BJSW Advance Access originally published online on October 31, 2005
British Journal of Social Work 2006 36(6):937-954; doi:10.1093/bjsw/bch365
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Knowledge and Reasoning in Social Work: Educating for Humane Judgement
Carolyn Taylor is Senior Lecturer in the School of Community, Health Sciences and Social Care, University of Salford.
Sue White is Professor of Health and Social Care and Director of the Centre for Health and Social Care Research in the School of Human and Health Sciences at the University of Huddersfield. They previously taught on various qualifying and post-qualifying social work programmes at the University of Manchester. They share an interest in exploring knowledge practices in health and welfare using discourse and textual analysis methods. They are joint authors of Practising Reflexivity: Making Knowledge in Health and Welfare (Buckingham, Open University Press, 2000) and several other articles and papers.
Correspondence to Carolyn Taylor, School of Community, Health Sciences and Social Care, University of Salford, Allerton Building, Frederick Road, Salford M6 6PU, UK. E-mail: c.taylor{at}salford.ac.uk
Much has been made of the uncertainties and contingencies of practice, and of the need for social workers to make more explicit use of formal knowledge in order to reduce this uncertainty. However, we argue that this focus on making certainty out of uncertainty glosses over the ways in which both knowledge and practice often propel practitioners towards early and certain judgements when a position of ‘respectful uncertainty’ might be more appropriate. Facilitating learning that will help social workers to deal with uncertainty raises challenges for social work educators. If they are to equip social workers with the skills to exercise ‘wise judgement under conditions of uncertainty’, they will need to recognize the ways in which both theory and popular knowledge are invoked to make unequivocal knowledge in case formulation. In this paper, we suggest ways in which students can be helped to remain in uncertainty and interrogate their knowledge and case reasoning.
Keywords: professional education, case reasoning, moral judgement, reflexivity, certainty
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