Social education and human rights in times of pandemic

• Autor(a) principal: Luisa, Cláudia
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: https://doi.org/10.31211/rpics.2022.8.2.268
• topic: Human Rights; Social Educators; Pandemic; Perceptions; Qualitative Study; Direitos Humanos; Educadores Sociais; Pandemia; Perceções; Estudo qualitativo

Background and Aim: In Portugal, as in most countries of the world, we are experiencing severe social inequalities, phenomena of social exclusion and poverty, increased unemployment, and lack of opportunities, situations that have been aggravated by the COVID-19 Pandemic. Thus, the main objective of the study was to identify the perceptions of social educators working in the Algarve about the impacts of the pandemic on their professional lives. The specific objectives were to make a sociodemographic characterization of the social educators, to identify the main difficulties that they experienced in a professional context during the pandemic, to identify their coping strategies, and to know their opinion about respect for human rights. Method: This is an exploratory and descriptive study with a qualitative approach. The sample was by convenience and included 32 social educators. Data collection was carried out through questionnaire surveys, completed on Google Forms, consisting of mostly open questions. The answers were subjected to content analysis. Results: The results allowed us to identify the difficulties experienced by social educators in a professional context, namely the difficulty in managing human resources, given the lack of people, and also the difficulty in maintaining social distance. Most respondents consider that human rights have been neglected both in their workplace and in society. Conclusions: It is thought that it will be a complex and busy future for social educators and all the people involved in the processes of decision-making, implementation, and evaluation of activities and projects, as a way to overcome the designs left by the COVID-19 pandemic.