Knowledge and Action: Designing the Future through the Social Professions

This edited volume is the first in a new series, with chapters from researchers and social professionals covering topics from Argentina, Canada, Italy, Spain, and the U.S. As a whole the book also lays the groundwork for building a theoretical base that both unites and strengthens the field itself, while also opening a space to analyze and understand particular professions and contexts.

In terms of KNOWLEDGE, this edited volume starts a new series that will envision the field in a comprehensive manner. This task includes reflections on social professions and their past, present and future roles, in a so-called well-being knowledge society. The series will include chapters from concept to theory and practice since social action can be established from different worldviews. The conceptualization of social reference models, and the redefinition of the different social professions, can be related to existing or necessary social intervention practices in the coming decades. The series also addresses social professions and planning and its role in knowledge building. The reader will find reflections on the current role of the social professions in the design, development and evaluation of social projects; and the possibilities of incorporating social professionals into the design processes of the future of human groups. Next the series envisions the frontiers on social planning research. In the 21^st century, the interdisciplinarity of the interventions opens a new path of collaboration and multidisciplinary training for professionals. It is time to reflect on how the social professions will be configured in the near future, and to make proposals to connect and further their collaboration. What is the research agenda in the sphere of the current social sphere and what are the challenges for the coming decades? Interdisciplinary proposals are especially interesting in this regard.

In terms of ACTION, the series looks at global and local contexts in social professions and social planning. Global policies increasingly define contextualized action, financing large social programs that segment into local projects. This requires collecting examples of these segmentation processes, reflections on the most effective ways of financing local projects and new trends in this area. Next it looks at social planning and social professions analysis or methodologies. This area focuses on research methods, qualitative and quantitative, from different disciplines-ie economics, sociology, education, anthropology, psychology, biomedical sciences-and different perspectives (positivist, hermeneutic, critical). . Finally it addresses collective action, institutional leverage and public policies. Contributions will relate to public policies in different parts of the world for the development of social projects, as well as the action of civil society, ie NGO, charity, foundations-and new forms of financing social projects, such as crowdfunding. Examples may include already developed projects and the results of their evaluation.

It is both appropriate and timely to continue promoting the visibility of social professions, understood in a broad sense, from an international and multidisciplinary vision, which supports a holistic model of social intervention and not a reductionist vision of these professions, and brings them closer to collaboration and the development of synergies in social intervention. For this reason, we believe it is important to continue the series started in this volume, which in the future will try to present different social professions, their challenges and their future potential to develop more inclusive and caring societies.

 

José Gijón Puerta has a bachelor's degree in biology, a DEA in Paleoanthropology - Human Evolution- and PhD in Pedagogy. He is an Associate Professor at the University of Granada, Department of Didactics & School Organization. He teaches in the Social Education Degree, MAES master of Secondary Teacher Training, and Doctorate in Education. He is a founding member and former Director of ProfesioLab Research Group. He has recently created the Research Group CHTI-HAM, Laboratory for Cognition, Health, Training and Interaction among Humans, Animals and Machines. He focuses his current research on three main topics of investigation: Human-dog interaction to manage academic stress in higher education students, Entrepreneurship Education, and Acceptance and Knowledge of Evolutionary Theory in degree students and teachers.

Kristine M. Harrison has a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction, with a background in Latin-American, Caribbean, and Iberian Studies (LACIS) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has worked in English and Spanish language teaching from K-12 to the undergraduate level in the U.S., Puerto Rico, Morocco, and the Sultanate of Oman. She supervised teacher candidates at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater from 2019-2021 while working as a substitute teacher in local schools. She has focused and published on issues aligned with language education policy (LEP) since 2013 beginning with the INLEPS website, as well as focusing issues of identity formation and language for indigenous, immigrant, and refugee students in U.S. schools. She co-coordinated the bi-continental conference in Madison, Wisconsin and Paris, France, in 2017. She is currently part of the start-up team for Deep Education Institute as well as an honorary postdoctoral fellow with LACIS, working on projects in Puerto Rico.