"The Relation between Social Work Practice and Science" – Analysis of Scientific Reasoning of Probation Officers and Social Work Students

Evidence-Based Practice is a crucial topic in Social Work research. The epistemology of most of the corresponding studies defines `knowledge as product´, although many scientists emphasize the importance of a process-oriented... [ view full abstract ]

Evidence-Based Practice is a crucial topic in Social Work research. The epistemology of most of the corresponding studies defines `knowledge as product´, although many scientists emphasize the importance of a process-oriented understanding of knowledge (McCracken & Marsh, 2007; Nutley & Davies, 2009; Petr & Walter, 2009; Webb, 2001). In line with these criticisms, our study focuses on reasoning processes of Social Workers, and how they include scientific theories and (experiential and scientific) evidences. Furthermore, we aim to identify hindering and supportive psychological conditions of Social Workers for ‘science-based reasoning in practice’. This term is based on the theoretical background according to Fischer et al. (2014). They define scientific reasoning as a process of eight epistemic activities (problem identification, questioning, hypothesis generation, construction/redesign of artefacts, evidence generation, evidence evaluation, drawing conclusions, communicating/ scrutinizing). As antecedents of scientific reasoning, we consider (a) participants’ problem-solving scripts (Schank & Abelson, 1977) and (b) their attitudes towards Social Work as a scientific discipline.
Our samples contain 25 Probation Officers and 25 Social Work students. The participants think aloud while verbally ‘solving’ a typical counselling case. In the second instruction they are confronted with scientific evidence which they can include in their elaboration. A content analysis is conducted to identify the problem-solving scripts of the participants, with a particular focus on what epistemic activities they engage in and on what quality level they do so. Furthermore, we developed a questionnaire which measuresthe participants´ attitudes towards Social Work as a scientific discipline. We are currently analyzing these data and expect results within the next weeks.
Besides the empirical findings we are going to focus on the potential of the mentioned concept of scientific reasoning, as well as our research design for Social Work contexts and present current developments of Evidence-Based Practice in the German Probation Service.