Abstract:

The paper seeks to deepen the experience of a training proposal for Social Work students from a research exercise that focused on analyzing the defense of the territory of a rural community in the south of the city of Bogotá (Colombia), recognizing the situated struggles that occur in the territories and areas of daily life. This with a view to generating in students critical thinking bets more in line with the feelings and knowledge of the communities.

According to Nohemí Parola (2009), the professional practice of Social Work has been characterized by a colonial thought that has favored tendencies that seek to homogenize subaltern communities from hegemonic discursive practices. Taking into account the above, it is necessary that from the Latin American academy exercises of construction of epistemological approaches are carried out more in line with the realities that are addressed. For this reason, the paper aims to contribute to generate innovative epistemological bets that can be conceptualized in our territories and work in an experiential way with our students in the classroom.

On the other hand, dialogue is required to be a horizon to aspire to in any social intervention process, including the training of those who are going to perform said intervention (Muñoz, 2011). To propose innovative proposals, Social Work should not only question the hegemonic logic; but also our own beliefs. The voices of individuals, families, organizations, communities must be positioned at the center of the processes and be the most relevant aspect of it. As mentioned by Santos (2010, page 56), it is a process of decolonization of knowledge, whose "preference must be given to the form of knowledge that guarantees the highest level of participation to the social groups involved in its design, execution and control, and in the benefits of the intervention. "These aspects are fundamental to be able to question the epistemological and methodological frameworks in which the profession has traditionally gone; and thus propose processes that politically affect the recognition of voices that have been made invisible.

For this reason, it is intended that the social workers in training carry out investigative exercises that favor the exchange of ideas, opinions and knowledge without privileging the knowledge of someone in particular. In the words of Fals Borda, combine the experiential with the rational (Fals Borda, 2007).

This exercise seeks to reclaim the non-hegemonic practices of social groups, which historically have been made invisible, as well as to analyze their political potential. This position implies an ethical positioning in which the researcher is not the one who builds knowledge, but enters a process of collective construction in which the results of the research arise as a result of the interactions and the recognition of the subjects participating in it. The above is very important in the process of training social workers.

Keywords:

Social work, social investigation, vocational training.