Constructing Practitioner Research

Abstract

We draw on a case study evaluation of two networked cohorts of practitioner researchers in a children’s services national social work agency in one of the home countries of the UK. Previous research and analysis have shed some light on whether practitioner research has or ought to have special methods and on the particular evidence or knowledge yielded by practitioner research projects. However, our aim is to understand the meaning of practitioner research for social work professionals through an exploration of how language, ascriptions of meaning and interpretation provide a social environment through which the nature and meaning of practitioner research emerge. We utilize a moderate symbolic interactionist approach to analyse diverse qualitative data. The findings suggest it is possible to trace a weft of analytic ideas regarding language, memory, moral accountability, ownership, meaning, value and social work practice as they run horizontally across the experience of the practitioner-as-researcher. The elements of practitioner research have to be understood as interwoven and bringing together and containing different career and life concerns that otherwise may remain scattered. The implications of this research suggest that practitioner research should not be seen as a less or more comfortable add-on to everyday core practice but as a multiform activity that challenges the taken-for-grantedness of practice, mainstream academic research, management and in all likelihood the experience of receiving services.