Chapter 3. Connecting Theory and Practice
Practice and theory interact in in many ways. Connections between them are complex responses to current ideas and social needs. This chapter focuses on helping practitioners to build connections between theory and practice so that they can feel confident in building a strong and enduring interaction between theoretical ideas and practice.
Terminology
Learning transferoccurs between practice culture, settings, specialties, and theories.
Process knowledge is about how practitioners make decisions and judgments, working through various stages of practice; process knowledge aids in making decisions regarding theory when in practice.
Use of self and emotional intelligence are approaches that help turn theory into action.
Refection, reflexivity, critical thinking, and critical reflection are ways of making connections between theory and practice.
Key Ideas
Conflicts occur in connecting theory and practice.
Conflicts occurred in connecting theory and practice among agencies, academics, and practitioners. After the rapid growth of prosperity in the West after WWII, economic growth slowed and social unrest increased, such as in the 1960s in the USA. Social work theories proliferated for a variety of reasons such as the movements related to rights of women. At the same time, agencies began to seek to take control of using knowledge in practice from the academic world; one approach was the push to use evidence-based practice. Overall, this led to what was called ‘theory wars’ between 1970 and 1990. This was a time of continual disputes and expansion in the number of theories used in social work.
The extensive body of theory now available offers a great deal of value.
The theory wars and expansion in intellectual scope of social work resulted in an extensive body of theory now available to practitioners for a variety of purposes. For example, a large body of theory offers the opportunity for normative generalizations thus allowing development of broad strategies. Generalizing helps us be consistent and well-organized in what we practitioners do; align work with the best informed guidance; better able to explain to clients; and better explain to managers, colleagues in other professions, public, policy-makers, and politicians.
There are three ways to deal with the interaction of theory and practice.
The wide range of theories results in competition, conflicts, and confusion especially to new practitioners who sometimes perceive an apparently unending circular criticism and debate about seemingly minor elements of one theory or another. There appear to be three possible ways in which social workers can deal with these complexities: by understanding theory-practice connections to see how theory and practice influence each other; by selecting from, combining and adapting aspects of different theories to help practitioners deal with plurality; and by using critical reflection techniques to help them apply ideas creatively to practice situations.
Approach 1: Using deduction, induction, and theory development.
There are a variety of ways to ‘connect the dots’ between theory and practice. Practitioners should be aware that any approach to theory-practice connections requires consideration of a variety of interests including but not limited to research, practice, agency manage, and social work education. These interests continually interact; their interaction results in the constant adaptation of theory and practice to each other. As a result, one useful piece of advice is for practitioners to examine how they use ideas to think about situations they face in practice and who influences that thinking.
Deductive versus inductive theory development
One approach suggests that generalized theory connects to practice theory which is turn is tested in practice—failed theories are rejected and successful theories gain support. The inductive approach is the opposite. Practice ideas come from practice itself—from the daily experience of practitioners—and those ideas are first tested in practice, used to generate practice theories, which in turn result in general social ideas. Over time theories in other fields such as psychology, sociology and broad political and social philosophies (general social ideas) are then drawn down into practice theories and placed in practice. One problem is that the resulting practice theories are often aspirations rather than concrete guidance because the original theories were not designed with social work in mind; another problem is that those theories may have been tested in academic or psychotherapy settings not social work.
Theory development can be seen as a process of enquiry and debate
Theory and practice can also be seen in a continuing process of enquiry and debate. Concerns emerge about social problems; people make proposals about action; debates take place about alternatives; people devise interventions; the interventions are tried practice. This then does not loop back—rather this pattern is on ongoing process. Ideas are incorporated into the mainstream or lose importance and are replaced. This continuing debate and adaptation is characteristic of the development of many of the longer standing theories. For example, radical theory shifted away from Marxism—there was a period of doubt—and then a move toward critical ideas. One of the concerns about this approach is the always-shifting progression of changes as nothing about theory is ever decided. You may see the result as being a succession of fads and theories or social work responding and constantly renewing as society and ideas change.
Theory development also can be seen as a process of accumulation
In this approach, theory and practice are interacting in a bottom-up process where practice is accumulated, articulated, refined using theoretical ideas, and then tested through research and experience and then further tested and refined. What may have been a single practice theory with clear ideological or research base becomes adapted to include elements of other theories Eventually as the theory is practiced it becomes an amorphous collection of ideas whose origins are hard to disentangle. This results in the ability to use a wide variety of theoretical ideas but the theories seem to offer no clear direction but rather a process of accumulation.
Another view of theory development is to look at the idea of practice constraints
Practice theory from experience, practice theory from general social ideas, and practice theory from research taken together are in turn limited by the agency’s mandate and organizational limits. As a result, the practice theory is constrained. However, the constraints of ideas, experience, and research are recognized and this lead to development in the theory or a decline in the influence of the theory. This view of theory development acknowledges that most social work is practiced in agencies and thus ideas need to be incorporated into a practice that is sanctioned by agencies and agency practice often limits or adapts how theory is implemented and practice. This model recognizes that people sometimes like the ideas of a particular theory but their agency does not.
Approach #2: Using transfer of learning to deal with plurality.
Transfer of learning is the use of ideas and knowledge gained in one setting to another. Most social workers practice eclectically which means adapting theory such as by shifting it from one setting or client group to another or by transferring it from another discipline to social work or from one country or culture to another. There are various ways in which this is done in social work.
Ideas become incorporated into a general approach to social work
For example, the long-standing influence of psychodynamic theory on social work resulted in social workers being fairly open-minded and non-directive toward clients as part of the general approach to social work used by many practitioners.
Ideas from wider settings go to specialized settings
A second common situation is when ideas in a wider setting are transferred to specialized settings such as work with children. This particular perspective and its wider theory then become more important in what the social worker does in this setting than it is in general social work such as attachment theory in work with children.
Social work sometimes develops its own ideas independently
Social work sometimes develops ideas and practice theory based on needs and opportunities. For example social work developed task-centered work relatively independently of other fields.
The most common approach is for social work to take theories from other fields and embroider them
Social work gathers ideas from other academic and professional fields and then embroiders and develops new ideas based on this accretion of ideas. Social work ideas thus are connected and may in turn contribute to other areas of society such as in social work’s use of feminist ideas, which in turn influenced feminist debates in society. However, these specialist settings often have more of an influence on social work itself than the wider bodies of ideas do. As a result, social work theory is often at some distance from wider theoretical debates.
Process knowledge approachesalso helps with decisions about practice theory.
Social work can be seen as a series of processes. By connecting interaction over a period of time with clients practitioner creates a structure and organization of what the practitioner and client are doing together. This is how the practitioner comes to see the different events as part of a whole that leads to an outcome. One of the useful aspects of many social work theories is that they help us identify states in what might be seen as a confusing progression of events. Critical appraisal processes include critical approach of the client’s situation and then generation of hypotheses. As a result, practitioners focus on the client’s situation and develop their own practice theories including partial- or whole-case hypotheses leading to rules of action and an intervention.
Use of self and emotional intelligence are still another way in which decisions are made about practice theory.
Social workers also can adapt theory as they use it as part of practicing use-of-self in sharing emotional reactions. They also can apply emotional intelligence that helps them integrate emotions with thinking so as to improve their capacity to access and manage their own and other people’s feelings, thus being better able to engage with others, carry out assessments, make decisions, and collaborate. Use of emotional intelligence can allow practitioners to move from observing and monitoring their own and their clients’ behavior to managing the environment around them.
Approach #3: Using reflectionto deal with the interaction between theory and practice.
Current thinking about the between ways to use our self as part of the social work process incorporating and contributing to theory as we do so focuses on four related concepts: reflection, reflexivity, critical thinking, and critical reflection.
Reflection
Practitioners use reflection to plan and conduct their work with a greater understanding of their situations. At times, this reflection also helps to develop practice theories inspired by particular events. ‘Reflective practice’ appears useful to test out theoretical ideas and research findings against the practitioner’s experience; clarify theoretical ideas; challenge assumptions; and generate feedback among the practitioner, colleagues, and clients. Reflection approaches help generalize theory from practice while recognizing and valuing human relations. Reflective practice involves more than carefully thinking things through and taking all aspects of the situation into account. It implies doe this in a structure system either while we are part of the situation or as a learning or review technique to improve future practice.
Reflexivity
Reflexivity is a cyclical process in which practitioners study how those things, which they observe affect their thinking and their actions. Traditional research methods assume a neutral observer looking at the situation from the outside with biases from social assumptions, etc. Beginning with feminists, research methods where the researcher is a participant observer in events and attention was given to how researchers were affected by their observations and how this might impact their behavior became more accepted. Reflexivity is a way of responding to the uniqueness of each individual and thinking about both our response and the uniqueness. While theory enables practitioners to generalize about issues, reflexivity picks up how individuals are affected by the issue. Reflexivity includes approaches such as introspection, joint introspection involving the participants, setting up systems for mutual collaboration, using reflexivity as a social critique, and using reflexivity as ironic deconstruction.
Critical thinking
Critical thinking refers to the study of the logical use of language to guide thought and so identifying important points of clients and colleagues’ thinking. In addition, critical thinking refers to reasoned thinking, questioning existing assumptions and testing them against evidence and observation. Critical thinking improves the practitioner’s capacity to handle uncertainty and change guided by respecting others as equals and not taking things for granted. Common techniques include examining language; considering different sides; questioning ideologies; looking for contradictions; and valuing openness. As a result, the practitioner can examine evidence through different perspectives; contextualize exploration of the evidence; develop an overview of the implications of the whole situation; and test out the practitioner’s judgments and decisions with colleagues, clients and others involved before taking any action.
Critical reflection
Critical reflection is a recent development that seeks to put facets of the above ideas. In critical reflection, reflection ideas and critical thinking are expanded using critical social theory, which does not take existing patterns for granted. This contributes to agencies becoming ‘learning organizations’ that that facilitate a flexible response to new situations. Critical reflection joins effective supervision and evaluation of services as techniques that can help develop learning organizations; a critical reflection process can be used to help introduce critical reflection into an organization. This offers numerous opportunities such as strengthening teamwork, facilitating participating; management of innovation; replicating cooperating inquiry within organizations; exploring situations and difficulties; and the management of professional discretion. Four threats to critical reflection are managerialism because it insists on the right of managers to control practice; EBP; rational rather than flexible implementation of policy; and failures in critical analysis such as taboos on certain issues.
Final thoughts…
Practice experience can be used to build up practical ways of testing out and incorporating ideas into practitioner’s approaches to help them plan effective interventions. Theory can be adapted and transferred from one setting, culture or specialty to another or by using different theories in different phases of work. Process knowledge helps practitioners understanding their thinking as they move from making sense of a situation to deciding on an appropriate intervention. In particular, emotional intelligence enables PR actioners to manage the emotions that they experience in their work. And finally, critical reflection has developed as an important way of using theory. It involves reflection-in-action, reflection-on-action, reflexivity, critical thinking, and critical reflection.