Introducing a special issue: Teaching qualitative research and inquiry

Abstract

Qualitative Social Work: Research and Practice offers this special issue to highlight the importance of education in developing a strong cadre of knowledgeable, skilled and active qualitative researchers, scholars and teachers. The journal expands upon its ongoing section on teaching to promote extensive discussion of this important part of social work education. Voices from many parts of the world are included in this special issue. These voices highlight different emphases and interests, but also affirm a shared strong commitment to educating students to understand, and to produce, excellent qualitative research. The timing of this special issue is also important. Within developed countries, advocates for expanding the role of empirical knowledge in guiding public policy and for evidence-based practice renew challenges to the worth and place of qualitative research (Cheek, 2011; Denzin and Lincoln, 2011; Drisko and Grady, 2012). While the ‘paradigm wars’ of the 1980s and 1990s led to support for ‘many ways of knowing’ (Hartman, 1994) in social work, contemporary neoliberal administrative models create research hierarchies that actively devalue the contributions of qualitative research in the name of science. Recent calls for a ‘science of social work’ similarly omit or undervalue the contributions of qualitative research to social work knowledge building and practice. In this context, strong economic, political and academic forces are questioning the need for qualitative research education in social work. The voices and views of those supporting the merit and worth of qualitative research in social work must be renewed and heard now. In practice, there is little emphasis on qualitative research in most social work education standards. Both the US Council on Social Work Education (2008, EP 2.1.6) standards and the United Kingdom’s The British Association of Social Workers (BASW) makes only scant reference to research as part of the professional capabilities framework. The International Federation of Social Workers Global Standards (2012) does not list research as a core social work purpose, nor do Qualitative Social Work 2016, Vol. 15(3) 303–306 ! The Author(s) 2016 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1473325016638197 qsw.sagepub.com