Editorial

There is a growing recognition that research in professional practices needs approaches that reflect the character and needs of these practices. The financial crisis of Western welfare states has reduced expenditure on services and research. At a time when it is important to know what is effective, there is a need for relevant knowledge for better practice in complex and uncertain situations and even for longer time perspectives. It seems also as though the contemporary emphasis on evidence-based practice is not producing the means to improve practice. To produce evidence takes a long time and the implementation even longer. Social work and its clients might therefore be better served, if there was a stronger emphasis to practice priorities and to a more active engagement with practitioners and users as co-producers of knowledge, and in creating broader collaboration amongst various stakeholders. We do acknowledge that social work discipline and profession is increasingly working with ever more ambitious agendas, increasing numbers of actors and stakeholders that also defines its very character. Practices are complex and undergoing constant change. It is this complexity and changing circumstances that underpin the rationale for practice research.

In discussing different turns in science and social transformation, the practice turn has its standpoints in assuming that society changes through practices that construct and direct our thinking and action. However, the question of how to understand practice is not new. Practice has always been a central focus in science throughout history. So, in fact, instead of talking about one practice turn, you may find many practice turns and wonder how they all influence on what we see in practice and how we think knowledge would be able to change society. Still, the present turn has increased interest in practice in many diverse disciplines and schools of thinking not the least in social work itself.

From a social work point of view, we now face a more integrated and explanatory relation to practice, in that there are myriads of different elements that surround and form practice, and we need knowledge on how these elements work together (Miettinen, Samra-Frederichs, and Yanow 2009). It is not, however, sufficient to just study the practice. What is needed is an active reshaping of relations where knowledge is produced in dialogue. This puts also pressure on the outcomes of practice research. We need functioning practices now (Julkunen 2014).

By involving the relational complexities within practice and by strengthening the relational and organisational linkage between research and practice the relevance of research may transcend the process of generalising and disseminating research findings.

Practice research in social work strives thus to create a reflective relationship between practices in different contexts, and the prevailing conceptions and theories in the social sciences. The research process is attached to the practice and its development, and is focused on increasing the visibility of social work, not only in terms of describing the practice but also attempting to continuously re-evaluate the conceptions and the outcomes. The reflective relationship may also recognise new ways of doing research together with users as Moe and Tronvoll and Jenssen have described in this issue.

Practice research is not grasped as a single philosophy or methodology but rather seeks to define practice-based knowledge through dialogue. One could say that practice research is looking for ways to make research-based knowledge count as robust and context-sensitive knowledge (Julkunen and Karvinen-Niinikoski 2014). Lars Uggerhøj (2011), who is also writing in this special issue, has described it as a meeting point between practice and research that needs to be negotiated every time and everywhere it is established because real operational change requires the involvement and participation of several different stakeholders and actors.

Professor emeritus Georg Walls (1986) has argued already in the 1980s that it is important that people are clued up in the research process. Research should contribute with descriptions and analyses in issues that people are connected to and involved in. It is only then that action obligations will emerge.

The crucial issue in practice research is that involvement is required throughout the different phases of research process. This emphasis on interaction and a balanced discussion between different parties provides opportunities for people to change and gain meaning through interacting. The interaction enhances the process of cooperation and collaboration in the convergence of practice and research methods. Robustness in this sense challenges traditions and understandings both within practice and within research and it will challenge the collaboration skills as both partners will not only meet the usual partners but also the other, new and unfamiliar partners – with different interests, understandings and goals.

But how can this be done? Does practice research differentiate as s scientific approach e.g. from other forms of participatory and inclusive research approaches, does it differentiate social work as a discipline? What are the arguments in seeing and motivating this kind of an approach?

Much of the need for practice research has focused on the disconnection between research, practice, and policies, especially the limited use of research findings by practitioners and policy-makers who may not see how research can contribute to the development of practices and policies. In evaluating the dissemination and utilisation of practice research, Santo et al. (2002) emphasised the importance of organisational and community factors in enhancing research utilisation. For research to be utilised, the knowledge generated by research must be relevant to the dilemmas facing practitioners and policy-makers. At the same time, the nature of the communication channels between researchers and practitioners needs to be taken into account when assessing the likelihood of research utilisation. They concluded that the most important factors in enhancing research utilisation are to establish clarity in the early stages of defining the problem at hand and to strengthen communication in the agency–researcher partnership during the whole process, especially the importance of identifying potential conflicts between the different actors involved. But how to engage and involve? Bruno Latour (2005) reminds us that ideas are spread by people who are interested in the idea and therefore it is important to study how different interests emerge and are negotiated.

Robustness was a central theme in the Second International Practice Research Conference in Helsinki in 2012. The concept of social robustness emphasises not only the research process but also the practice context, the different interests and the changes that knowledge production facilitates when findings are disseminated through dialogue with practice in order to reflect a learning processes. Even though the articles in this special issue do not directly discuss robustness, they all bring up different theoretical assumptions underpinning practice and the iterative knowledge production processes. The Helsinki Statement, presented in this volume, was produced as an analysis of the papers, plenaries and discussions in the Helsinki Conference in 2012, and pinpointed the central themes of what achieving social robustness in practice research may hold. These were: seeing negotiations as necessary throughout the research process, incorporating the dissemination elements into the research strategy, taking into account the embedded values and emotional and political dimensions, being strategic about choosing collaborative partners and validating the outcomes in large and external networks.

The articles in this special issue scrutinise hence how to collaborate and make it possible for different interests to coincide, exploring for instance how users, practitioners, policy-makers and also students can be involved, and what forms of power dynamics is involved, explores what multi-professional knowledge is, and discusses the diverse ethical issues emerging in the iterative knowledge production processes.

In looking for a reflective approach in Practice Research Anne Moe and Inger-Marii Tronvoll are posing the questions about how and why we should aim in research designs and processes where the for social work practices critical reflection would take place. They present experiences and reflections from a very specific and so far rare research project involving the service users as equal and even by contracts hired parties in a research studying the character and improvement of social work practices in a Norwegian HUSK project. Employing both social workers and users as co-researchers from the very beginning to the end of the research process revealed the different expertise and interest and power positions of the collaborative research team. Instead of seeing this as breaking the rules of good traditional researcher-led research practices, they pose the importance and gains in this kind of an approach as necessary to practice research aiming at better understanding and improvement of the professional practices. They emphasise the bridging of the different interests rather than safeguarding the traditional stakeholder positions. It is an issue of commitment to mutual respect and recognition showing new ways of doing research. The notion that practice research is for reducing the gap between research and practice opens also further questions about what really is taking place when trying to research the practice of social work

The practice research concern is much about knowledge production, about how it would be possible to produce both practically and societally relevant knowledge that could include the multi-voiced reality in an honest and respectful way. The environments we are living today in are knowledge intensive especially because of the Information and Communication Technologies and the growing interests of knowledge management that concern also social work in drastic way. Pasi Pohjola and Satu Korhonen discuss in their article ‘Social Work as Knowledge Work: Knowledge practices and multi-professional collaboration’ the need of developing knowledge practices able to respond to the need of robust knowledge managed in an agile way. According to them, any professional work today is facing the challenges of organising effective knowledge work and effective multi-professional collaboration in order to develop existing working practices and use of knowledge technologies. They are assessing the questions through a few empirical studies in Finland. These cases tell about the tension of new knowledge practices interested in acquiring more top-down and precise information and still facing the challenges of the open-ended multi-professional work. This calls for new knowledge tools as the future social and health services need to be developed in the direction where organisations have tools and ways to adapt their working and knowledge needs. The co-creation of knowledge where clients have a central role and collaborate and interact with professionals and researchers is getting ever more important. The article describes how practice research may both provide tools and a frame for developing knowledge practices in social work.

Knowledge practices can be considered as a meeting point between practice and research. Also Lars Uggerhöj discusses this from the perspective of collaboration and meeting between practitioners and university researchers in his article Learning from each other – Collaboration Processes in Practice Research. His article is based on a comparative study amongst service users and collaborative knowledge production processes in Norway and Denmark. There is a strong emphasis in this article on co-creation of knowledge in the field of family investigations. Also here there is an attempt to bridge the traditional top-down knowledge interest into the for social work necessary bottom-up-processes in meeting the needs and methods of practical work, the voice of practice in the search for knowledge and research practices for a creating robust and practice relevant knowledge in social work. A collaborative research process is in close connection to practice so that both parties, the practitioners and researchers, collaborate from the very beginning throughout the whole, but still maintain their own and parallel interest lines to gain a mutual respect of their otherness. Uggerhöj addresses through these reflections on otherness in collaboration, on the problem of defining and positioning practice research in between traditional university research and the practitioner researcher approach, and putting practice research in between these ‘two extremities’ of a continuum. This echoes Flyvbjerg (2001) idea of the science of the concrete as a standpoint for conceptualising practice research.

For practice research and knowledge production in social work the collaboration between the different stakeholders is seen as necessary condition and as a tool for gaining in ideas of robustness and concreteness. One party that often is not counted as a producer of new knowledge is the student. The article of Avril Bellinger and Deirdre Ford is challenging this assumption that the students only would be users of knowledge by critically examining an example of the work of a student. Danielle is a student who undertook her first fieldwork placement in a centre for homeless people and the article reflecting how she in the processes of meaning making as a part of using knowledge in practice actually is reaching to innovative knowledge production. They also present the idea of collaborative placements of students and the prospects of knowledge and meaning making for students engaged in practice research-oriented field-learning environments. In the case of Danielle, ‘her ability to move out of the socially accepted construction of homeless people as vulnerable and a problem to society and present a concept of them as worthy of regard in a society in which people from across the social spectrum are increasingly threatened with homelessness.’ Thus students should be included a partners in the knowledge making processes and their education as a challenge to practice research.

Also Mats Börjeson and Kerstin Johansson in their article ‘In search for a model for knowledge production and practice research in Swedish social work’ are addressing the issue of collaborative relationships between practice and research especially when it concerns producing socially robust knowledge in the sense of meeting the current challenges and needs of ‘making evidence-based practice (EBP) more than a rhetorical catch-phrase’. In Sweden, there has been an ongoing debate on introducing EBP into social work as a solution to the kind of problems of knowledge practices also on the above-mentioned article of Pohjola and Korhonen. The interest here is about how the knowledge base for social work practice can be strengthened by a model developing education and research in collaboration with social work practice in Linköping. A core element in this is a close and continuous dialogue with practice, and there are efforts ‘to develop practical research to meet the need of a new form of knowledge production, a form that captures the current issues at the interface between research and practice’ like Marthinsen and Julkunen (2012) have posed the problem. In this Swedish case with the official strategies with a focus on developing the idea and models of evidence-based social work, the positioning of practice research in between the poles between traditional research and practitioner research is consequently introduced in the dialogues as underlining the different positions and aims of the university, and the practice parties though aiming in creating better connections between research and practice. In their model under construction, the writers leave it open how the improvement of knowledge production in social work is going the take place. It is seen as challenging because of ‘the fact that education/research and social work are different practices (with different interests and different logics of action)’. The approach will be ‘not hiding these differences, but instead, confronting them in a constructive – and collaborative – manner’.

Polyphony and multiple perspectives in understanding are important in understanding the complexity of social work and welfare practices. Gregory Hall and Jennifer Boddy and Lesley Chenoweth present an Australian research alliance known for its aim of ‘bringing science into society’. Their article called ‘In the shadow of Rashomon: Pursuing polyphony in practice case studies within the Australian social security environment.’ gives an example on having an alternative approach to practice research even on governmental programmes. In this case, the practices concern social security interactions that are more known as directive and punitive. By offering an approach on enhancing and strengthening perspectives, it aims in providing for more supportive services. This is made by engaging in interpersonal practices, local knowledge and relationships instead of routinised and standardised practices provided traditionally by managerialistic approaches applying the ideas of evidence-based practice. The research team behind this article describes their work taking a different epistemological stance towards evidence-based approaches, their approach lying at the ‘pointy end’ of tensions with scientific, evidence-based trends. The starting point is that understandings of practice needs to incorporate the actions and input of people experiencing e.g. unemployment rather than view and see them as objects to be moved towards fixed outcomes. The client voices tend to be non-heard and allowing diverse voices to emerge in research practice is a long-held tenet of critical social work, but also an essential challenge in practice research. In this article, the polyphony is reached by actual accounts and information in the organisational case contexts.

Åsa Rosengren, Ann-Marie Lindqvist and Ilse Julkunen continue on the polyphony of practices in addressing a rather unexplored area illuminating the different interests and needs of knowledge in a local community. In line with Pohjola and Korhonen and Börjesson and Johansson, they too are concerned with how to produce socially robust knowledge in the sense of meeting the current challenges and needs of a community. A conceptual framework was used to visualise the extent and diversity of knowledge that can be identified in a community and that is seen as relevant to social work and social services. They describe the development of a university–municipality collaboration as an inclusive real-life learning and research environment, and raise the question that knowledge production cannot build solely on the positive attitude of professionals. Instead, they highlight the importance of building long-lasting actor–researcher relationships as the corner stone for knowledge development. Still, there was a distinctly weak link between the strategies of the municipality and the need for new knowledge production. This lack of anchoring is a serious hindrance and there is a definite need to develop dialogue between decision-makers as well as with other central actors to ensure a more sustainable knowledge development.

Although there has been a strong leap of development when it comes to user involvement in research, studies often take on a more rhetoric and philosophical standpoint. The last article in this special issue is on User involvement in practice research by Anne Grete Jenssen who describes a unique experiment in Norway, a five-year HUSK programme which aimed at developing new forms of collaboration between research, practice, education and service users to build knowledge about improving the quality of social services. The uniqueness lies still in describing in concrete ways how users are involved in the different phases of research, starting from defining the research goals, to literature review, analyses and finally the dissemination. It is with much honesty the writer tells about the many ethical challenges that were involved in the different phases. ‘Users do not experience being met as people, but rather as problems’. The writer raises in the end the core challenge in user involvement: ‘to enhance likeliness of an equal collaboration, one must be able to see the other as a complete human being and not simply as a diagnosis or a need’. Within the practice research debate, this approach stands for achieving knowledge on user perspectives in an inclusive and ethically consistent methodological approach.

Ilse Julkunen and Synnöve Karvinen-Niinikoski
University of Helsinki, Finland