Professional Practice in Social Work as Research Object
– a Critical Constructive Approach
At present we are involved in a research project concerning social work in the field of employment in the interface between professionalism and political and administrative control.
We present the critical constructive perspective as an alternative and supplement to the already present perspectives used for research in social work. A central point in this perspective is that professionalism is a significant factor in the shaping of practice in professional social work. This practice exists within certain political/administrative parameters that are partly controlled by institutional logic and influenced by clients’ involvement or lack thereof. Professional traditions and genres are also of importance in executing judgement, discretion and assessments in the practical situations that arise in social work.
We believe that practical social work is illustrated by both similarities and great variation. Similarities can reflect political intentions, societal discourse and institutional rationales. Variations are most commonly explained through control problems and particularly frontline incompetence. The question we wish to pose is how much variety in social work practice is connected to independent decision-making within professional action in social work.
We begin by comparing the critical constructive perspective in professional social work to the present Danish research context. We provide a closer presentation of this perspective by presenting our international sources of inspiration, our perception of professional social work and central points within the approach. Our research approach is based upon four theoretical perspectives that we try to combine. These are implementation, institution, profession and citizenship. There is no simple way of combining these perspectives and it is not our belief that they must be conflated and smoothed out. It is, however, imperative to allow the relevant perspectives to interact in order to fully describe and analyse in a nuanced way.
In our present research project we use empirical cases that are taken from employment practice within local municipalities. They have been selected with the expectation of finding situations where professional practice is affected by change, challenges and alternatives. We expect that differences in professionalism and the role professionalism plays in practice will be visible and therefore illustrative for research purposes. Our analytical strategy and methods have been developed through inspiration from primarily critical discourse analysis.
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