Co-operative inquiry and Participatory Action Research

Towards a collaborative social work agenda

Dr. Rea Maglajlic HolicekSenior Lecturer, Programme Director, BSc(Econ) Social Work

School of Human SciencesSwansea University

R.A.Maglajlic-Holicek@swansea.ac.uk01792/602 732

Questions for social work education

• What education ought to do?

• How education might do what it ought to do?

• Which of the aims, strategies or behaviours would social worker educators need to reform to educate more successfully?

Adapted from Torbert (1981)

Who gets involved in ‘knowledge production’?

• Who are the marginalised groups?– Service users?– Carers?– Students?– Practitioners?– Wider community?

How do they get involved?

• I design the study– Possible consultations

• I design the tools for– Questionnaires?– Interviews?

• Possible consultations

• I make sense of the findings– Possible consultations

How to avoid research ON people and enable research WITH people?

Alternative = Action research

• Co-operative inquiry (counterpartal role inquiry, Heron, 1996) & Participatory Action Research – Engaging with others to explore a significant

aspect of one’s lives (Reason, 1994)– Enables joint exploration of the so-called

‘theoretical knowledge’ and knowledge from practice and experience (Reason, 1988)

– Acknowledgement of power issues in knowledge production (Martin, 2000)

Theoretical-conceptual framework

Service users

II=

StudentsPractitioners

Involvement and joint responsibility for: • Formulating the study/adapting the questions• Choosing methods for further research• Making sense of the information• Promoting the findings

THROUGH

Reflection

Action Action

Reflection

Locations

• Cambridge, England– Anglia Polytechnic University/APU/Anglia

Ruskin University – 22 group members – 6 service users, 5

practitioners and 9 students

• Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina– School of Political Sciences, Sarajevo

University– 15 group members – 4 service users, 5

practitioners and 6 students

The research process The research process

group initiation

individual interviews with members

a list of issues of interest to each group

biweekly (BiH) /monthly (UK) group meetings

A review of research on Survey of students and

social work education and practitionerspractice

Making sense of the findings - summaries from each meetings and (in BiH) findings from the surveys

The report writing

A discussion of findings with the representatives of the Departments of

Social Work(Anglia Ruskin , University of Sarajevo)

Amended questions

• What is social work and what do social workers do?

• The how’s of practice– How should we work in Practice?

• The how’s of education

• The future of the profession?– Employment/unemployment

Findings

• the practice context – a need for change agents– Community = service user (avoid focus on

individual needs)– Acting in partnerships with service users –

rights focus

Findings (2)

• Education should prepare students for this type of practice– Involvement of service users and carers in

education– Involvement of social work teachers in

practice/teaching in practice– BiH – longer and more structured placements – Use of participatory practices

Findings (3)

• Support for the resurgence of – radical social work (Langan, 2002; Jones,

Ferguson, Lavalette and Penketh, 2004)/– Progessive social work (Mullaly, 2001)/– Civic social work (Powel and geoghegan,

2005)and

– The parntership-based model of professionalism (Thompson, 2002)/

– Collaborative professionalism in social work (Healy and Meagher, 2004)

Practical concerns

• Understanding of research– What is research? What is my role? – Support– Reciprocity

• Length of time necessary for– Study initiation– The study itself– Follow up (beyond the PhD framework)

• ‘Quality criteria’

References: Jones, C., Ferguson, I., Lavalette, M. and Penketh, L. (2004) Social Work and social justice: a

manifesto for a new engaged practice. Available from: http://www.liv.ac.uk/ssp/Social_Work_Manifesto.html (Accessed 1st of July 2008).

Healy, K. and Meagher, G. (2004) The reprofessionalization of social work: collaborative approaches for achieving professional recognition, British Journal of Social Work 34: 243-260

Heron, J. (1986) Co-operative Inquiry: Research Into the Human Condition. London: SageLangan, M. (2002) The Legacy of Radical Social Work, in Adams, R., Dominelli, L. and Payne, M.

(eds). Social Work: Themes, Issues and Critical Debates. London: PalgraveMartin, M (2000) Critical education for participatory research, in Truman, C., Mertens, D.M. and

Humphries, B. (eds.) Research and Inequality. London: UCL Press: 191-204Mullaly, B. (2001) Confronting the politics of despair: toward the reconstruction of progressive social

work in a global economy and postmodern age, Social Work Education 20(5): 303-320Powell, F. and Geoghegan, M. (2005) Reclaiming civil society: the future of global social work?,

European Journal of Social Work 8(2): 129-144Reason, P. (1988) Introduction, in Reason, P. (ed.) Human Inquiry in Action: developments in new

paradigm research. London: Sage: 1 – 17-- (ed.) (1994a) Participation in Human Inquiry. London: Sage

Thompson, N. (2002) Social movements, social justice and social work, British Journal of Social Work 32: 711-722

Torbert, W. R. (1981) Why educational research has been so uneducational: the case for a new model of social science based on collaborative inquiry, in Reason, P. and Rowan, J. (eds.) Human Inquiry: a handbook of new paradigm research. Chichester: John Whiley & Sons:141 – 151