Distance Learning and Social Workers’ Professional Education: Elements for Debate

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to analyze the extent to which distance social work training is based on or distant from the principles of the ABEPSS curriculum guidelines of 1996. We set out to analyze educational policy based on the framework we have adopted, distance education policy in Brazil, characterized by excessive commercialization and a discourse of democratization that eschews the precariousness of teaching, and does not expose or criticize the workers or students who work and study in this modality, that “motivates” the subjects to act in this modality is the material reproduction of the daily life. We have verified that distance education has been operationalized as mass education. Standardization and technology as the main mediator subjects workers to alienation at work. This is a determinant of the formative process in this modality. Other characteristics raised were the superficiality of the apostilled material, which does not contemplate the theoretical - methodological rigor advocated by ABEPSS guidelines and the inexistence of the tripod research - teaching and extension.