Knowledge, Autonomies, and Reflexivity in Professional Work in the Third Sector (KARPROW)

Reference: PTDC/CS-SOC/098459/2008

Research coordinator: Telmo Caria (Centro de Investigação e Intervenção Educativas (CIIE/FPCE-UP))

Research team: Ana Paula Marques (CICS-UM), Armando Loureiro (UTAD), Berta Granja (ISSSP), Fernando Pereira (School of Agriculture, Bragança), Maria Cristina Rocha (CIIE/FPCEUP) and Maria Isabel Costa (CIIE/FPCEUP).

Funding Institution: FCT

Objectives: The project aims to develop an ethnographic strategy of data gathering and analysis regarding professional knowledge and reflexivity, highlighting the subjective appropriation and intelligibility of work in social interaction by and to the professional him/herself. This will be accomplished on the basis of a detailed self-description of the activity of the latter and on a self-reflexion regarding aspects of his/her activity observed by the researcher. It will also be important to gather data in order to understand the Third Sector’s social-organisational conditions that may facilitate or inhibit (dis)continuities between reflexive-discursive competencies and reflexive-practical ones, since it is known that both obey to different epistemologies – therefore, involving different forms of mobilising knowledge. For this reason, one type of reflexivity does not necessarily entail the development of another. For this purpose, we will conduct inquiries on the power and autonomy the professionals have in the symbolic, technical, and political plans, within their work contexts, which allow them to develop their knowledge, and consequently their reflexive competencies.

Duration: 2010-2013