CHANGES TO SOCIAL WORK TRAINING AND RESEARCH PRACTICES GENERATED BY COVID-19: OPPORTUNITIES, DILEMMAS AND CHALLENGES FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH

Introduction. This article presents the results of research on the conditions of Social Work teachers and students who conducted scientific research or final degree projects during the COVID-19 pandemic. We adopted the comprehensive perspective of the social sciences, inspired by authors who question technical-instrumental rationality and advance, instead, the need for a practical-reflexive rationale, in both Social Work professional practice and training. The authors involved came from the disciplines of Philosophy, Sociology and Social Work, and their postures were based on the concepts of "practical knowledge" "reflective process", "reflexivity" and "knowledge in action". Methodology. The methodological design was based on an emic reading of reality. A simple convenience random sample was used, applying the following criteria: geographical location, job position within the universities and research experience. The documentary review technique was implemented to analyse 42 thesis projects. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven academic-researchers-from four Latin American countries - and eleven Social Work students who complied with the following criteria: being in the final semester of their degree; belonging to a university in the city of Guayaquil; and researching topics related to the pandemic. Results. Four dimensions were considered: context, research practice, teachers' scientific production, the tutoring of the academic production of senior students and Social Work research training. The voices expressing the daily implications of the pandemic were found to present clear alterations in the case of those who were carrying out a research project or training new researchers. The personal dynamics resulting from the virus have redirected and, above all, produced learning. Such learning fosters a possible description, explanation and understanding of new dynamics to form and produce knowledge. Discussion and conclusions. Novel research challenges or dilemmas have emerged in Social Work research. The pandemic-as a sociohistorical and bio-psycho-social phenomenon-has evidenced that social inequalities and vulnerabilities are not only of a physical or material nature. Nor do they depend solely on access to technological resources (a computer, a mobile phone, internet, energy service). This fact could, perhaps, lead to changes in research budgets in order to provide these material means to the people involved. They also exist on another level: the subjective level, in which culture, territory, class or gender, among others, determine more complex vulnerabilities than that of the symbolic world to which they belong. And they cannot be solved simply by resorting to material or technological investments.