Expert by experience research as grounding for social work education

Abstract

This article is based on an investigation that involves five experts by experience in the field of mental health and eight students of social work. Both groups investigated the experiences of people with mental ill-health living in group homes. The article identifies the advantages if the researchers are expert by experience and the epistemological shift produced by the inclusion of people with the lived experience. Expert by experience research is a challenge to both experts by experience and for social work practice since it promotes the basic principle of social work as the science of doing. This study was based on the assertion that the real integration of theory and practice will not come from a rigid body of knowledge, but from the humility to learn from experts by experience.

Keywords:

• Education
• users knowledge
• students
• social work
• mental health

Notes

1. An expert by experience is someone with experience of using social services now or in the past (read more about this in Haaster & Koster, 2007; McLaughlin, 2009). In our case experts by experience have been people who use services and who have done so in the past. I am very aware that an expert by experience can have a double identity (being a student and service user, or, academic and service user).

2. Expert by experience knowledge is in the literature also described as experimental or direct knowledge, as lived experience and as from experts by experience. The key point lies in the fact that people are experienced and it is learned from personal experience. This is not to deny the existence or validity of professionals’ knowledge or the fact that they are based on direct experience. It means first-hand experience and reflection.