Co-operative inquiry and Participatory Action Research Towards a collaborative social work agenda

1. Co-operative inquiry and Participatory Action ResearchTowards a collaborative social work agenda Dr. Rea Maglajlic Holicek Senior Lecturer, Programme Director, BSc(Econ) Social Work School of Human Sciences Swansea University R.A.Maglajlic-Holicek@swansea.ac.uk 01792/602 732

5. 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)

6. Who gets involved in ‘knowledge production’? • Who are the marginalised groups? • Service users? • Carers? • Students? • Practitioners? • Wider community?

7. 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?

8. 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)

9. Theoretical-conceptual framework Service users II= Students Practitioners

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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 practitioners practice 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)

13. 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

14. 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

15. 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

16. 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)

17. 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’

18. 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: Sage Langan, 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: Palgrave Martin, M (2000) Critical education for participatory research, in Truman, C., Mertens, D.M. and Humphries, B. (eds.) Research and Inequality. London: UCL Press: 191-204 Mullaly, 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): 303-320 Powell, F. and Geoghegan, M. (2005) Reclaiming civil society: the future of global social work?, European Journal of Social Work 8(2): 129-144 Reason, 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