Narrations of rights: social education, ethics and professional deontology

Abstract

Social education, like all forms of education, contains a series of inevitable ethical considerations. For this reason proposals have recently increased for the systemization and construction of applied ethics in the context of social education. The aim of this article is to look at these approaches on a deeper level. We consider these approaches constitute a kind of narrative in transit, in the sense that they represent areas of collective reflections which, as with all social knowledge, are in a continual process of reconstruction and development. Nevertheless, these reflections should be a reference for the improvement of theoretical and practical initiatives in social education. We begin by analyzing the way in which social education makes the distinction between the ethical and the moral. This allows us to begin the identification of common codes for the professionalization of social education with its own professional ethics. Therefore, we concentrate on finding definitive aspects related to the understanding of ethics as the axis with which to narrate social education as being a meeting point for meaning and experience, with differing characteristics regarding normatives and professional ethics. Following this, the recent history of the discipline is described, focusing on the varying developments of a professional code of ethics. The essential points are explained with concrete proposals for its implemention. Social education is linked to ethical and political processes, both indispensable in the development of citizenship.