Pedagogy curriculum foundations for forming and building professional identity in social work

Abstract

This paper is aimed at academicians and specifically those teaching in social work schools who are charged with defining and promoting professional training in this particular field. The paper was presented in July 2017 at the Tenth National and Seventh International Conference on Latin American and Caribbean Social Work: “Resistance and Proposals in the Face of Economic, Social and Political Inequalities” organized by the Costa Rican Professional Association of Social Workers. The goal was to promote academic discussion on what should necessarily be included in the social work degree curriculum to help build professional identity. This issue has become a concern as new schools are created, each with a different curriculum, giving rise to the following questions: How is professional identity constructed, and how is it linked to the graduate’s profile? The paper proposes four themes: current society, a relevant curriculum, professional identity, and the role of higher education. The key conclusions include: assimilation of a professional identity goes through objective and subjective processes; the educational project has two scopes of work that should be consistent with each other – curriculum and pedagogy; and both should share a theoretical and political vision. These are roughly the topics covered in this paper.