What Don’t We Know About Group Work?

As editor of The Journal for Specialists in Group Work (JSGW), I’m constantly in awe and amazed by the interesting and novel manuscripts that are submitted to our journal each month. The manuscripts we receive reflect new and burgeoning ideas about the field of group work, each challenging us to think more broadly, and at times differently, about how we view group work, as well as its impact on clients, our profession, and the larger world. As I’ve considered what we have published and received in the last year, I couldn’t help but reflect on what we have not seen published recently in JSGW and where the field could continue to expand and explore.

Multicultural and social justice issues in group work provide some examples of notable gaps that I have become aware of. The Association for Specialists in Group Work (ASGW), and JSGW as its flagship journal, have long had a strong and noble history of attending to multicultural, social justice, and diversity related issues. Examples of this include the many international scholars published within this journal (including last year’s “article of the year” recipients), articles focused on international group work, as well as scholarship focused on multicultural and social justice issues. This attention, for me, appears to capture the heart and spirit of ASGW, and with it, its journal. Even with all this attention, however, gaps still exist. Vereen and Bohecker (2017) noted in a content analysis of JSGW last volume that although the journal has seen a great deal of scholarship focused on age, ethnicity, race, and international work, a large gap still exists in group work scholarship focused around sexual/affectional orientation and gender diversity. They presented a call to arms for authors to further engage in this work, to better represent and serve this group of clients. Concurrently, I have noticed that that few, if any, articles have ever been published within the journal focused around persons with disabilities. This is a huge gap, as there are a large number of persons with disabilities, both in the nation, as well as in contexts where we serve. This is sad, because of the association and journal’s strong attention to multicultural issues, it appears to be a current blind spot within our scholarship. It is notable, however, that there is enough information and resources for this work to have a book published by a former JSGW editor and ASGW Fellow with the American Counseling Association (Bauman & Shaw, 2016). As such, it appears that we have resources to continue this work, and we should, to fully embrace our potential as multiculturally focused practitioners and scholars.

Multicultural issues, however, are not the only current areas of gaps. In his parting editorial, former editor Christopher McCarthy noted the potential for scholarship in group work related to mindfulness, which is a growing and important area of scholarship and work (McCarthy, 2017). He noted the number of published scholarship in mindfulness that has occurred in a group setting, but the lack of attention in that scholarship to what might be operating within that group (group dynamics) that might influence or support the outcomes we have seen in mindfulness based work. I agree with McCarthy that this is an area that we should embrace in future work, which thankfully, some scholars have begun to have completed in issues 1 and 2 of this volume.

Further, although much attention in supervision scholarship has attended to the process and outcomes of group supervision, one issue that we continue to neglect in scholarship is attention to the supervision of group work. Rubel and Atieno Okech (Atieno Okech, & Rubel, 2007; Rubel & Atieno Okech, 2006), as well as Goodrich and Luke (Goodrich & Luke, 2011; Luke & Goodrich, 2013), have written about different models of supervision of group work, but little scholarship has attended to the process and outcomes of this work. If we as an association truly love groups, and want to ensure that groups operate appropriately in our different professional contexts, we should ensure that group work receives appropriate attention through clinical supervision, including measuring the outcomes of such. Therefore, I would like to call scholars and practitioners to continue to think of ways in which group work can be supervised, through supervision of group work, as well as how we may further measure the efficacy of these interventions to ensure that we provide ethical and appropriate work when serving our groups.

Finally, JSGW has published a large number of articles focused on the experiential group, an apparent passion area for our authors and readership. This is wonderful, as our association is passionate about groups, and wanting to ensure that we are intentional and creative in instructing students about group work, as well as facilitating our groups. The experiential group is most definitely not an area of gap within our literature; in some ways, we have probably explored the experiential group far too much in conceptual and pilot studies. The gap that exists, however, is the empirical exploration of experiential groups, focused on high quality, empirically rigorous explorations of the process and outcome of these groups. Although I am cautious to call for a moratorium on conceptual and pilot study manuscripts focused on the experiential group, as a society we need to recognize the large volume of scholarship we already have in this area. Instead of issuing that moratorium, I wish to call for scholars to explore the extent scholarship, and empirically investigate the experiential groups that have already been proposed, or if offering a new experiential group, utilize what we know from the previous special issue on exemplary research in group work, and conduct a high quality investigation into these experiential groups. We cannot continue to grow and thrive as a journal if we only publish conceptual articles or provide basic pilot tested outcomes.

As a journal, we have a great opportunity to provide exemplary scholarship to our readership, serve as a leader within our association, and be a messenger in our larger field about the potential and opportunities for group work in counseling. As noted above, there is great potential to lead in underexplored and underserved areas within the field of group work. The areas that I listed above are not comprehensive in any way, as I am sure there are many further areas that could be explored within the field of group work. I hope that you consider this editorial as a call to arms to begin to think about scholarship in group work more broadly, and the impact that you can have as a future author within the journal. We need excited, engaged, and creative authors like you to further the mission and vision of our journal, and I am excited to see what the future may hold.