The beginning of the subject of Social Work/Social Pedagogy in Oldenburg predates the founding of the university. Already in the context of the earlier teacher training at the (then still) University of Education Oldenburg, the social pedagogical internship formed the first study placement, and there has been a professorship for social pedagogy since 1968.

In the course of the founding of the University of Oldenburg at the beginning of the 1970s, efforts were made to establish a major in social education/social work in the diploma programme in education. In the winter semester of 1975/76, the specialisation was opened and now existed alongside the specialisation in Adult Education, later supplemented by the specialisations in Special/Rehabilitation Education and (then) Intercultural Education or (now) Migration and Education. Since then, social work/social pedagogy can be studied as an academic subject in Oldenburg, meanwhile in a Bachelor's and also in a Master's degree programme.

From the very beginning, Social Pedagogy in Oldenburg has been concerned with social inequality as well as with issues that address defining attributions and disadvantages against women. Heike Fleßner, who represented an important voice of the subject in Oldenburg very early on and for a long time (from 1973 to 2009), made it clear that the thematisation of gender relations is not a special issue that appears on the fringes of social work/social pedagogy, but that gender relations are at the core of the issues that form and move the subject: "Regardless of which field of action of social work is considered, regardless of which pedagogical concepts are used: Gender structures are systematically anchored in Social Work, regardless of whether this is addressed or not: Social Work is a professional field with a historical deep structure of gender segregation". (Fleßner 2011, p. 62)

Since the winter semester 2006/2007, Social Work/Social Pedagogy in Oldenburg has seen itself as diversity-conscious.

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