Looking for ‘social work’ in school social work

ABSTRACT

School social workers can be seen as a professional group operating on the margin of an educational logic that dominates schools as institutions. This conditions what tasks they are assigned and what aspects of social work knowledge they will find relevant. On the other hand, the role as a sole professional and relative outsider in the organization provides a potential for school social workers to transcend established theories of social work practice. This article aims to investigate how social work theory is applied in school social work. Twelve semi-structured interviews with school social workers were analysed in terms of how they relate to four knowledge approaches derived from the literature: task-centred, systems theory, strengths and anti-oppressive. Contrary to claims within the sociology of professions that social work practice is formed largely by organizational context rather than a discipline-specific knowledge base, the interviewees seemed to lean on a robust professional foundation within social work theory. Interviewees strongly emphasised their role as working for the individual pupil and positioned themselves as somewhat in opposition to a somewhat oppressive school environment.

ABSTRAKT

Skolkuratorer är en professionell grupp som har en perifer position i förhållande till skolan, som domineras av en pedagogisk logik. Detta påverkar vilka specifika arbetsuppgifter och aspekter av socialt arbete som blir relevanta för den skolkurativa praktiken. Samtidigt erbjuds denna grupp av socialarbetare genom sin perifera roll möjligheter att överskrida och utveckla etablerade former och teorier för vad som utgör det sociala arbetets praktik. Syftet med artikeln är att undersöka hur teorier i socialt arbete tillämpas i den skolkurativa praktiken. Tolv semistrukturerade intervjuer med skolkuratorer analyserades med utgångspunkt i fyra centrala perspektiv inom socialt arbete: uppgiftscentrerat, systemteoretiskt, empowerment och antiförtryckande. I motsats till vad som framförts i professionssociologiska studier, där det hävdas att det sociala arbetets praktik formas av den organisatoriska kontexten snarare än av en disciplinspecifik kunskapsbas, föreföll intervjupersonerna i sin praktik primärt förhålla sig till en robust kunskapsbas hämtad från teoribildning i socialt arbete. Intervjupersonerna framhöll vidare hur deras arbete präglades av ett barnperspektiv, vilket gjorde att de i viss utsträckning positionerade sig i opposition till en skola som delvis uppfattades som förtryckande. Dock var de inte benägna att kritiskt reflektera över sin egen potentiella roll i denna förtryckande kontext.

KEYWORDS:

• Social work
• school social work
• counselling
• practice theory
• knowledge use

NYCKELORD:

• Socialt arbete
• skolkuratorer
• skola
• elevhälsoarbete
• kunskapsanvändning
• praktikteori
• evidensbaserad praktik

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Cristine Isaksson is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Social Work, Umeå University. Her research interest concerns school social work, especially regarding professionalization and theory use. She is also interested in visual research methods.

Stefan Sjöström has a Ph.D. in communication studies and is currently Associate Professor in Social Work at Umeå University. His research has often focused on power relations within the mental health field. Issues of human rights have also been addressed in studies concerning court hearings relating to compulsory interventions, but also criminal proceedings. He has also taken an interest in professional’s understanding and claims- making in relation to client problems and how they choose to address problems. In a current project he is researching public relations work within social service organization.

ORCiD

Cristine Isaksson http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8474-5821

Stefan Sjöström http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4540-5373

Notes

1 In addition to conventional searches in international databases such as Ebsco, we have surveyed a Swedish database (Diva) and conducted manual searches in the two existing Social Work journals published in Swedish.