The article analyzes the challenges and perspectives of education in social economy, considering the context of implementation of a national public policy in education. After situating the issue in the context of productive restructuring of capitalism, and its repercussions in the work world, there are analyzed the potentialities and limits under the perspective of real and potential pedagogical mediations found in these spaces of associated work. Among the challenges one can highlight the activity in the field of ideas to reaffirm the centrality of work, and the need to discern the characteristics of the alternatives in social economy in contrast to the neoliberalization of solidarity, as well as to affirm a coherent social, ecological, political and technological practice that contributes to a new mode of producing and living.