Community health agents with higher education: norms, knowledge and syllabus

Abstract This paper aims to analyze how the degrees in Nursing, Social Work, Psychology, or Pedagogy taken by community health agents can influence their knowledge, practices, and the directions of the profession. This is a qualitative, analytical research with triangulation of methods based on the interpretation of the various subjects that dispute the profession. The article is developed in three parts: the first compares normative aspects of the professional categories; the second discusses the knowledge of community health agents after entering higher education and the influence on professional practices; and the third analyzes the syllabuses of Nursing, Social Work, Psychology, Pedagogy, and community health agents as an element of dispute and construction of professional identities. Gaps are pointed out regarding the absence of an ethical-political project and of a teaching and research association proper to community health agents, as well as the necessary dispute of epistemologies and theoretical foundation to achieve a cognitive and professional domain more committed to the transformation of the agents as a subject and of their reality.