© British Association of Social Workers
Competence and Discipline in Professional Formation
Chris Clark is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Social Work at the University of Edinburgh. His teaching interests include social policy, philosophy of welfare, and professional ethics. Other interests include voluntary action and community care. He is author of Social Work and Social Philosophy: A Guide for Practice (with Stewart Asquith), and of Theory and Practice in Voluntary Social Action.
Correspondence to Dr C Clark, Department of Social Work, The University of Edinburgh, Adam Ferguson Building, George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LL.
Summary
This paper argues that ‘competence’ is inadequate as the founding principle of professional knowledge, and consequently the attempt to build professional training on it is misguided. Besides the unresolved conceptual issues, the competence approach is radically undermined by the absence of an adequate research base necessary to validate concepts of competence and measures of individuals' competences. Drawing on the author's research on how practitioners use knowledge and theory in practice, it is shown that the attempt to reduce good professional practice to a codified set of competences is mistaken; it does not properly recognize the constant need for creative solutions to poorly understood problems. The idea of professional discipline is explored, which, it is argued, better describes the character of the knowledge and skills which practitioners should aim to master.
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