Abstract:

Social Educators are professionals dedicated to socio-educational intervention, in various fields of action, with people, institutions and communities, in a perspective of lifelong training, which promote the integration of these audiences in society, thus combating social exclusion, loneliness and promoting community development by satisfying the educational and guiding needs of the populations, challenging the personal, social and professional growth of each person. In the Social Education degree, students (future social educators) acquire a diversity of skills that enable them to intervene, with educational practices, in very diverse social contexts, always with a pedagogical intention. As future professionals, they are carriers of scientifically consistent knowledge that, integrating the contribution of diverse academic knowledge, makes them capable of feeding reflective dialogue with a plurality of academic knowledge. The question that guides the study is: what is the perception of the Social Educator profile in students and graduates? The use of qualitative methods, resort to specialized software, webQDA® for data analysis, through open procedures, corresponding to a permanent process of progressive creation, in which, the reflection and analysis of data are rigorously and constantly triangulated to identify the Social Educator profile. Questionnaires were prepared with open questions and passed to students of 1st year, 2nd year, 3rd year (last year) of the Degree in Social Education and to former students, already licensed, in a total of 51 questionnaires collected, from a Higher Education institution Northern Portugal. The three categories are defined a priori: Social actor, educator and social mediator and validated, according to the Delphi method. Data collection will be carried out in circumstances previously agreed between researchers, students or graduates. Data were collected over two weeks in the first academic semester of 2020. The results were triangulated with the results of students, graduates and documentary analysis. The main results were: Values such as hospitality and human closeness must be assumed as a commitment to socio-educational action. The Social Educator is a professional of socio-educational intervention specially provided with skills of educability with socially vulnerable people and human groups. A social intervention, because it works in and with the community, with and for the person, an educational intervention insofar as it favors the development of new forms of relationship, communication and social interaction, promoting the formation of a chain of solidarity and social co-responsibility, bringing together the living forces of the community, consolidating social ties. The main conclusions are: Social Educators are called to point out paths and to suggest direction lines. In a vulnerable and uncertain world, in which it is becoming increasingly difficult to lead one's life with the capacity for initiative, maturity and security, like living the responsibility of guiding others in the process of building their own autonomy, their own life project. Which leads us to the question of the necessary balance between the desire for influence and respect for the other's otherness.

Keywords:

Social Education, Social Educator Profile, Social Intervention.