The biomedical paradigm provides foundational assumptions that shape the context within which social workers in health care settings practice. By providing social workers with a greater understanding of the history, epistemology, and key assumptions, this article aims to promote critical awareness and critical reflection on how the biomedical paradigm may be influencing health care environments. The analysis of this article raises important questions for social workers within health care environments, questions about how social workers are able to retain their disciplinary identity as agents of change in the pursuit of social justice.

While substantial efforts are being made in some universities to democratize the production, ownership, and use of knowledge through partnership with the community, significant barriers to community-university partnership persist, maintained through inequitable research relations, reductionist definitions of knowledge, and disincentives for faculty who are interested in community-based scholarship. The perseverance of this disconnect, we argue, is indicative of an existential aversion to community that lies deep within the psyche of the university. We liken the aversion to that of a disgust response, a social response that creates distance from that which is perceived to be dangerous, which in this case serves to preserve the university’s privileged status as knowledge producer. In this paper we bring forward arguments for the importance of community-engaged scholarship to the university’s civic role, to the pursuit of knowledge, and to the principles of democracy. We highlight promising advances in how some universities are accommodating community partnership within their definitions of scholarship and academic production, and, drawing upon Gordon’s theory of structural transformation and Bourdieu’s conceptualization of agency and habitus, we consider how such changes might be brought about at a deeper, structural level within the university.

This article examines the holism paradigm, implications on social work practice in healthcare, and how social work practice can help promote the value of social justice. Examining the holistic health paradigm fosters a critical reflection that assists to better understand beliefs and assumptions that guide social work practice, thus leading to critical action.

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INTRODUCTION:Although the field of social work has experienced an exponential increase in the use of arts-based methodology, the way in which knowledge shared through artful presentations is understood by audience members remains understudied. As arts-based inquiry often involves active co-construction of meanings between researchers, participants and audiences, it is crucial for social work researchers to scrutinise the process of meaning making by audience members. In this article, we explore how audience members make sense of research findings presented through improvisational dance and how the provision of information about the dance may influence viewer responses. METHODS:A personal experience with self-injury documented in a creative poem was represented through the performance of improvisational dance pieces and assessed by two groups of viewers, with and without knowledge of the topic of the dances. The viewers were prompted to interpret the dances by reflecting on the feelings, thoughts and perceptions they had while watching the performance. A thematic analysis was conducted to compare and contrast the responses of the two groups FINDINGS: By comparing the interpretations of informed and uninformed viewers, we suggest that interpretation can be influenced by normative, socially constructed assumptions that hinder empathic and action-inspiring engagement. CONCLUSION:We conclude the article with a discussion of potential implications for social work research, practice and education.