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BJSW Advance Access originally published online on August 15, 2005
British Journal of Social Work 2005 35(6):881-900; doi:10.1093/bjsw/bch280
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© The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The British Association of Social Workers. All rights reserved.

The Knowledge Spectrum: A Framework for Teaching Knowledge and its Use in Social Work Practice

Jennifer Osmond

Dr Jennifer Osmond is a lecturer at the School of Human Services, Griffith University in Queensland, Australia. Her current research interests are: knowledge utilization, tacit knowledge, evidence-based practice, child abuse theory and foster-parents’ knowledge use.

Correspondence to Dr Jennifer Osmond, School of Human Services, Logan Campus, Griffith University, University Drive, Meadowbrook, Queensland 4131, Australia. E-mail: j.osmond{at}Griffith.edu.au

For students, educators play a pivotal role in identifying and explaining the knowledge that can guide social work practice. Yet there is an absence of educational tools that can assist the educator with this objective. The knowledge spectrum framework is an innovative tool that was developed to explain the possibilities of what can inform social work practice. As a tool, it can be utilized to show that knowledge use in practice is a dynamic process, illustrating that knowledge can be created, modified and discarded by practitioners. The framework can also be utilized to capture the complexity of knowledge used by recognizing both the tacit (unconscious) and explicit (conscious) domains, thereby identifying different knowledge use possibilities. Strengthening students’ and/or practitioners’ ability to recognize and identify the basis of their professional behaviour is critical for clear, knowledge-guided practice.

Keywords: knowledge, framework, explicit, tacit knowledge


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