Meticulous Thoughtfulness: Cultivating Practical Wisdom in Social Work

ABSTRACT

Practical wisdom is a necessary virtue for social workers. We explore the nature of this virtue and one possible element of facilitating its development in social work students who are seen as beginning learners of virtue. The pertinent ethical reflections can be stimulated by employing practically feasible guidelines which are Aristotelian in structure and which are not predominantly outcome oriented. We emphasize the need for slowing down the decision-making process. Creating ‘meticulous thoughtfulness’ is the first step on the path of facilitating the cultivation of practical wisdom. The beginning learner of virtue struggles to figure out the core aspects of a situation and good judgements seem rather fragile. Developing practical wisdom entails that one understands increasingly the gravity of social work situations and the role that ethics plays in them. Therefore, we emphasize the need to deliberate a case thoroughly. Failing to do so could imply damages to clients and to social workers. We will consider the contents and systematic order of the guidelines with which a deep reflection process could be initiated, one which through repeated use can result in practical wisdom. The main focus is on the process of reflection not on the outcome.

KEYWORDS:

• Ethical decision-making
• social work
• practical wisdom
• virtue ethics
• education
• deliberation
• professional community

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Dr Margaret L. Rhodes was an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the College of Public and Community Service, University of Massachusetts/Boston, where she taught courses on social work ethics and philosophy at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Her publications include her book on ethics, Ethical Dilemmas in Social Work Practice, as well as a number of published papers exploring the links between clinical and ethical issues in social work.

Dr Heidrun Wulfekühler is currently a research associate at the University of Applied Sciences in Osnabrück. She received her PhD in Applied Ethics at the University of Iceland. She is especially interested in researching and teaching social work ethics.

Notes

1 See discussion in Section C.

2 We do not think that a virtue account is the only one valuable for reflecting on social work ethics. Other accounts provide important perspectives also. In this sense, we are ethical pluralists like, for instance, Banks and Gallagher (2009).

3 Martha Nussbaum’s account of capabilities bears some resemblance to our articulation of social work goals (e.g. Nussbaum 2000).

4 O’Sullivan provides a very rich analysis of practice wisdom. He does not explore practice wisdom in virtue terms, but we suspect that his account could be linked to such an account.

5 Strictly speaking, it is artificial and inadequate to refer to ‘a particular Muslim culture’ considering that there are likely to be heterogeneous views within it.

6 Our perspective on diversity issues in social work connects with Hugman’s discussion (2008). He tries to develop a pluralist stance on ethical issues, arguing that a debate about commonly shared values is possible across different cultures and perspectives. It is very difficult and requires navigating between the two extreme poles of universalism in an absolutist sense and relativism in an ‘anything goes’ sense. The discussion about when respecting cultural differences is called for and when considerations for human rights demand a critique of harmful practices (which are justified in terms of ‘cultural differences’) has to stay open.

7 This is implicit in the sections on principles (4.) and on professional conduct (5.).

8 While there are similarities of skills to virtues, there are also differences. For a detailed discussion of Annas’ analogy, see Irwin (2013).

9 Note to the reader: See the full guidelines (Appendix). As you can see they are rather complex and as we stated before the different questions can help students to understand and act with practical wisdom on particular case problems. Not all of the questions are equally relevant in each case. Discerning what is most relevant in what case is also part of developing practical wisdom.