Looking back, looking forward: using a duoethnographic study to explore the role of personal positioning in social work education in the UK and Slovenia

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article highlights the importance of learning about reflective processes in social work education, because acts of reflection enable us to learn from past experiences in order to improve our future practice. We show how duoethnography, as a reflective method, enables us, as two social work academics from the UK and Slovenia, to investigate our personal positioning and its influence on our practice. This duoethnographic study allows the authors to challenge their place in the status quo, and consider their social and political position in society. Alongside the use of duoethnography as a reflective method, the analysis of critical incidents, is used herewith to develop our personal and professional knowledge base. We consider how our own educational experience taught us to value the perspectives of experts-by-experience in all aspects of our practice, investigating the disclosure of our own self and identity in this process; furthermore we consider the importance of incorporating the perspectives of experts-by-experience in the wider professional development of social workers. Consequently, we recommend that social workers reflect on their experience throughout their professional development; and suggest the potential of duoethnography as a potentially significant method in the development of theory and practice in social work.