Catherine Flynn - Doing Research in Social Work and Social Care: The Journey from Student to Practitioner Researcher

Catherine Flynn and Fiona McDermott 2016

Chapter 8 Catherine Flynn, Fiona McDermott and Susan Baidawi 2016

Chapter 9 Catherine Flynn, Fiona McDermott and Alex Haynes 2016

Chapter 11 Catherine Flynn, Fiona McDermott and Chris Trotter 2016

First published 2016

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2016935865

British Library Cataloguing in Publication data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-4739-0661-7

ISBN 978-1-4739-0662-4 (pbk)

Editor: Mila Steele

Assistant editor: Alysha Owen

Production editor: Tom Bedford

Copyeditor: Camille Bramall

Proofreader: Andy Barter

Indexer: David Rudeforth

Marketing manager: Camille Richmond

Cover design: Shaun Mercier

Typeset by: C&M Digitals (P) Ltd, Chennai, India

Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

We have been motivated to write this book for a number of reasons:

This book is therefore shaped by a pragmatist approach. When we say this we do not mean we focus only on how to do research and a simplified account of what works. Rather, we are of the view that pragmatism requires us to consider why we do research in particular ways, as well as what difference it makes to do our research in one way rather than another (Morgan, 2014). This ensures that the focus is clearly on our research goals, and the desired practical application of our research.

We agree with the view of classical pragmatist William James that

the world of everyday life is multitudinous beyond imagination, tangled, muddy, painful, and perplexed, continually presenting us with ambiguities and complexities, confusions and contradictions (1907/1975, pp. 1718). Our explanatory systems offer but a summary sketch, a picture of the world in abridgement, a foreshortened birds eye view of the immediacy and particularity of real life (1909/1967, p. 8). (Borden, 2013: 261)

To work with such uncertainty and contingency requires us to engage in and seek knowledge and responses to problems in pluralist ways. This is a clear feature of the social work profession (Borden, 2013), which involves both developing meaningful goals and using appropriate methods (Morgan, 2014).

We hope that this book will be a companion for you on your journey to practitioner researcher in the fields of social work and social care. To encourage and support your learning, you will see that this text is grounded in professional practice and built around relevant case examples, from a range of perspectives and disciplines. These cases provide concrete illustrations of research, showing how problems can be approached and studied differently, depending on the research context or the research aim; the case studies also provide real examples of how research aims can be achieved and made use of in practice. Use of such examples provides you with hangers for key methodological concepts so you can integrate these with your existing knowledge (Csiernik et al., 2010). Because we have framed this book as a companion for your journey, we also make use of the experiences of a group of social work practitioner researchers and students (we call them the chorus). All have been engaged in their own research journeys over the past few years. Along the way they have questioned, reflected on and analysed the research process, recording their experiences with a view to using them to assist other novice researchers. We will use their insights and comments as the research process unfolds in the book, providing snatches of their conversations as they worked with the challenges, surprises and successes of their first ventures into researching their practice issues. (You will hear their voices in the quote text boxes throughout the book.)

It is important to note at this point that although being a good social work and social care professional means being both a consumer and producer of research, our primary focus in this book is on developing the skills to be a research producer. We believe that these skills will also give you the tools to read and understand other peoples research (we discuss reading and reviewing others work in ).