O currículo do Serviço Social da UFTM - desafios e contradições a partir da racionalidade técnica e da Teoria do Capital Humano

Abstract

This exploratory study analyzes the influence of Human Capital Theory (HCT) and technical rationality on the curriculum of the undergraduate Social Work program at the Federal University of Triângulo Mineiro (UFTM). The research employs a bibliographical review with a qualitative and critical approach, grounded in the perspective of Historical-Dialectical Materialism. The objective is to understand how these ideological assumptions permeate the 2023 Pedagogical Political Project of the Course (PPC), guiding the organization, implementation, and purposes of the curricular structure. The investigation was structured in two stages: a theoretical analysis of the origins and implications of HCT and technical rationality in the educational field, and a descriptive and critical analysis of the PPC, focusing on the 2023 curriculum. Data collection involved examining the curricular structure, the competencies proposed, and the organization of formative components, in order to identify the ideological determinations and contradictions expressed in the document. The results revealed that the 2023 PPC of the Social Work program at UFTM embodies a dual movement. On the one hand, it incorporates critical principles aligned with the Ethical-Political Project of Social Work and the National Curriculum Guidelines of ABEPSS, reaffirming the commitment to theoretical, ethical, and political education oriented toward human emancipation and social transformation. On the other hand, it retains elements of technical rationality and Human Capital Theory, evident in the emphasis on competencies and skills directed toward efficiency, productivity, and labor market insertion. It was also found that the inclusion of university extension activities and interdisciplinarity represents an effort to overcome knowledge fragmentation and to strengthen the connection between education and social reality. However, these advances coexist with the persistence of curricular practices guided by the logic of resource optimization and performance measurement hallmarks of instrumental rationality. This tension reflects what Herbert Marcuse conceptualized as the “intimate negativity” of the educational process a contradictory space where emancipatory potentialities coexist with tendencies toward the reproduction of the dominant social order. The analysis further demonstrated that the curriculum, while reproducing structural determinants of the capitalist mode of production, also constitutes a space of resistance, where critical debate, research, and extension activities serve as instruments to confront neoliberal policies and the commodification of higher education. Therefore, it is concluded that both Human Capital Theory and technical rationality contribute to the reproduction of the capitalist system, shaping education to reinforce bourgeois hegemony and the functionality of labor within the market. Nonetheless, in the case of the UFTM Social Work program, a dialectical movement is identified in which the curriculum is continually redefined as a field of contestation and resistance, reaffirming, to a large extent, public higher education as an instrument of emancipation and social transformation.