The Vocational Pedagogy Curriculum aims to train professionals, experts in the field of guidance, animation, and education, vocational training (operators, teachers, researchers) specifically regarding vocational pastoral care, ordained ministry, consecrated vocations, and lay vocations, particularly marital and family vocations.
The curriculum is divided into two tracks:
- Pedagogy for Vocational Training;
- Pedagogy for the Formation of Marital and Family Vocations.
Bachelor’s Degree in Educational Sciences: specialization in Pedagogy for Marital and Family Vocational Formation
The first cycle of the Bachelor’s Degree aims to train professional figures of trainers, educators, and animators in the field of guidance, animation, and education of vocations to marriage and family. These professionals will be able to perform tasks of accompaniment and initial and ongoing training in educational and training institutions in general, and particularly in ecclesiastical structures dedicated to the discernment, promotion, and care of marital and family vocations.
The course aims to prepare trainers capable of performing significant roles and functions in guidance, accompaniment, training, and vocational pastoral care in general, and marital and family pastoral care in particular. It aims to train professional figures capable of educating individuals and couples, designing and coordinating interventions to enhance the formative capacities of educational, pastoral, and training institutions in general, and ecclesiastical ones in particular, according to the current conditions of couple life, marriage, and family.
Students will be guided in acquiring theoretical and methodological knowledge, along with operational and planning skills, enabling them to:
- understand the vocational reality and interpret new needs in a pedagogical and formative key, with particular attention to developmental, youth, couple, and family aspects;
- address educational, ecclesiastical, marital, and family situations with an operational and planning approach to establish itineraries, choose effective methodological strategies, and adapt processes to the current needs of marriage and family, society, and the Church;
- grasp new perspectives and needs of the educational task (animator, accompanist, guide, trainer, etc.), to enhance them in the context of their professional activity for the benefit of individuals, couples, families, and the institutions in which they are involved.
Licentiate in Educational Sciences: specialization in Pedagogy for the Formation of Marital and Family Vocations
The License in Educational Sciences with a specialization in Pedagogy for the animation and formation of marital and family vocations trains expert counselors, animators, and vocational educators at the lay, marital, and family levels. It also trains experts in pastoral accompaniment and counseling for marriage and family, as well as professionals in family pedagogy and pastoral care at various levels of civil and ecclesial jurisdiction.
It also prepares teachers in the field of marital and family vocation formation and experts in designing training processes according to the needs of the times and places, for various modes of initial, permanent, formal, and informal training in civil and ecclesial educational structures serving marriage and family.
The student will acquire in-depth theoretical and methodological knowledge and will be able to address educational and training situations with an operational and design approach, grasping the perspectives and training needs in the marital and family vocational field, and thus perform tasks of orientation, training, design, and vocational counseling for marriage and family.
To this end, in addition to theoretical, epistemological, and methodological knowledge, the student will acquire practical skills through workshops, seminars, internships, exercises, research experiences, and the design of educational interventions in the vocational field.
This curriculum trains experts in:
- animation and coordination of educational and ecclesial training structures for children, youth, adults, couples, and families;
- counseling for discernment, orientation, and accompaniment, especially for couples and families;
- designing initial and permanent or continuous training paths for marital and family vocations;
- diagnosing and developing vocational resources, accompanying and supporting the vocational journey in situations of vocational crisis in couples, families, and family groups, also in collaboration with other specialists.