Promoting Practitioner Research through a Social Work Teaching Partnership

Abstract

Research is critical for effective and innovative social work practice, yet social workers do not always have time to engage with research and there are limited accounts of how practitioners can undertake research in practical and meaningful terms (Mitchell, Lunt, and Shaw 2010). Using a reflective, storytelling methodology (Beresford 2016), which centres experiential knowledge, we describe how one regional social work teaching partnership nurtured practitioner research over a three-year period. We introduce a regionally administrated 'hub', that connected social workers and academics and supported the development of seventeen research teams. The studies that resulted, focused on a range of important issues including child protection, young people in transition to adult services, adults in community and residential settings, lived experience-led provision, and social work education. In terms of limitations, our reflections are descriptive and illuminative, rather than critical, our findings are also not representative but rather reflect a snapshot of practice. Despite limitations, this commentary reveals the feasibility and value of proactively nurturing practitioner research and offers a blueprint for cultivating similar initiatives in other regions.

Reflections from members of a collaborative social work practitioner–academic research team investigating the career progression experiences of black social workers

“…Collaboration between social workers in practice and academia is increasingly seen as a preferred way to produce knowledge in social work research (Kong et al, 2023). Practitioner involvement, for example, can lead to contextually relevant research (Goel et al, 2018) and more germane research questions (Buck et al, 2023).…”