Six Approaches to Group Work

Abstract

Over recent years social group work literature has moved toward a degree of specificity not found in the earlier writing of, for example, Konopka.¹ As a result, several formulations of the aims and methods of group work are beginning to emerge. The first purpose of this paper is to present and contrast these formulations. My thesis is that there is no one all-encompassing correct way of “doing” group work. The broad methodology which a practitioner uses to pursue pre-defined purposes through small group processes should, and (to a limited extent) now can, be chosen according to certain relevant variables. (Such variables would include, for example, the worker's purposes, salient characteristics of his agency and the purposes and goals of group members). Although the approaches presented herein have attained only relatively primitive stages of development they do offer some viable methodological choices to the group worker. And it is in this important respect that the differential conceptualization of group work presented in this paper is similar to that which is now being used in casework.²