Reclaiming the Practical: Formal and Substantive Rationality in Social Work Practice

Abstract

In this article, I argue that the starting point for inquiry about practice knowledge should be the empirical question, How does the competent practitioner go about knowing "in" practice? Using the work of Jurgen Habermas, Michael Polyani, Donald Schon, and others, I advance a claim for the nonderivative status of substantive rationality alongside the technical in the construction of professional knowledge. I maintain that the researcher and practitioner have functionally different relationships to the practice arena and, therefore, differing cognitive interests for their involvement in that arena. These interests are assumed decisive for (1) categories in which knowledge is structured, (2) methods by which truth claims are authenticated, (3) the type of discourse in which knowledge is communicated, and (4) the mode in which knowledge is available to the knower.The professional school of social work builds its raison d'etre on the notion that theoretical knowledge can be translated into skills and know-how for practice. In the prevailing view, knowledge generated and disseminated in the academy is applied to problems faced in the practice arena. 1 The language of technology (applied research) is the metaphor of choice for the relationship assumed to exist between the achievements of the academic, on the one hand, and the work of the practitioner, on the other. From the perspective of this metaphor, the role of the researcher-theoretician is to produce and authenticate knowledge, whereas the role of the practitioner is to apply Social Service Review (June 1992).

Toward Open Public Administration Scholarship

“…Too often scholars taking this position and conducting ''applied research'' around practice-based questions are not able to highlight this work in scholarly publications. Like scholars within other professions (Kondrat 1992;Van de Ven 2007), PA scholars should acknowledge that creating relevant research often requires grappling with different epistemologies. As Aristotle first articulated, there are fundamentally different ways of knowing for those concerned with technical, practical, or theoretical problems.…”

Knowledge for Theory and Practice

“…Professional schools typically build their raison d'ê tre on the mission of developing knowledge that can be translated into skills that advance the practice of the professions (Kondrat, 1992;Simon, 1976;Tranfield & Starkey, 1998). But, as evidenced by the often lamented gap between theory and practice, this mission remains an elusive ideal.…”

Comparing Collective and Personal Professional Theories of Experienced Practitioners

“…However as explained, these implications are one of the reasons that vocational curricula cannot be considered as CPTs. Another reason stems from the observation that the way the content in vocational curricula is structured strongly differs from the ways in which experts structure their professional knowledge (Kondrat, 1992). This may explain why in many vocational institutions there is a debate about the gap between the content of the curriculum and the demands of (regional) occupational groups (Eraut, 2009).…”