The Competency Profile Of A Social Work Educator
Author(s):
María Dolores Eslava Suanes (presenting / submitting) Ignacio González López (presenting) Ana Belen Lopez Camara Carlota De León Huertas
Conference:
ECER 2016
Network:
22. Research in Higher Education
Format:
Paper

Session Information

22 SES 02 C, Professionals in Academia

Paper Session

Time:
2016-08-23
15:15-16:45
Room:
NM-J109
Chair:
Liudvika Leisyte

Contribution

Today’s socio-economic and education reality requires a series of training plans and continuing development programmes to be designed, encompassing a set of professional competencies that enable students and practising professionals to perform their professional task effectively in order to carve out a path in the labour market. Furthermore, professionals must be trained in such a way that they are capable of intervening, investigating, and researching professional action within settings of social exclusion, settings that have suffered a severe blow in recent years.

 Castel (2014) and Laparra (2014) point out how processes of social exclusion in Spain have intensified in recent years owing to the decline of the labour market combined with austere social policies. This situation highlights the peculiarities and limitations of the welfare model since, although rights are being maintained, austerity measures have meant that this protection is coming up against increasingly restrictive conditions of access, the effects of which have been aggravated among the most vulnerable population (Frazer & Marlier, 2012).

 If social exclusion is understood to be the result of a growing process of social disconnection, the loss of personal networks and bonds that make it difficult for a person or a group to access the opportunities and resources provided by society itself (Amorós & Ayerbe, 2000 and Subirats, 2004), the most realistic goal is to ensure the professional capacity of education agents to intervene in such settings, which entails providing them with training in professional competencies. This implies activating a relationship between knowledge, processes, and attitudes, leading to the development of know-how or savoir-faire, savoir-être, and ability in professional endeavours (Fernandez March, 2006; Zabalza, 2008; Díaz, 2012 and Guzmán, 2012). However, this savoir-faire and savoir-être are not an end in themselves; rather, they will depend on being put into motion, on being exercised, in order to perform competently when carrying out an action (Bunk, 1994; Tejada, 1999 and Le Bortef, 2001).

 One of the difficulties that hinder the establishment of professional competencies is the problem of predicting the professional profiles required at any given time in a constantly changing society (Cascante Fernández, 2004). Therefore, the aim of this research is to establish the competencies that define the professional profile of individuals who work in diverse settings, in areas of social transformation, in contexts of risk - graduates in Social Work Education - in order for this profile to be reflected in their curriculum, a professional and competency profile.

This degree course emerged in Spain in 1991 as part of the Diploma Course in Social Work Education, which was converted in line with the requirements of the European Higher Education Area and relabelled as a Degree Course in Social Work Education. This course is currently taught in thirty-eight Spanish universities. These institutions have developed initiatives to specify the competency-based training required by a Social Work Educator, setting out the foundations of this profile in the findings of the Tuning Project (González & Wagenaar, 2003), a document that defines the transversal and specific competencies of each discipline, as well as in the information set out by ANECA (2005) for the Degree Course in Teaching and Social Work Education.

 Professionally, the work of social work educators in Spain is regulated by the State Association of Social Work Education (ASEDES),which provides Social Work Educators with a series of professionalising documents that tackle the definition of Social Work Education, the Professional Code of Ethics of the Social Work Educator, and the catalogue of Functions and Competencies of the Social Work Educator  (ASEDES, 2007).

Method

At this point, the purpose of this research is to combine the efforts of the State Association of Social Work Educators and university institutions to define an agreed professional profile. The aim of the proposed research is to define the professional profile of the social work educator based on a comparative document study of the different curriculums set out by Spanish universities. Following López Noguero (2002), Massot, Dorio and Sabariego (2004), Rodríguez Campos (2006), Gómez (2011) and Sadornil (2013) in their review of the methodological stages required to implement document-based research as a technique, the following stages were implemented: - An inventory was compiled of the existing documents available that define the competency profile of social work educators in Spain. The catalogue of functions and competencies proposed by the Professional Association of Social Work Educators (ASEDES) was accessed along with the different Reports on the Social Work Education degree courses taught at Spanish universities. A total of thirty-three Verification Reports for Social Work Education degree courses were accessed, from the thirty-eight Spanish universities that teach these courses, with a success percentage of 87%. Information regarding the remaining universities was accessed through their webpage. - The contents of the selected documents were read and analysed in depth, extracting the different elements that make up the professional and competency profiles defined by each institution for social work educators. - Patterns were identified in the different curricula: number of competencies, types of competencies, and training modules. - A cross-referenced and comparative interpretation was performed of the different curricula on the basis of the patterns found. - Content sheets were compiled with each of the Social Work Education degree course Reports, reflecting the university, the training modules comprised, the types of competencies, as well as the number of competencies allocated to each module. They also reflected the total number of competencies by type and contained an observations section defining the professional profile of the social work educator, along with bibliographical references. - The specific competencies were selected from the Social Work Education Degree Course Reports. - The first summarised competency profile of the social work education was constructed.

Expected Outcomes

The resulting profile points to two metacategories: basic competencies, competencies that, from an integrating perspective, combine the knowledge, procedures, and attitudes that are considered essential in order to apply the knowledge acquired and, therefore, are considered common to other professions in the sphere of education; and professional competencies, pertaining to the function performed by the social work educator in each scenario of socio-education intervention (savoir-faire), as well as competencies that allude to the professional identity of the social work educator (savoir-être). These two metacategories generate seven categories: - Five pertaining to basic competencies, such as: communicative skills, critical-reflexive skills, relationship skills, the capacity to select and manage information, and disciplinary knowledge, with a weighing of 33% within the competency profile. This set of categories can be further broken down into thirteen sub-categories or competency elements. - Two pertaining to professional competencies, functional competencies, and professional identity. These categories encompass eight competency elements. Depending on the category, in terms of basic competencies, the greatest weighting is represented by disciplinary knowledge with 21.6%, and especially those related with the discipline “theory of education”, with 7.5%. Also of particular note, although to a lesser extent, is critical reflexive capacity, with a weighting of 2.2% for competency references related with the understanding of theoretical and contextual reference points in education, and 2.3% for those related with critical thinking. However, the curricula analysed place greater importance on procedures in the training of social work educators, showing that 63.5% of the references compiled correspond to functional competencies. Within these competencies particular relevance is observed for the functions of “evaluation of social and educational contexts”, “design, implementation, and evaluation of education programmes”, and “management of institutions”. This model will be subject to validation by a team of experts.

References

ASEDES (2007). Catálogo de funciones y competencias. Recuperado de: http://www.ceespv.org/downloads/Cat_Funciones_y_Competencias.pdf ANECA (2005). Libro Blanco. Título de grado en Pedagogía y Educación Social. Volumen I y II. Madrid. Bunk, P. (1994). La transmisión de las competencias en la formación y perfeccionamiento profesionales de la RFA. Revista Europea de Formación Profesional, 1, 8-14. Castel, R. (2014). Los riesgos de exclusión social en un contexto de incertidumbre, Revista Internacional de Sociología, 72(1), 15-24. Díaz, F. (2012). TIC y competencias docentes en el siglo XXI. En R. Carneiro, J. C. Toscano y F. Díaz (Eds.), Los desafíos de las TIC para el cambio educativo (pp. 139-154). Madrid: OEI y Fundación Santillana Gómez, L. (2011). Un espacio para la investigación documental. Revista Vanguardia Psicológica, 1(2), 226-233. González, J. &Wagenaar, J. (eds.). (2003). Tuning Educational Structures in Europe. Informe Final Fase Uno. Bilbao: Universidad de Deusto. Guzmán, F. (2012). El concepto de competencias. Revista Iberoamericana de Educación, 4 (60), 1-13. Fernández March, A. (2006). Metodologías activas para la formación de competencias. Educatio siglo XXI, 24, 35-56. Frazer, H. & Marlier, E. (2012). Assessment of Social Inclusion Policy Development in the EU. January 2012. Main Finding and Suggestion on the Way Forward. EU Network of Independent Experts on Social Inclusion Policy. Recuperado de: www.ceps.lu/publi_viewer.cfm?tmp=1800 Laparra, M. (2014). La fractura social se ensancha: intensificación de los procesos de exclusión en España durante 7 años. En Fundación FOESSA, VII Informe sobre exclusión y desarrollo social en España 2014 (pp. 152-255). Madrid: Cáritas. Le Boterf, G. (2001). Ingeniería de las competencias. Barcelona: Gestión. López Noguero, F. (2002). El análisis de contenido como método de investigación, XXI, Revista de Educación, 4, 167-179. Massot, I., Dorio, I. y Sabariego, M. (2004). Estrategias de recogida y análisis de la información. En Rafael Bisquerra Alzina (coord.). Metodología de la investigación educativa. (pp. 329-366). Madrid: La Muralla. Rodríguez Campos, I. (2006). Técnicas de investigación documental. Sevilla: Trillas. Sadornil, D. (2013). Diccionario-glosario de metodología de la investigación social. Madrid: UNED. Subirats, J (dir.) (2004). Pobreza y exclusión social. Un análisis de la realidad española y europea. Barcelona: Fundación La Caixa. Tejada, J. (1999). Acerca de las competencias profesionales (II). Herramientas, 57, 8-14. Zabalza, M. A. (2008). El trabajo por competencias en la enseñanza universitaria. En I. Rodríguez Escanciano (Ed.). El nuevo perfil del profesor universitario en el EEES: claves para la renovación metodológica, (pp. 79-114). Valladolid: Universidad Europea Miguel de Cervantes.

Author Information

María Dolores Eslava Suanes (presenting / submitting)
University of Cordoba
Education
Córdoba
Ignacio González López (presenting)
University of Cordoba
Education
Córdoba
Ana Belen Lopez Camara
Universidad de Cordoba
Educacion
Cordoba
Carlota De León Huertas
University of Cordoba
Education
Córdoba

Update Modus of this Database

The current conference programme can be browsed in the conference management system (conftool) and, closer to the conference, in the conference app.
This database will be updated with the conference data after ECER. 

Search the ECER Programme

  • Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
  • Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
  • Search for authors and in the respective field.
  • For planning your conference attendance, please use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference and the conference agenda provided in conftool.
  • If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.