Professional Practices in Social Work and University Extension: elements for problematization

Abstract

The essay I present results from a curricular analysis process that is part of the elaboration of the new curriculum of the Bachelor's degree in Social Work, of the curricularization projects proposed by the areas of university extension, as well as of the debates with teaching teams of the different subjects of the career regarding the need not to homologate-necessarily-professional practices with university extension.

In a brief introduction we describe some institutional scenes of a series of debates regarding the transversalities between professional practices and university extension. We also review, from a critical point of view of the sociology of professions, the classic tensions in the field that are usually synthesized in a reductionist way in different cultural uses of the profession: divorce theory-practice, in practice theory is another, etc., an overdimensioned moment within professional debates. Also, a brief genealogy of the different ways of understanding the university extension is made, promoting its dialogue with the professional practices of Social Work. Finally we propose a dialogue between Paulo Freire's positions on Extension and Communication, and what is known as the Political Ethical Project of Social Work, proposed by the Latin American Collective, to think about what political, institutional and economic conditions would be placed as barriers to tune professional practices with the emancipatory dimension of extension in our University.