Articulate your vision of social work practice, reflecting on whatit isand what you believeit should be. Locate the position or stance that you take towards social work practice with reference to Malcolm Payne’s triangle (Payne, 2021, p. 22), and identify and critically reflect on the factors and considerations that have shaped your positioning. What challenges are you likely to face as a beginning practitioner, considering the stance/position you have taken?
Payne, M. (2021). Modern social work theory. Red Globe Press. Please use the chapter of the book attached . Need more in text references apart from that one and reference list.
Task description: Articulate your vision of social work practice, reflecting on what it is and what you believe it should be. Locate the position or stance that you take towards social work practice with reference to Malcolm Payne's triangle (Payne, 2021, p. 22), and identify and critically reflect on the factors and considerations that have shaped your positioning. What challenges are you likely to face as a beginning practitioner, considering the stance/position you have taken? Payne, M. (2021). Modern social work theory. Red Globe Press. Marki a Articulation of personal vision of social work practice - 10 marks This relates to how clearly and persuasively you articulate your emerging vision of social work practice Reflective practitioner: Very clear, convincing and evidence-based articulation 8-10 of what social work practice is and should be. |Aware practitioner: Well-reasoned and argued articulation of what social work 5-7 practice is and should be. Limited practitioner: Articulation is not clear, convincing or supported by research. |0 - 5 Self-positioning, justification for self-positioning and anticipated challenges - 10 marks This relates to the quality of your reflexive reasoning in positioning yourself with reference to Payne's triangle, explaining/justifying that positioning and reflecting on challenges that you could face as a result of that positioning. Reflective practitioner: Very clear, convincing and well-supported explanation of 8-10 professional self-positioning with reference to Payne's triangle and critical reflection on challenges that could arise as a result of that self-positioning. |Aware practitioner: Provides good and justified explanation for self-positioning, and [5 - 7 explains challenges that may arise as a result of that self-positioning, but explanations are not very convincing or solidly supported by relevant research or literature someTitle 3 CHAPTER 1 The social construction of social work theory MAIN CONTRIBUTION This chapter aims to help social work practitioners feel confident in using theory in their practice. It discusses different kinds of social work theory and the arguments around them. Then it explains how all of this may be useful in practice. It shows how social work theory, and practice theory within it, is socially constructed. This means that both practice and theory are not given to us from on high, but that we build them through our experience in the real world. Social construction ideas also show that practice and theory are not separate, settled bodies of knowledge, but constantly evolve and influence each other. Change in social work, and in the lives of practitioners and clients, is possible if we engage in this process of evolution of ideas and practice. MAIN POINTS ● The main aim of the book is to review social work practice theories. ● Theories are generalized sets of ideas that describe and explain our knowledge of the world in an organized way. ● Theory is different from both knowledge and practice. ● Social work theory comprises formal and informal theories of what social work is, how to do social work and the social world in which our clients live. ● Theory helps us understand and contest ideas about social work and the world around us. It offers a framework for practice and helps us to be accountable, self-disciplined professionals. ● All social activities generate practice theory, which in social work may be perspectives, frameworks, models and explanatory theories. They often complement each other. ● Social construction ideas emphasize that change for social institutions and individuals is always possible, although it may be slow. Social experience often reinforces stability rather than change. ● The social construction of social work theory forms a politics. This means that groups within the profession contend to gain influence over practice by getting support for par- ticular theories. Payne, M. (2020). Modern social work theory. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. Created from ballarat on 2023-06-17 00:28:49. C op yr ig ht © 2 02 0. B lo om sb ur y P ub lis hi ng P lc . A ll rig ht s re se rv ed . 4 Thinking about social work theory ● Three views of social work objectives (social cohesion, empowerment and social change and development) are derived from the aims of social work and from political philoso- phies. They form the context in which practice theories are socially constructed. ● Five shared principles affect our use of all practice theories: alliance, aim, action sequence, critical practice and rights. ● Social work is socially constructed in three main arenas of debate and practice. These are the relationships between clients, workers and social agencies. ● Clients make an important contribution to the construction of social work through their reflexive interaction with practitioners in social work agencies. I explain reflexivity in Chapter 3. Knowledge, theory and practice All over the world, at this moment, people are struggling into an office to see a social worker. Or perhaps they are meeting a social worker in their home or working with a social worker in a building such as a residential care home or a day centre. Or again, the social worker may be meeting them as part of a group and community activity, or in seeking policy change. How can people using the social worker’s services understand what is happening? How can the social worker decide what to do and explain it to them? You may have found that many statements about social work are generalized or idealistic and give you no clue about what is supposed to happen when social work takes place. Yet social workers must learn what to do and how to carry out what their agency and their profession expects of them. The main aim of this book is to review the practice theories that social workers use to inform their practice. This chapter aims to help you understand what theory is in general, what theories influence social work and, within that, what social work practice theories are. It also helps you to think through some of the debates about using theory in practice. In this first section, I look at ideas about the various kinds of knowledge and theory available in social work. This helps us to understand that knowledge and theory are connected, but different. What kinds of knowledge are useful in practice? We start by looking at the kinds of knowledge that may inform what people do. Jacobs (2009) summarizes various philosophical accounts of knowledge in practice as follows: ● ‘Knowing how’ to do something is different from ‘knowing that’ something is true or ‘knowing about’ some aspect of the world. ● Technique is knowledge that is formulated in an organized way and is usually written down. Technique helps us to do something, but it is different from practical knowledge; that is, the unformulated knowledge of how to do something. ● Tacit knowledge is also unformulated and is different from express knowledge; that is, formulated knowledge of facts, procedures and values. ● Knowledge about the world used in academic study of the natural or social world is worked out by rational deductions from confirmed observations. This is different from Payne, M. (2020). Modern social work theory. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. Created from ballarat on 2023-06-17 00:28:49. C op yr ig ht © 2 02 0. B lo om sb ur y P ub lis hi ng P lc . A ll rig ht s re se rv ed . 5The social construction of social work theory knowledge in practical fields such as social work. In practical fields where knowledge is used to do something, practitioners use theories to help them understand how knowledge can support their decision-making. Their aim is not just to know more, but also to use what they know. In practical fields of work, therefore, theory is about supporting reason- able judgements with thought-through arguments based on knowledge. The implication of these distinctions is that you can know a lot about facts, procedures and values, and possess techniques for doing things, but knowledge about how to act may not be so easily formulated. You can sometimes see this in professional guidance or agency proce- dures, which often leave it to you to decide how to apply their instructions in relationships with your clients. Social workers use skills and theory learned in their education and by per- sonal experience to do this. Polanyi (cited by Jacobs, 2009) suggests that there are important facets of the professional use of knowledge in practice. The first is about priorities. A profes- sional learns which issues to focus on in each situation, and which are subsidiary and don’t need to be dealt with in detail. Second, professionals use personal knowledge that comes from their interpretation, intuition and similar skills; for example, how well someone cares for the fabric of their house. In addition, they use impersonal knowledge, such as the number of rooms in a house, which we can learn in a mechanical way. Toulmin (cited by Jacobs, 2009) adds that knowledge in practical fields often involves clinical skills, which mean making timely decisions based on skills acquired through practice and honed and refined by repeated experience. This leads to a kind of practical wisdom. We develop this by a constant use of everyday practices, using local knowledge that allows for constant minor readjustments of formal rules by feel. The sociologist Garfinkel (1967; Roberts, 2006: 90) took this idea further, and showed that we all develop ‘practical theories’ about the world by building up with people around us a shared wisdom and a sense of what is reasonable and intelligible. These points lead us to consider what theory is, what that special kind of theory that we call ‘practice theory’ is and how it may help professionals to use knowledge in their work. What is theory? One way to answer this question is to start from general ideas about theory. Sheldon and Macdonald (2009: 34) look at a dictionary definition of it, and suggest that there are both scientific and everyday uses of the word. To a scientist, a theory is a general principle or body of knowledge, reached through accepted scientific processes, that explains a phenomenon. The everyday use of the word ‘theory’ refers to abstract thoughts or speculations. In everyday talk, therefore, people may think that theory is disconnected from practical realities. Many social work writers (for example, Howe, 2009; Sheldon & Macdonald, 2009; Thompson, 2017) focus on explanation and structure: a theory should explain some aspect of the world in an organized form. Others accept less exacting understandings of theory. For example, Fook (2016: 50) argues that there are many different meanings of theory, and that the important thing is to be inclusive so that we do not cut ourselves off from useful ideas. When a mass of knowledge about a situation has been built up, one of the uses of theory is to help you rise above what you can immediately observe to find patterns that are not obvi- ous in the tangle of everyday life. Howe (2009: 1) offers an analogy. He describes how the first people to fly in balloons saw the landscape in a new way. He is suggesting that patterns and Payne, M. (2020). Modern social work theory. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. Created from ballarat on 2023-06-17 00:28:49. C op yr ig ht © 2 02 0. B lo om sb ur y P ub lis hi ng P lc . A ll rig ht s re se rv ed . 6 Thinking about social work theory order already exist, and that by looking more broadly than just at the situations you are faced with, you can identify aspects of them that are present but hidden from you. By providing you with organized descriptions of the world, a practice theory offers ideas about where to look. Bringing these points together, I define a theory as a generalized set of ideas that describes and explains our knowledge of the world around us in an organized way. A social work theory is one that helps us to understand and to do social work. A social work practice theory describes and explains what actions to take when doing social work. Knowledge and theory To sum up these points, I argue that knowledge and theory are different but connected. In professional activities such as social work we use both, but we need a special kind of theory to practice. So: ● Theory is different from knowledge – theory involves thinking about something, while knowledge is a description of reality. Reality is a picture of the world that is accepted as true. ● Theory is different from practice – theory is thinking about something, while practice involves doing something. ● Practice needs theory to use knowledge – if we are going to do something, we need knowl- edge about the reality around us so that we can act upon it, but we need theory to help us interpret that reality. Knowledge, practice and theory are connected, therefore, for two main reasons. First, the real world exists independently of theories