Territorial research processes in the first year: strengths and new challenges

Abstract

Throughout its history, the Public University has been the object of dispute between sectors that claim greater social recognition as the driving force behind a fairer and more inclusive society and others that delegitimize it because they believe it should link its organization and functioning to the logic of the market. Within this framework, we propose to reflect on the strengths and challenges of a proposal for territorial research, in connection with research and extension, in a first-year course of the Degree in Social Work of the FCS-University of Córdoba.

The links between territory and training practices in Social Work are constitutive of the teaching and learning process during the career, with particular relevance during the first year. It is there that this first encounter with the culture of the university field and discipline, with colleagues, teachers and with the institution, takes place. But it is also the first encounter with training practices in a territory that demands a particular way of appropriating its codes, logics, languages and processes of building knowledge in the social sphere. It is in the territory where it is possible to weave a network of trajectories and knowledge between the teaching team, students and neighbors, configuring interconnected and interdependent nodes between training, extension and research.