Collaborative practice research in a community-based home visiting program

ABSTRACT

Through collaborative practice research with the goal of identifying alternative discourses that can challenge expert-led knowledge in parent education, this study examined a community-based home visiting programme conducted by a social work practitioner serving disadvantaged migrant families in Shenzhen. To obtain diverse information, data was collected by three major methods, including in-depth interviews, participant observations and document reviews. Findings of this study shed lights on the social work research-practice partnership through a reflexive knowledge co-construction approach which helped to produce alternative discourses that considered parents’ experiential knowledge and emphasised a system-oriented perspective. By embracing the alternative subjectivities constituted by alternative discourses as collaborators and co-learners, the practitioner and researcher also demonstrated abilities to think about new possibilities for parent education practice and research. Implications for future empowerment-oriented social work practice and research in family and parent education fields were also discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Knowledge co-construction
• parent education
• reflexive
• research-practice partnership
• social work practice research

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Ethics

Ethical approval for this research project was given by the Survey and Behavioural Research Ethics Committee of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Reference No.: SBRE-19-766) and informed consent from research participants was obtained.

Additional information

Funding

Not applicable.

Notes on contributors

Lei Dong

Lei Dong, Social Work Postdoctoral. After obtaining her doctor’s degree of social welfare at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, she became a postdoc at Nanjing University of Science & Technology and focused on social work research in child and family service fields. She also provides program evaluation services for social work organizations in Jiangsu, China.