Investigative Training Trends in Contemporary Social Work

Abstract

In part, the little production of knowledge derived from Social Work is due to academic positions that tend to professionalization. These opinions contribute to generate and even to perpetuate a situation in which the role of research on social reality is not considered as a source of employment. This article seeks to contribute with elements that allow understanding a different sense of social research; a sense that goes beyond of the diagnosis processes

with the ones it has been traditionally linked. It presents the background of the issue, that is to say, the debate on the notion of social work as a profession or discipline, and its relationship to research. Then, it is done an analysis of research training given to undergraduate students. In this context, I present a review of research designs more used, trying to highlight the importance of integrality of that issue for research activities. At the end, I try to show the trends of research training and its perspectives for contemporary social work, in order to give some conclusions, as a matter of study, related to social work in its disciplinary and professional construction.