The Place of School Social Workers within Education Public Policy: The Portuguese Case
Abstract
Social workers promote justice and social change, work to optimize access and promote citizens' rights, among which is the access of all students to education. In Portugal, social workers presence in schools fluctuated throughout times, as a consequence of the variable appreciation the profession deserved in the successive public policies regulating the educational sector. Thus, two purposes guide this paper review: (i) to unfold the main legislative initiatives in the field of public education to reflect upon social workers participation in Portuguese schools, over time; (ii) emphasize the multidimensionality of the work accomplished by social workers in schools, conceptualized the open systems permeable to the diversity and complexity of the problems (failure, abandonment, indiscipline, violence, bullying, discrimination, …, consumption) that encompass students' social origins and their needs. Resting on exploratory-descriptive research, this paper is based on the selective literature review from school social work's and educational policies scientific fields, subsequently subjected to content and argumentative analysis procedures. Main results emphasize the central role fulfilled by social workers in Portuguese schools, stressing out the ways by which political theoretical-methodological, ethical and technical-operational dimensions permeating social work practices, are mobilized to build critical professional projects capable of responding the challenges school social workers face nowadays.
KEYWORDS: social work, social intervention, school, educational policy, Portugal
Published
Issue
Section
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms: RAIS Journal of Social Sciences is given by the author the right of the first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal. Authors retain copyright. If the author cites from his own article published in RAIS Journal of Social Sciences, then he is encouraged to cite the name of the RAIS Journal of Social Sciences, volume, and page. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access). This journal provides immediate open access to its content, in this way, we make research freely available to the public and support a greater global exchange of knowledge.
PRIVACY STATEMENT
The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.