Lesson 01 Use Theory for Professional Purposes

From Forte’s Forte’s An Introduction to Using Theory in Social Work Practice

 

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Social Workers Begin as Generalists

Generalist social workers can work with client systems of different sizes can enact a variety of roles can adapt to diverse practice settings including urban,

suburban, town, and rural environments can work in a variety of organizational settings can use a systematic planned change process can make use of a range of social science and practice

theories

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Theory and Generalist SW

The use of sound and scientific theoretical knowledge adds value to the generalist and specialist

social worker and to the profession and helps distinguish us from amateurs,

technicians, volunteers and other non-professionals

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Pragmatism and Conception of Theories as Useful Tools

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"There is nothing is as practical as a good theory" Kurt Lewin (1951)

Flexner, Theory and Professional Social Work

Abraham Flexner (1915 / 2001) defined a profession by reference to theoretical knowledge - the “the intellectual character of professional activity involves the working up of ideas into practice” (p. 154).

Flexner argued that professionals “derive their raw materials from science and learning” (p. 156). He emphasized the practical aspect of theory use by adding the phrase “this material they work up to a practical and definite end” (p. 156).

Mary Richmond

Mary Richmond, Social Work and Theory Use

In The Training of Charity Workers (1897 / 1971), Richmond recommended the training of social workers in a “course of instruction which will combine theory and practice under leaders who are skilled in both” (p. 90).

She appreciated the importance of theory-practice integration and characterized the ideal workers as those who have “learned to apply reasonable theory to many concrete needs and then to modify the theory by results” (p. 94).

Her list of attributes of the trained workers included a capacity for strenuous thinking and the ability to think for themselves: each an important component of theory application.

Theories are tools for making sense of and solving problematic situations. Theorizing is the action of using these tools (theoretical models, propositions, concepts, displays, and so on).

There are many theories & many theorizing skills. Effective social workers have large toolboxes and competency

in a range of theorizing skills.

Theories as Tools (Pragmatist Conception)

Many Diverse Tasks – Many Theoretical Tools

Social workers work with many different client systems and with many different kinds of problems or challenges.

Problems and their causes vary and one tool may be insufficient for the diverse caseloads of many practitioners,

With a toolbox of multiple theories, the practitioner can help clients by selecting from a large set of assessment and intervention tools rather than settling on just one tool for every job.

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Uses of Theories for the Professional Social Worker

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Theories Deepen Understanding

Effective practitioners are curious about their clients, the clients’ environments, and the challenges these clients confront. Human curiosity has deep evolutionary roots, and the impulse to solve the client and organizational problems that emerge in daily practice may be as fundamental as the impulse to meet needs for clothing, food and liquids.

Theories are instruments or tools that enable practitioners to satisfy this core curiosity, the need to understand events, objects, people, processes, and situations. For example, theories assist workers in making sense of the very complex

situations and person-in-environment puzzles common to professional activity.

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Theories Deepen Understanding: Examples

The behavioral theory can enhance our understanding of a child’s destructive behaviors in the home.

The interactionist theory can enhance our understanding of repeated communication problems between a supervisor and a worker.

The critical perspective can help us understand the difficulties experienced by city mayors attempting to pass gun control legislation.

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Theories Aid in Knowledge Selection: The Challenge

For any particular case, there is a multitude of information that a practitioner might consider in understanding the person / system in environment configuration. The profession’s Person-in-Environment Framework, for

example, challenges the worker to learn about the person and his or her qualities, the transactions between the person and the environment, and the specific contexts in the environment (cultural, economic, political, and so on) relevant to a focal challenge.

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Theories Aid in Knowledge Selection: Example

I was trained as a social group worker. As a member of a community mental health clubhouse, I soon realized that in work with small groups, the leader must struggle to make sense of an abundant data including information about eight or ten members, their problems, and their styles of participation; about the interaction of each of these members with each other and with the whole group; about a range of group processes and structures; and about the agency and community context of the group services

Three theoretical perspectives – role theory, symbolic interactionism, and the strengths perspective – helped me meet this knowledge management challenge.

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Theories Guide Thinking, Action, and Evaluation

Theoretical knowledge provides a blueprint to guide thinking, acting, and evaluating during each phase of the helping process. Our choice of a particular theory or set of

theories can have positive consequences for all that follows during the planned change process.

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Theories Guide Thinking- Assessment

A preferred explanatory theory serves as a guide to what to look at and listen for and also what to ignore during assessment processes During the information gathering and assessment

phase, theories help the worker organize data into patterns and possibilities for understanding the focal problem or challenge

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Theories Guide Action - Intervention

A preferred practice theory serves as a guide to considering a range of interventions and associated effectiveness evidence and selecting the optimal course of action that will help the client during the intervention process. A useful theory of change, for example, will point to

the mechanisms or processes that must be identified and altered to realize desired outcomes

During the intervention-planning phase, practice theory directs the worker and client’s selection or creation of effective interventions

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Theories Guide Judgment - Evaluation

During the evaluation of effectiveness (infusing all helping phases), theory helps the practitioner and client set targets for change, determine criteria for success, devise suitable evaluation procedures, monitor ongoing mutual work, and guide the client system to achievement of desired ends.

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Theories Facilitate Professional Communication: The Challenge

Theoretical knowledge and theorizing competencies can inform our helping work, ethical analyses, research projects, and policy advocacy.

These endeavors are generally collaborative. Social workers must communicate and cooperate effectively and responsibly with colleagues, clients, collaterals, supervisors, and many others.

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Theories Facilitate Professional Communication

Theoretical knowledge provides the social worker with a vocabulary for talking clearly and precisely about practice challenges. This vocabulary enhances communication between the worker and all stakeholders in the task at hand. The theoretically fluent social worker can explain the agency’s

theoretical orientation in simple terms to a couple seeking marriage counseling.

The worker able to translate theoretical jargon into plain English or Spanish can justify her assessment formulation and intervention plan and discuss clearly the specifics of the helping process necessary for client progress to the couple, other family members, and significant others.

The worker confident in the use of multiple theoretical languages can participate articulately and intelligently on the multi professional team assisting with family services.

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Theories Enhance Worker Confidence

Tools for professional excellence including theoretical knowledge of major and relevant theoretical

traditions a large set of effective theorizing skills aptitudes for creative and rigorous theory application, and developed capacities for thinking critically and reflectively about theory puzzles, theory application, and theory developmentwill supply the social worker with the equipment, esteem, and

confidence for dealing competently with a range of complex case puzzles and for cooperating adeptly and assuredly with all members of helping teams.

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Uses of Theories for the Profession of Social Work

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The Challenge

Professional groups in contemporary societies compete for task assignments, monetary and other resources, and legitimacy.

Mastery of multiple theories and their languages helps the profession of social work compete successfully.

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Theories Define Professional Identity and Boundaries: PIE

Theoretical knowledge helps establish a profession’s identity and its boundaries. Social workers prefer to use theories committed to explaining

“person in environment” configurations, and social workers prefer theorizing in ways appreciative of the multiple dimensions of human functioning and the multiple contexts of behavior.

This differentiates us from professional groups that prioritize either the person (psychologists) or the social environment (sociologists), and groups that specialize in only one aspect of the person like clergy members emphasizing spirituality or one environmental context like economists assessing market conditions

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Theories Define Professional Identity and Boundaries: Values

Social work differentiates itself by a distinctive set of ethics and values, and the ways these guide our theory choices and uses. The profession, for example, recommends value criteria for

judging the appropriateness of theories like strengths orientation, justice promotion, and difference affirmation.

The profession’s code of ethics provides guidelines relevant to the responsible and sensitive employment of theory in everyday helping situations.

Member commitment to and use of these ideals fortifies the profession’s distinctive identity and core convictions and differentiate the social work profession from professions with different theories and different ethical and value preferences.

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Theories Promote Profession’s Status Claims

What makes social work a profession? A major ingredient is its proclaimed use of scientific knowledge accumulated over time and demonstrated to be useful in ameliorating community and personal problems. The profession works to document its effectiveness especially compared to competitors indifferent to scientific theory In fighting for part of the turf allocated by society to

professional organizations, the profession of social work uses empirically sound theoretical knowledge to achieve successes at professional tasks like describing, explaining, predicting, and resolving problems of human membership.

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Theories Promote Profession’s Status as Profession

Could a professional group earn community regard and legitimacy by asserting “Count on us. Our members have finely developed instincts” or “Assign important social tasks to our profession. We may not know much about science but we have accumulated many trade secrets over the generations.” Not likely. Publicity about the informed use of validated scientific

theories improves the reputation and status of social work as a legitimate, important, and valuable profession in society.

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Theories Builds the Collective Knowledge Base: Our Library The knowledge base is like a large library and all

professional social workers have a library card. Each can check out the books and journals from the library needed to analyze and understand the particular features of an upcoming job.

Switching to the hardware store metaphor, each member of the social work profession can walk through the shelves, check out different tools, and pick the theory-based measurement instruments, explanatory hypotheses, change logic models, interventions, or other tools to do the required job.

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Theories Builds the Collective Knowledge Base

Theories borrowed from other disciplines and theories created by social workers become part of this collective resource. Continual and enthusiastic theorizing when shared in

communities of applied scientists, for example, stimulates and guides research. Such theorizing helps researchers construct and test theory-based explanatory models that answer important questions identified by the profession

Evidence-supported theoretical knowledge generated during practice by social workers also becomes part of the knowledge base.

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Theories Contribute to Public Problem Solving

Theories prepare social worker leaders for participating in the significant role of public intellectual,

Social workers can use theories to provide citizens engaged in projects of human betterment with sound conceptual orientations, a set or reasonable explanations, and enlightenment regarding viable interventions.

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Theories Contribute to Public Problem Solving: Examples

Theoretical knowledge can be an instrument for contributing a theory-informed social work perspective to social & political change projects. We can describe and recommend assessment and intervention

strategies related to public problems and unmet needs caused by drug abuse, family conflicts, homelessness, intolerance, poverty, war, and so on.

We can engage citizens in appraising the relevant theoretical reasoning and empirical evidence, and influence public debates and dialogues about these understandings of problems.

Theory creation, dissemination, and application can expand the range of imagined alternatives for both policy and personal problems. With many options, change agents are more likely to advance the common good.

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Jim Forte, HimselfJim Forte, Himself

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For Forte’s Complete Lesson 01 and Related Lessons Check Out

About Jim Forte

Forte is professor, author of 4 books & 41 articles, and presenter at international, national, & regional conferences. Teaching human behavior classes for 16 years, Forte recently published the books An Introduction to Using Theory & Skills for Using Theory. As practitioner, Jim worked with the elderly in a community center, served as clubhouse group worker for persons with mental health challenges, and led a program for criminal offenders. Awards include Outstanding VA Social Work Educator, Outstanding Teaching-CNU, NASW-MD Social Work Educator of the Year, & SU Distinguished Faculty.jaforte@salisbury.edu or jamesforte@mac.com, http://jamesaforte.com (Forte’s website & free resources)

Forte’s Free Teaching Resources

I am creating supplemental resources for my two new books. By chapter, these include a chapter outline, a PowerPoint (expanding on chapter content), a list of key terms, and supplemental items (lists, tables, and on for some chapters). As I finish resources for additional chapters this semester (Spring, 2016, I will upload them).

To access these resources (Sort by name to see them in order) For Skills for Using Theory in Social Work, go

https://app.box.com/s/qyxx9sgmfb79w3o1r77gt2iy9wtl849a For An introduction to Using Theory in Social Work Practice, go to

https://app.box.com/s/9mokwnm35h7rcd77fhd57kuf1mjqz3vt

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