Suchergebnisse

This article describes a methodology for studying the relationship between scientific theory (technical-rational or textbook) and theory generated in practice (knowledge-inaction or practical). It identifies the written and oral practice narrative as empirical sites for studying the use of technicalrational theory in practice. The strengths and limitations of studying the written narrative alone are discussed and a method for juxtaposing the oral and written narrative of the same practice event is described. By respecting both forms of knowledge as productive powers, identifying their empirical referents, and investigating in vivo practice events, it is argued that practice research will remain open to discovering its dual or holistic potential.

While social work must be evaluative in relation to its diverse areas of practice and research (i.e., values-informed research), the purpose of this article is to propose that values are within the scope of research and therefore research on practice should make values a legitimate object of investigation (i.e., research-informed values). In this article, the fact/value debate in social work research is considered by offering reflection on the history and philosophy of this debate and by offering summary thoughts on how social work must engage with normativity (i.e., the ought, what matters most to people, and how the world and people matter) so the debate moves beyond mere questions about the relevance of values to the questions we ask, the methodologies we engage, the theories we promote, the interventions we support, our engagements with our many and diverse publics, and the investigation of values as causes.

In this essay, the authors consider the challenge made by two keynote speakers at recent social work research conferences, one in the United States and the other in Europe. Both spoke of a knowledge crisis in social work. Both John Brekke (Society for Social Work and Research) and Peter Sommerfeld (First Annual European Conference for Social Work Research) proposed some version of realism as a solution to the crisis. The authors will deepen the argument for realism, however, by discussing how a critical realist perspective allows us to rethink positivist and conventionalist assumptions about the fact/value relation. Using a critical realist philosophy of social science, the authors discuss how social work has taken up positivism and myriad forms of conventionalism and also identify how practical knowledge gradually loses its place and thus contribute to social work's ongoing knowledge crisis. The authors then offer a way of thinking about practice. The authors will consider forms of practice knowledge and propose that social work has four kinds that unfold in essentially open systems: discursive, visual, embodied, and liquid systems, and that each of these have both tacit and explicit dimensions. These forms of practice, moreover, are inevitably situated in theory-to-practice gaps (the authors call them phenomenological practice gaps), which are the source of social work's knowledge crisis. The authors conclude with a discussion of the role of reflexivity in a science of social work.