BJSW Advance Access originally published online on September 26, 2005
British Journal of Social Work 2005 35(8):1231-1248; doi:10.1093/bjsw/bch223
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Practitioner Research: Evidence or Critique?
Ian Shaw is Professor of Social Work at the University of York, England. He is co-editor of the journal, Qualitative Social Work. His Handbook of Evaluation: Programme, Policy and Practice with Jennifer Greene and Mel Mark (Sage Publications) is scheduled for publication in 2005.
Correspondence to Professor Ian Shaw, Department of Social Policy and Social Work, University of York, Heslington, York YO10 5DD, UK. E-mail: ifs2{at}york.ac.uk
In this paper, I revisit some of the origins and more recent directions in practitioner research in social work, seeing it as a phenomenon that—rather than being special or narrowly associated with social work—manifests a pervasive cluster of concerns about good professional practice in contemporary society. Drawing on some general conclusions of a recent study of practitioner inquiry, I indicate ways in which the wider systems of which it is a part frequently hamstring the potential of such research to operate as more than a fringe operation—a ‘street market’ version of mainstream research. I outline four ways in which social workers, service users, agency managers, academics, government departments and universities should work to a transformative agenda for practitioner research—transformative for both practice and research. This will involve refashioning the interface between the methodology and methods of practice and research; generating practitioner research capacity; recognizing the subtlety and critical potential of a genuinely ‘practical’ agenda in practitioner research; and rescuing practitioner research from a simply technical information-providing function, that by-passes the challenge to promoting critical practice.
Keywords: practitioner research, critical practice, practical research
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