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ABSTRACT
Aims: To understand the features of experiential knowledge with recovery and the process of social work students learning to use their experiential knowledge of recovery from an existential and emancipatory perspective.
Methods: A participatory action research design was used in an applied university social work department in the Netherlands to develop a new curriculum for students using their experiential knowledge. Students were invited to disclose and share their personal experiences of recovery in the classroom and practice.
Results: Experiential knowledge of recovery can be articulated as knowledge of finding a new balance in dualities of several existential themes. Social work students shared their experiences in a reflexive way and transcended their individual experiences to develop a critical subjectivity. They experienced their learning process as emancipatory and destigmatizing, but shame came up as a recurring theme. Making use of experiential knowledge sometimes conflicted with expectations of the social worker as a detached professional expert.
Conclusion: Experiential knowledge of recovery can be articulated as knowledge of living with existential dualities. Profiling oneself as a social worker with existential knowledge of recovery has paradoxical aspects: it may weaken shame and combat stigmatization, but may reinforce stigma as well.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Alie Weerman
Alie Weerman (1960) is a Dutch psychologist and professor of Mental Health & Society. She worked in a mental health organisation. Since 1990 she works at the Department of Social Work of the Windesheim University of Applied Sciences. She did her PhD on experiential knowledge of addiction of recovered social workers.
Tineke Abma
Tineke Abma (1964) is Professor Participation & Diversity at the VU University Medical Centre. Formerly she was appointed at the Maastricht University and Erasmus University. She studied for some time in the US and has a degree in Nursing and Health Care Administration. Abma has published on client participation, including patient research partners and transdisciplinary research teams, qualitative research, responsive approaches to evaluation, organizational learning and learning communities, dialogical ethics, moral deliberation and ethics of chronic care.