Serviço social frente às tecnologias digitais da informação e comunicação : uma análise a partir de dissertações e teses (1990- 2021)

Abstract

The research object of the paper is the production of knowledge, dissertations and theses, of the postgraduate course in Social Work on information and communication technologies in the training and professional practice of the social worker. It is based on the hypothesis that the development of digital information and communication technologies, at the current stage of capitalism, and in the way it is appropriated, accentuates the abyss of social inequality, which leads to "new" expressions of the social issue and poses challenges to the training and professional practice of social workers. The experiences lived during undergraduate studies contributed to the awakening of questions about how the discussion about digital technologies is being made by the category. The research is exploratory, bibliographic/documentary in nature and has as its general objective: to analyze the production of knowledge of post-graduate studies in Social Work, through dissertations and theses, about the presence of information technology and communication in the formation and professional practice of Social Work, between 1990 and 2021. And as specific: To understand the technological development, articulating it to the social relations of production with emphasis on the capitalist mode of production; to apprehend the conceptions of technology present in the works selected for analysis; to characterize the digital technologies of information and communication in the context of contemporary capitalism; to identify the debate of the digital technologies of information and communication in the formation and professional practice of the social worker through the selected dissertations and theses. We resorted to collecting material from the CAPES dissertation and thesis database, using the keywords Social Service and Technology, initially finding 4,991 results. After exclusion criteria and successive approximations, 5 works were selected to compose the sample, with emphasis on training and/or professional practice. The use of the Content Analysis (CA) method, through the categories: Conception of technology; Social Question; Social Service and Technology Relationship, made it possible to cover the debate, the development and operationalization of these demands during the formation and professional practice. As main results, the study pointed out that the works in the area of Social Service place technology in a historical perspective and that it presents potentialities and limits within the capitalist society. As far as training is concerned, with the advance of the DTICs, there has been an increase in distance education courses, which has been accentuated with the covid-19 pandemic, an accelerated growth in the modality due to the mercantile logic that has tied itself to education, especially since the 1990s, with the neoliberal offensive. Moreover, there are gaps that need to be filled, especially in undergraduate courses, because fears of falling into pragmatism when dealing with the theme may put the profession in this very position. Therefore, the unity of the theory-practice relationship is emphasized, which needs to accompany the social dynamics. In relation to professional practice, it was found that technological innovations significantly alter the process and the organization of work. On the one hand, they allow greater control over the pace of work, the worker's time, and constant surveillance; on the other, they hold potential for social organization, improved communication between peers and users, and approximation of reality based on the greater capacity to store, systematize, exchange, and articulate data. Thus, it is concluded that the DTICs, by themselves, are instruments, which gain direction from the materialization of the intentionality of each professional, which reinforces the importance of this discussion.