The aim of this paper is to reflect on the usual (German) assumption that there is an actual objective relation between pedagogy, education and residential care homes for children and adolescents. For this perspective it is necessary to epistemologically avoid the terms "pedagogy" and "education", as this supports a distinct analysis of (social) pedacogical matters in the context of residential care for children and youth. To analyze these matters, the paper builds its argument on some basic thoughts of a social theory approach that has lately been developed by Andreas Reckwitz in the field of cultural studies and focuses on the deconstruction and reconstruction of so-called complexes of practices/discourses/subjectifications/artefacts. Drawing from this approach, this paper will concentrate on practice/discourse-relations. The take this perspective allows firstly to establish some systematic observation on the special characteristics of a relatively powerful discourse of "educational residential care" in Germany. Secondly it will take a first step towards an empirical investigation of discourse formations that go along with institutionalizations of "education through residential care." The latter institutionalizations will be investigated in terms of their epistemic idiosyncrasies, which can be illustrated particularly where they relate to practices in residential care homes.