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Psychology and Social Work Through Critical Lens

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International Handbook of Psychology Learning and Teaching

Abstract

Psychology around the world has undergone important changes along last decades. One of the most salient transformations has impacted both the science and psychologists’ self-images as practitioners and researchers and provoked the slow displacement of the discipline’s focus, from isolated individuals to individuals within groups and communities. Psychology today left the closed rooms of offices and clinics, and has gone outdoors, to work with community members and through the participation in communities’ daily life. As a consequence of this empirical shift, theoretical novelties were required. Psychologists represent now even more active agents within health, educational, social care system, and governmental and non-governmental programs. In this chapter we present and discuss the historical process of this sociocultural and epistemological rupture in Psychology and consider its impacts over applied social sciences today. We elaborate on contemporary challenges concerning social work and discuss the contribution critical psychological approaches can provide to enhance its impacts and outcomes in face of the very complex issues dealt by social policies in a globalized world.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In this chapter, we use the term “social worker” in reference to the set of social care professionals, while “social assistant” is exclusively adopted to refer to those graduated in this career and registered as professionals, even though this differentiation is not universally adopted in different national contexts.

  2. 2.

    To other informations about the “Soccer of the Hood” project, please access: https://www.instagram.com/uamaparanoa (Instagram); https://www.facebook.com/uamaparanoaitapoa/ (Facebook); or, search in Youtube “Soccer of the Hood: a project that makes a difference” (Futebol da Quebrada: um projeto que faz a diferença), a video produced by adolescents and social workers (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmxI9SA2cW4)

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de Oliveira, M.C.S.L., Yokoy, T. (2022). Psychology and Social Work Through Critical Lens. In: Zumbach, J., Bernstein, D., Narciss, S., Marsico, G. (eds) International Handbook of Psychology Learning and Teaching. Springer International Handbooks of Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26248-8_49-1

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