scholarly journals Imagined, prescribed and actual text trajectories: the “problem” with case notes in contemporary social work

2017 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Theresa Lillis
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Action Research ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Everyday Practice ◽  
Writing Practices ◽  
Textual Practice ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Problematic Aspect

AbstractDrawing on a text-oriented action research ethnography of the writing practices of UK-based social workers, this paper focuses on a key but problematic aspect of everyday, professional textual practice – the production of “case notes.” Using data drawn from interviews, workshops, texts and observation, the paper locates case notes within social work everyday practice and explores the entextualization of three distinct case notes. The heuristic of

Learning in Finnish Social Work Practice and Research

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anniina Tirronen ◽  
Tony Kinder ◽  
Jari Stenvall
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Action Research ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
Academic Journals ◽  
Situated Action ◽  
The City ◽  
New Framework

Abstract Accepting Bartlett’s vision of social work’s evolution resulting from action research, the article argues that in Finland, extensive action research is occurring, and this is resulting in service innovations. However, little of this research is published in academic journals and has only limited dissemination. Drawing on data from new interviews with experienced social workers in the City of Tampere, Finland, the article details the nature and extent of action research by social workers. A new framework with which to analyse action research from the logic-of-practice is used to show not only how extensive the action research is, but also how readily situated action research can be analysed from a broader perspective, making dissemination easier.

Conclusion

2014 ◽  
pp. 339-350
Author(s):  
Margaret Pack
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Action Research ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Research Methods ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Service Users

This chapter gathers together and synthesises the concepts used and developed throughout this book. These themes include the challenges posed for social work as a profession in relation to notions of rationality and scientific research methods when considering what constitutes “evidence” for social work practice. This critique challenges the definition and application of evidence to complex scenarios where there are no easy answers, yet the agency and systems seem to demand them from social workers. In response to these challenges, social work has developed expertise in the use of case study and action research methods, drawing from interpretive and participative epistemologies. Such research studies aim to give resonance to voices hitherto missed, marginalised, or ignored. To redress this marginalisation and to provide much needed balance in what constitutes “evidence,” narratives of service-users and their caregivers have become primary sources of evidence, which are used to guide social work practice.

Engaging ethnomethodology for social work

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-151
Author(s):  
Gerald de Montigny
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Everyday Practice ◽  
Harold Garfinkel ◽  
Everyday Activities ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Ethnomethodological Study

Summary How does one go about doing or engaging in ethnomethodological study of local occasions? Would such study be of value for social workers, hence would it help them to understand the everyday accomplishment of practice as social work? Harold Garfinkel, the founder of ethnomethodology, argued that the task is to start with and to be in the midst of ordinary and everyday activities. A beginning in ordinary, mundane, and everyday activities is also to be surrounded by taken-for-granted understandings, frameworks, and facts or facticities. The focus on “facticities” of everyday things directs us to attend to utterly ordinary and mundane interactions, and here there is deep congruence with social work interests and practices. Findings This paper turns to Garfinkel’s oeuvre to set out in readily understandable language the orientation and tools needed for social workers to do ethnomethodological studies. A focal question is: Just how might social workers in the midst of practice actually go about engaging in EM? Application By taking up tools from ethnomethodology, social workers can better understand and explicate the essential reflexivity of their everyday practice. As a result, EM provides a pathway for both understanding and teaching effective social work through a reflective and reflexive turn.

The Relationship between Feelings of Alienation and Burnout in Social Work

1994 ◽  
Vol 75 (4) ◽  
pp. 229-235 ◽  
Author(s):  
William E. Powell
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
The State ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Relationship

Many articles and books have been written about alienation and burnout. Although the concepts have been conceptually linked, no known empirical studies have demonstrated that relationship. Using data from a survey of social workers practicing in the State of Wisconsin, the author tested the hypothesis that the concepts of burnout and alienation are closely related. The findings support that hypothesis and suggest that some dimensions of alienation may be especially potent predictors of burnout among social workers.

scholarly journals Back to School for social work students

2012 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 43-60
Author(s):  
Lynne Wilson ◽  
Karen Hillison
Keyword(s):  
Child Care ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Action Research ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Subsequent Development ◽  
Social Work Students ◽  
Learning Opportunities ◽  
Research Model ◽  
New Approach ◽  
The Past

Every Child Matters: Change for children (DfES, 2004) places effective inter-professional working at the top of the child care agenda. Developing new opportunities for practice learning in different professional settings, therefore, is high on the agenda for all those concerned with the teaching of social work. Learning within a different professional setting can bring many benefits, but also challenges. This article outlines a well-established project in Hull, where student social workers have been experiencing practice learning opportunities in mainstream schools for the past four years. The project has been evaluated using an action research model and as such reflects the subsequent development and consolidation as the project has expanded. We highlight both the benefits and the challenges for all those concerned with these placements, addressing some of the issues for students, practice teachers, and work-based supervisors in their roles in this new approach.

Finding a place for my research to belong: experiences of early-career social work participatory action researchers in neoliberal academia

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine S. Kramer ◽  
Darren Cosgrove ◽  
Sarah Mountz ◽  
Eunwoo Lee
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Action Research ◽  
Participatory Action Research ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Participatory Research ◽  
Community Based Participatory Research ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Participatory Action ◽  
Community Based ◽  
The Us

Social workers face complex challenges that demand practice-engaged research and research-engaged practice. Participatory action research and community-based participatory research span the boundaries that often exist between the research and practice communities. Some social workers argue the values underpinning participatory action research and community-based participatory research align with the values of the profession; however, such methodologies are not widely represented in social work research in the US. This article presents the findings of a study examining the lived experiences of 15 early-career scholars, mostly based in the US, who were pursuing participatory action research and community-based participatory research. The neoliberalisation of the academy pervaded their experiences, presenting significant barriers to their ability to pursue action-oriented methodologies. Review of the international participatory action research literature also suggests the US may contrast with other regions in the world like Asia and Latin America, where participatory action research is more robust. Recommendations to better develop participatory action research social work literature are offered.

Action Research

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
David P. Moxley
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Action Research ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Knowledge Development ◽  
Alternative Methods ◽  
Social Betterment ◽  
Specific Practice ◽  
And Control ◽  
Work Knowledge

Through cycles of systematic and purposeful iterative engagement with problems they face in specific practice settings, social workers engaging in action research build knowledge that is useful in advancing practice for the purposes of social betterment. This entry situates action research in the development of social-work knowledge and then examines variants of action research formed when degrees of participation and control vary among members of vulnerable populations, particularly within community situations involving coping with a degraded quality of life. The author identifies the importance of methodological pluralism and addresses how sound action research results in knowledge dissemination and utilization for the purposes of social betterment, often through alternative methods of inquiry. The entry concludes with caveats social workers engaged in action research should heed, and the author emphasizes the pivotal role social work can serve in local efforts to engage in knowledge development for social betterment.

The Social Work Regulator and Professional Identity: A Narrative of Lord and Bondsman

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (6) ◽  
pp. 1909-1925
Author(s):  
Murray Simpson ◽  
Maura Daly ◽  
Mark Smith
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Professional Identity ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Power Imbalance ◽  
Professional Identities ◽  
Regulatory Relationship ◽  
External Regulation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Anglophone World

Abstract Since the early 2000s, in a development since mirrored throughout much of the Anglophone world, social work across UK jurisdictions has been subject to external regulation. Whilst a key justification for regulation was to enhance professional identity, there is little evidence that it has done so. Indeed, a growing literature points out conflictual and unproductive relationships between the social work profession and its regulators, within which a marked power imbalance in favour of the regulator is apparent. In this article, we illustrate the nature of this imbalance theoretically by drawing upon the classic philosophical narrative, developed by Georg Willhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), of the ‘lord and bondsman’. We seek to demonstrate the utility of the Hegelian narrative using data from a study into the views of social workers on how they understand their professional identities, focusing specifically on those aspects of the study that address the place of regulation in this process. Whilst exposing some fundamental problems in the regulatory relationship, the lord and bondsman narrative may also offer some possibility of a way forward through identifying these dialectics as a step towards a more self-conscious professional maturity.

scholarly journals Time, the Written Record, and Professional Practice: The Case of Contemporary Social Work

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 431-486
Author(s):  
Theresa Lillis ◽  
Maria Leedham ◽  
Alison Twiner
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Professional Practice ◽  
Social Worker ◽  
Contextual Data ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
Professional Goals ◽  
Textual Practice ◽  
The Relationship

Drawing on a three-year ethnographically oriented study exploring contemporary professional social work writing, this article focuses on a key concern: the amount of time taken up with writing, or “paperwork.” We explore the relationship between time and professional social work writing in three key ways: (a) as a discrete, measurable phenomenon—how much time is spent on writing? (b) as a textual dimension to social work writing—how do institutional documents drive particular entextualizations of time and how do social worker texts entextualize time? (c) as a particular timespace configuration of lived experience—how is time experienced by professional social workers? Findings indicate that a dominant institutional chronotope is governing social work textual practice underpinned by an ideology of writing that is at odds with social workers’ desired practice and professional goals. Methodologically, this article illustrates the value of combining a range of data and analytic tools, using textual and contextual data as well as qualitative and quantitative frames of analysis.

scholarly journals Socialt arbejde og aktionsforskning i Grønland

2014 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 77-93
Author(s):  
Steven Arnfjord ◽  
John Andersen
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Action Research ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Quantitative Research ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Action Research Project ◽  
Research Project ◽  
The Social

Socialforskningen i Grønland har gennem årtier dokumenteret sociale problemer. Populært sagt har socialforskningen i Grønland indtil for nylig kun bestået af beskrivende, kvantitativ elendighedsforskning. Der eksisterer således (modsat fx socialforskning med canadisk inuit) stort set ikke nogen kvalitativ eller deltagerorienteret forskning om vilkår for indsatser og praksis i forhold til at håndtere de sociale udfordringer. Der har således manglet sociologisk og handlingsorienteret praksisviden, der kan understøtte professionel og organisatorisk kapacitetsopbygning i det socialpolitiske felt. Denne artikel handler om empowerment og aktionsforskning med socialarbejdere i Grønland og bygger på Steven Arnfjords ph.d. projekt fra 2014. ENGELSK ABSTRACT: Steven Arnfjord and John Andersen: Social Work and Action Research in Greenland Years of social science research in Greenland has documented a range of social problems in the country. However social research in Greenland has been limited to quantitative research that has focused only on misery. Contrary to what we have seen in Canadian Inuit research, there has been no qualitative nor participatory research into the concrete circumstances under which Greenlandic social workers deal with the social challenges they face daily. This article draws on a research project that, for the first time, employed exploratory interviews with social workers. Analysis of these interviews uncovered the social workers’ feelings of despair and their atomised sense of loneliness because of having no references to an external network of professionals (e.g. through a union). The research was then extended to an action research project, which set out to form a social workers union in order to create a sense of unity and professional group awareness within the profession. Keywords: Greenland, action research, empowerment, social work, social planning, marxism.

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