Learning from each other: collaboration processes in practice research

Abstract

Practice Research is a meeting point between practice and research where both common understandings and different interests meet. Therefore, Practice Research has to be understood as a process in which negotiation is a central part of developing research initiatives. In these negotiations, neither practice nor research must fully give up their special interests. Both partners must maintain equal share so as to make it possible for them to hold on to their interests; to open up new understandings, new traditions, and new learning processes; and to make it possible for them to learn from each other as a part of the process. Although the overall goal in Practice Research is to qualify social work, the balance – or the conflicts – between the different partners is both an interesting and a challenging issue in Practice Research. Based on the position of Practice Research, the article connects the theoretically based definitions and described methodological approaches with concrete experiences from Practice Research, and answers such questions as: ‘How is it possible to plan the research together, to agree on the research questions, to discuss findings?’, ‘How is it possible to have a critical discussions and to define and discuss the concept of Practice Research?’ Such discussions are normally carried out only among researchers but, in practice, research goes together with practice. To establish the meeting point between research and practice in social work, researchers and practitioners must be open to having their traditional understandings of what social work entails disturbed, to accept ‘the other’, and to work with ‘otherness’ as a positive part of the collaboration.