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).

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