Abstract
The article discusses researches carried out in Portugal and in Brazil on professional knowledge respectively of social workers and health technicians, supported by the concept of sociocognition — the knowledge implied in social experience — whose analytical sense requires to identify work situations, practical and cognitive competences or modes of cognition that structure and sustain the action of workers in their situations. Such elements of professional work were organized into a typology of situational sociocognition. Professional knowledge, with a predominantly tacit character, is equivalent to the knowledge produced and mobilized in these situations. The first research carried out in Brazil, in this sense, was done with Technicians in Oral Health, after which the analysis was, in some aspects, extrapolated to the team of Family Health team technicians. Among the results, it is possible to emphasize that the main practical competence demonstrated by the studied technicians is the embracement, whereas the mode of cognition or cognitive competence that manifests the most is of an associative or selective intuitive character. Practical experience tends to be more recognized than technical training, although ethnographies of professional knowledge may help to make the relation between these two dimensions of professional work more explicit.
professional ethnographies; professional health knowledge; professional skills; professional practice