THE ETHICAL DIMENSION AND VALUES INVOLVED IN SOCIAL EDUCATION. PERSPECTIVES OF SCHOLARS, EDUCATORS AND PARTICIPANTS

There are three dimensions to consider in the profession of Social Education: knowledge, practice and ethics. While the former two have been widely developed, that of ethics has been largely ignored. Currently, there is an open theoretical debate on how to develop this ethical dimension, and this affects professionals in the field, who do not know how to incorporate it into their daily practice. This article aims to explore the ethical dimension and values involved in socio-educational relationships based on the discourses of scholars, professionals and participants or learners within the framework of Social Education. To this end, a qualitative research process was designed in two phases, namely, a systematic review of the academic literature and a multiple case study of four socio-educational relationships from two different fields of intervention: mental health and children at risk. The main findings of this study confirm that the dimension related to ethics and values plays a fundamental role in the socio-educational relationship, which will be useful when building an analytical framework to analyse said dimension. Finally, the study allows us to describe how social educators incorporate values into their daily practice, providing a snapshot of how this dimension of Social Education is currently evolving in the Spanish context.