Education aimed at people with Diabetes Mellitus: pedagogical, theoretical and practical approaches in tension

Education for people with Diabetes Mellitus (DM) represents a challenge in the field of public health. We present a theoretical proposal that guides the pedagogical analysis of health education for people with DM, based on a documentary research process. The findings evidenced the existence of different theoretical perspectives in tension about education in people with DM that struggle for legitimacy, which can be grouped into two tendencies, one traditional and the other critical. A proposal guided by pedagogical theory and public health is presented to explain the findings. The theory constructed intends to evidence the configuration of educational currents as a result of the debates and theoretical, political and epistemological struggles that occur at the intersection of the fields of public health and pedagogy.