THE PROFESSIONALIZATION OF SOCIAL EDUCATION IN SCHOOLS

The formal introduction of Social Education professionals in schools in Spain dates back to 2002 in Extremadura and Castilla-La Mancha. However, social education as a practice and occupation not yet professionalized, anticipating theory and regulation, has already dealt with pupils with school problems since the 1970s, carried out by social services or multidisciplinary teams at the community level. In this article, we analyze the level of pro-fessionalization of Social Education in schools from the broad perspective of the universe of school socio-educational action. The analysis is based on the theory of professions and uses the selection of the actors involved in its professionalization as an analytical tool. A quali-tative deductive approach is used as a methodological procedure, following the proposals of the Glaserian version of Grounded Theory and the Atlas.ti program. The results indicate that there are de-professionalizing factors such as the fragmentation of the profession, the scarcity of employment, the absence of monopolization, deficient regularization, lack of au-tonomy of professionals, the assignment of non-educational tasks, and precariousness due to unstable financing, as well as professionalizing factors such as the efficiency of professionals, satisfaction of the educational community, and the activism of professional groups. Depend-ing on the executing entity, three models of socio-educational action in the school can be distinguished. Using a critical empirical nominalism, we can conceptually distinguish two edu-cational realities based on the bond of the agent, the orientation of the activities, the intensity of the intervention, and the professional who performs it.