Editorial - Educação Social

Diálogos entre a Formação e a Profissionalidade

Abstract

The thematic issue «Social Education: dialogues between training and professionalism» appears at a crossroads moment in the process of institutionalization and consolidation of Social Education in Portugal, as in other European contexts. Not being a new professional field, it is, when compared to other professions that inhabit the field of social work, still recent. With some of its disciplinary bases and its programmatic commitments firmly grounded, Social Education remains crossed by a plurality of knowledge and methodological orientations that make its borders permeable and diffuse - which, in our view, constitutes both a challenge and an opportunity. Involved in the social and educational response to the problems and challenges posed by contemporary societies, it is transformed and is transformed by contexts, conjunctures and structures. It is, therefore, a field in permanent (re) configuration, one that, at the present moment, proposes to look to the future and dialogically identify priorities and pathways.

This issue arises, therefore, from the need to promote the dialogue between the field of training and professionalism, looking for bridges and voids, challenges and opportunities, achievements and failures. It brings together a set of contributions, some more theoretical-reflective, some more empirical,  from authors with a professional background linked to higher education of social educators (whether they are social educators themselves or not) and / or the associative movement. It also counts on the contribution of a social educator. It is a dialogue that crosses borders, with two texts by Spanish authors.