At the University of Applied Sciences FH Campus Vienna we offer the course “Social Management in Early Education and Care”. In university teaching, the question arises as to what extent the transfer of scientifically based knowledge from research into practice is possible, since the graduates should be qualified to professionally design and accompany children's educational processes on the basis of scientific findings. During the course, students learn the basics of psychoanalytic development theories in order to make the meaning of unconscious processes in relationships for working with children and parents theoretically understandable. Psychoanalytic theoretical knowledge can only be applied in practice if it succeeds in bringing it to the level of action. Two aspects appear to be important here: developing the ability to observe children and processes of self-awareness of one's own actions. The “Work Discussion” method was developed by Martha Harris at the Tavistock Center in London and further developed for teaching at the university. The observation, writing and subsequent reflection of one's own actions in the group should enable a differentiated access to one's own professional actions, one's own emotional experience and the emotional experience of the children and parents by making the unconscious relationship dynamics between the acting persons understandable from the different perspectives can be. In the lecture, the concept of the course will be presented first, and then case material from teaching will be used to show how pedagogical practice can be professionalized by linking psychoanalytic knowledge, observation and reflection on one's own actions.

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