Pub Date : 2023-09-05DOI: 10.1177/14733250231200499
S. Tønnessen
Being able to control ones drinking is an expression of attitudes in most western societies towards the act of drinking, and if losing control, one breaks with these attitudes. This is what I call the “controlled drinking discourse.” Loss of control can be understood as any drinking of alcohol which starts a chain of reaction that is felt as a physical and psychological demand for alcohol. This is a description of how I related to alcohol for years until a complete crisis of meaning in my life in 2014. In recovery research, different kinds of “doings” are well documented as meaningful, while meaningful ways of thinking is less explored. Ways of thinking is influenced by available discourses. Through an autoethnographic approach, I explore ways of thinking with use of an analytical framework focusing on the relationship between discourses, narratives, and small stories. I also discuss theories on non-drinking, alcoholism, and recovery. Doing a discursively shift in thinking by accepting that controlled drinking is not possible, is for me a meaningful and self-sustainable way of thinking, which keeps me sober and away from crisis of meaning in my life.
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Pub Date : 2023-09-02DOI: 10.1177/14733250231200484
Samantha Phippard, Kerry Ball, Nicole Paulson
The World Café (TWC) method is now established as a participatory tool used in community development and qualitative research. However, there is a limited critique of TWC as a social work research method, especially with children. This paper discusses TWC as a method for understanding what matters for children on the British Overseas Territory of St Helena Island. As a social worker, the importance of supporting children’s engagement and voice is well known in participation, necessitating careful ethical consideration. Within this project facilitating authentic conversations with children on a remote island required examining assumptions alongside engaging with colonial legacies to bring forward respectful participation. TWC shares several fractures of other participatory approaches evolving from critical pedagogy, which appeared aligned with social work values and ethics. Facilitated shared learning and allowed children to discuss issues that mattered to them, although handing over dialogue to children required commitment to trust and sharing control with young people. Café events revealed the complex positioning of social roles situating lived experiences, whereby children developed their learning of what mattered to them through interactions and a growing understanding of their global position. The method edged dialogue towards transformative conversations, acknowledging the oppression of marginalised peoples, requires reflection and action from children and young people themselves to elevate their positions from within their own knowledge. This supports the potential for further research to understand if creative methods can create more spaces for dialogue, allowing the emergence of more authentic children’s engagement in research which is more socially just.
{"title":"Creating space for dialogue: Exploring what matters for children on St Helena Island through The World Café","authors":"Samantha Phippard, Kerry Ball, Nicole Paulson","doi":"10.1177/14733250231200484","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14733250231200484","url":null,"abstract":"The World Café (TWC) method is now established as a participatory tool used in community development and qualitative research. However, there is a limited critique of TWC as a social work research method, especially with children. This paper discusses TWC as a method for understanding what matters for children on the British Overseas Territory of St Helena Island. As a social worker, the importance of supporting children’s engagement and voice is well known in participation, necessitating careful ethical consideration. Within this project facilitating authentic conversations with children on a remote island required examining assumptions alongside engaging with colonial legacies to bring forward respectful participation. TWC shares several fractures of other participatory approaches evolving from critical pedagogy, which appeared aligned with social work values and ethics. Facilitated shared learning and allowed children to discuss issues that mattered to them, although handing over dialogue to children required commitment to trust and sharing control with young people. Café events revealed the complex positioning of social roles situating lived experiences, whereby children developed their learning of what mattered to them through interactions and a growing understanding of their global position. The method edged dialogue towards transformative conversations, acknowledging the oppression of marginalised peoples, requires reflection and action from children and young people themselves to elevate their positions from within their own knowledge. This supports the potential for further research to understand if creative methods can create more spaces for dialogue, allowing the emergence of more authentic children’s engagement in research which is more socially just.","PeriodicalId":47677,"journal":{"name":"Qualitative Social Work","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2023-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49348078","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-08-31DOI: 10.1177/14733250231200501
Caitlin van Noppen, Lobna Yassine, Katarzyna Olcoń
This article explores the conceptualization of cultural responsivity in Australian child protection through the critical Whiteness theory lens. Critical discourse analysis was deployed to examine the cultural responsivity concept in two statutory child protection documents from New South Wales (NSW), Australia. Interrogating the underlying assumptions present in the texts, the study demonstrated a narrow categorization of who is deemed ‘culturally diverse’ and a problematic conceptualization of cultural responsivity. We argue that these texts maintain Whiteness as the unexamined cultural norm and can reinforce the ‘Othering’ effect and racial disproportionality in the child protection system. We conclude with a call to practitioners to remain critical of the widely accepted concepts that inform their practice, such as cultural responsivity to avoid reinforcing racial inequality through their practice.
{"title":"Whiteness in our understanding of culture: A critical discourse analysis of the cultural responsivity practice frameworks in child protection","authors":"Caitlin van Noppen, Lobna Yassine, Katarzyna Olcoń","doi":"10.1177/14733250231200501","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14733250231200501","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores the conceptualization of cultural responsivity in Australian child protection through the critical Whiteness theory lens. Critical discourse analysis was deployed to examine the cultural responsivity concept in two statutory child protection documents from New South Wales (NSW), Australia. Interrogating the underlying assumptions present in the texts, the study demonstrated a narrow categorization of who is deemed ‘culturally diverse’ and a problematic conceptualization of cultural responsivity. We argue that these texts maintain Whiteness as the unexamined cultural norm and can reinforce the ‘Othering’ effect and racial disproportionality in the child protection system. We conclude with a call to practitioners to remain critical of the widely accepted concepts that inform their practice, such as cultural responsivity to avoid reinforcing racial inequality through their practice.","PeriodicalId":47677,"journal":{"name":"Qualitative Social Work","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2023-08-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43055541","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-08-21DOI: 10.1177/14733250231197715
Kirsty Oehlers
It is with great gratitude that I have accepted an Associate Editor position at Qualitative Social Work thanks to the belief the other Editors have in me, a non-traditional academic and writer. I currently work part-time as a teaching focussed academic at Curtin University in the isolated city of Perth,Western Australia. The rest of my time I run a counselling centre where I work in private practice as a child and family therapist, specialising in Family Court referred families. As a joyful contrast, I also engage in gender diversity counselling with children, young people, and their families. My journey into social work research has been a convoluted one, as I previously sawmyself as a creative writer first, however once I realised that creativity could be encapsulated within qualitative research, I was hooked! If I think back to the pathway to my love affair with words, it probably began in a much more simplistic form. That of the note thrown across the room in class where short, coded sentiments were secretly passed backwards in forwards in a type of exchange, not that dissimilar to a semi-structured interview, where a topic (usually a love interest) was examined and explored, and thoughts, feelings, and beliefs were sought and offered. I have kept somany of those notes, and perhaps one day I’ll consider coding and analysing them to consider how adolescent identities have shifted (or not). This is only one of many ideas that stem from awell of late-night thoughts! After all, qualitative research asks or even demands, that we innovate and expand the ‘known’ way of doing research. My first attempt at research was in my first year of my social work degree, where we had to choose a specific cohort of people to conduct an ethnography with. My nineteen-year-old self chose ‘boys who lived at boarding school’ as the subjects for my ethnography. I have no idea how that passed any form of ethics, but in all honesty, I found it fascinating. Conducting the interview in situ was eye-opening, as I sat with male students and asked them to open up about their boarding school experiences. To my amazement, they divulged and shared secrets, joys, pain, heartache, and some very entrenched patriarchal views. That was the beginning of my desire to challenge, expose, reveal, or unfurl ideas that may otherwise remain hidden. It felt as though interviewing those boys allowed them to see alternatives to
{"title":"Honouring the artistry in qualitative social work research","authors":"Kirsty Oehlers","doi":"10.1177/14733250231197715","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14733250231197715","url":null,"abstract":"It is with great gratitude that I have accepted an Associate Editor position at Qualitative Social Work thanks to the belief the other Editors have in me, a non-traditional academic and writer. I currently work part-time as a teaching focussed academic at Curtin University in the isolated city of Perth,Western Australia. The rest of my time I run a counselling centre where I work in private practice as a child and family therapist, specialising in Family Court referred families. As a joyful contrast, I also engage in gender diversity counselling with children, young people, and their families. My journey into social work research has been a convoluted one, as I previously sawmyself as a creative writer first, however once I realised that creativity could be encapsulated within qualitative research, I was hooked! If I think back to the pathway to my love affair with words, it probably began in a much more simplistic form. That of the note thrown across the room in class where short, coded sentiments were secretly passed backwards in forwards in a type of exchange, not that dissimilar to a semi-structured interview, where a topic (usually a love interest) was examined and explored, and thoughts, feelings, and beliefs were sought and offered. I have kept somany of those notes, and perhaps one day I’ll consider coding and analysing them to consider how adolescent identities have shifted (or not). This is only one of many ideas that stem from awell of late-night thoughts! After all, qualitative research asks or even demands, that we innovate and expand the ‘known’ way of doing research. My first attempt at research was in my first year of my social work degree, where we had to choose a specific cohort of people to conduct an ethnography with. My nineteen-year-old self chose ‘boys who lived at boarding school’ as the subjects for my ethnography. I have no idea how that passed any form of ethics, but in all honesty, I found it fascinating. Conducting the interview in situ was eye-opening, as I sat with male students and asked them to open up about their boarding school experiences. To my amazement, they divulged and shared secrets, joys, pain, heartache, and some very entrenched patriarchal views. That was the beginning of my desire to challenge, expose, reveal, or unfurl ideas that may otherwise remain hidden. It felt as though interviewing those boys allowed them to see alternatives to","PeriodicalId":47677,"journal":{"name":"Qualitative Social Work","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2023-08-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46915900","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-08-21DOI: 10.1177/14733250231197714
L. Morriss
Welcome to this issue of Qualitative Social Work. We are very honoured to have two new Editorial Board members. You will have read the brilliant Editorial by Kirsty Oehlers which reflects the creativity and innovation she brings to her Associate Editor role. Having published in our New Voices section, Kirsty will be taking the lead and as you can see, very much welcomes your submissions. We are also excited to have a new European Review Essay Editor, Dr Caroline Leah. Caroline will be introducing herself and her vision for the Review Essay section in the next European-led issue. We have 12 articles in this issue, on topics including mental health, child protection, and dis/abilities, using a range of methodological approaches. We begin with an article by Talin Gharibian and David McCarty-Caplan who write about their exploratory study which examined the intersections of Middle Eastern and North African American cultural identity, and attitudes towards mental health and substance use in the United States. The authors note that ‘the unique experiences of MENA communities are rendered nearly invisible within much of the extant scientific literature on public health and substance abuse within the U.S., despite growing recognition that research about these communities remains limited’. Based on their interviews with 15 people, the authors identified five primary themes: lack of understanding, shame and stigma, denial, collective identity, and resistance. The article concludes with four important recommendations for social workers. The following article is by Louise Morley and Frances Crawford who are both based in Australia. Their article reflects on the humanistic conceptualisation of Martin Buber’s I/thou notion of personhood. I was interested to read how their engagement with Buber’s work was sparked by the reflections of two social work interviewees in a larger study. It reminded me of Les Back’s (2019, np.) argument that ‘fostering a different kind of attentiveness to the world is a resource in the service of hope’. The authors, attentive to the social workers discussion of personhood, have used this as a basis for their own reflections. Wemove to an article by Rahel More, based on their doctoral research, which critically explores the meanings of parenting and dis/ability for mothers and fathers with intellectual disabilities in the context of social work in Austria. The author collected data from Austrian virtual internet discussion groups (newsgroups), interviews with six social work
{"title":"In this issue …","authors":"L. Morriss","doi":"10.1177/14733250231197714","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14733250231197714","url":null,"abstract":"Welcome to this issue of Qualitative Social Work. We are very honoured to have two new Editorial Board members. You will have read the brilliant Editorial by Kirsty Oehlers which reflects the creativity and innovation she brings to her Associate Editor role. Having published in our New Voices section, Kirsty will be taking the lead and as you can see, very much welcomes your submissions. We are also excited to have a new European Review Essay Editor, Dr Caroline Leah. Caroline will be introducing herself and her vision for the Review Essay section in the next European-led issue. We have 12 articles in this issue, on topics including mental health, child protection, and dis/abilities, using a range of methodological approaches. We begin with an article by Talin Gharibian and David McCarty-Caplan who write about their exploratory study which examined the intersections of Middle Eastern and North African American cultural identity, and attitudes towards mental health and substance use in the United States. The authors note that ‘the unique experiences of MENA communities are rendered nearly invisible within much of the extant scientific literature on public health and substance abuse within the U.S., despite growing recognition that research about these communities remains limited’. Based on their interviews with 15 people, the authors identified five primary themes: lack of understanding, shame and stigma, denial, collective identity, and resistance. The article concludes with four important recommendations for social workers. The following article is by Louise Morley and Frances Crawford who are both based in Australia. Their article reflects on the humanistic conceptualisation of Martin Buber’s I/thou notion of personhood. I was interested to read how their engagement with Buber’s work was sparked by the reflections of two social work interviewees in a larger study. It reminded me of Les Back’s (2019, np.) argument that ‘fostering a different kind of attentiveness to the world is a resource in the service of hope’. The authors, attentive to the social workers discussion of personhood, have used this as a basis for their own reflections. Wemove to an article by Rahel More, based on their doctoral research, which critically explores the meanings of parenting and dis/ability for mothers and fathers with intellectual disabilities in the context of social work in Austria. The author collected data from Austrian virtual internet discussion groups (newsgroups), interviews with six social work","PeriodicalId":47677,"journal":{"name":"Qualitative Social Work","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2023-08-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41694452","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-08-19DOI: 10.1177/14733250231196430
Felicity Morrow, M. Kettle
This article describes an unexpected methodological shift made in response to the COVID-19 pandemic during doctoral research, and exemplifies reflexivity in action whilst negotiating my complex positionality as both a researcher and a social worker. The first UK national lockdown was announced after I had conducted 3 months of ethnographic data collection in a local authority adult social work team, thus halting my research. As society shut down, face-to-face research was paused overnight, however, the local authority continued to provide essential services and support. Forging a path forward, I successfully gained a job practising as a social worker within the team and completed a supplementary ethics application to include auto-ethnographic data which would complement the existing ethnography. Although practicing reflexivity and analysing positionality are established and encouraged parts of ethnographic research, how a researcher actively conducts them varies and usually remains unseen. Methodologies are often presented in a sanitised and polished manner, depriving the reader of the messy yet informative reality of research. This article draws upon fieldnotes to practically illustrate and bring this reflexivity on positionality to the fore. As I move from participant-observer to complete-participant, the findings zoom in on my experience of navigating positionality, revealing a micro picture of the details and subtleties of this process. This unexpected research journey enhanced my level of intimacy with the phenomenon, the research site, and the participants. Overall, this example of enacting reflexivity helps to bridge the gap between how positionality is theorised and how it actively practiced. Finally, this article is a call for more open, deeper, and continual reflexivity on our positionality as researchers.
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Pub Date : 2023-08-13DOI: 10.1177/14733250231194783
G. Iacono, Leah Holle, Emily K. Loveland, Christina Borel, Evan Horton, Hannah Olson, Shelley L. Craig, Breana Bietsch
We use a collaborative autoethnography (CAE) methodology to explore how our research team conducted community-based participatory action research (CBPAR) with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual, and other sexually and gender diverse youth (LGBTQIA+) youth during the COVID-19 pandemic, which required us to modify our original research approach. This paper describes the authors’ processes and provides critical reflections on continuing to use CBPAR during the pandemic with LGBTQIA+ youth to develop and evaluate a mental health intervention (i.e., Tuned In!) that aims to address their mental health needs. Our CAE revealed three main themes: 1) Enhancing Accessibility; 2) Centering the Voices of LGBTQIA+ Youth; 3) Prioritizing Relationships and Community Building, and an over-arching theme of Trust that facilitated our efforts. Taken together, our findings illuminate practical approaches to engage LGBTQIA+ youth through research despite myriad obstacles brought on by the pandemic.
{"title":"Community-based participatory action research with LGBTQIA+ youth during the COVID-19 pandemic: Reflections from a collaborative autoethnography","authors":"G. Iacono, Leah Holle, Emily K. Loveland, Christina Borel, Evan Horton, Hannah Olson, Shelley L. Craig, Breana Bietsch","doi":"10.1177/14733250231194783","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14733250231194783","url":null,"abstract":"We use a collaborative autoethnography (CAE) methodology to explore how our research team conducted community-based participatory action research (CBPAR) with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual, and other sexually and gender diverse youth (LGBTQIA+) youth during the COVID-19 pandemic, which required us to modify our original research approach. This paper describes the authors’ processes and provides critical reflections on continuing to use CBPAR during the pandemic with LGBTQIA+ youth to develop and evaluate a mental health intervention (i.e., Tuned In!) that aims to address their mental health needs. Our CAE revealed three main themes: 1) Enhancing Accessibility; 2) Centering the Voices of LGBTQIA+ Youth; 3) Prioritizing Relationships and Community Building, and an over-arching theme of Trust that facilitated our efforts. Taken together, our findings illuminate practical approaches to engage LGBTQIA+ youth through research despite myriad obstacles brought on by the pandemic.","PeriodicalId":47677,"journal":{"name":"Qualitative Social Work","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2023-08-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45328644","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-07-04DOI: 10.1177/14733250231185962
R. Oram, A. Young, Patricia Cartney
This paper concerns parenting assessments which are integral to child-safeguarding professional processes in England, and which involve Deaf parents whose primary language is British Sign Language (BSL). In an under-researched area of social work, the research aim was to contribute to the existing literature by eliciting the practice wisdom of specialist professionals. Specifically, it draws upon their linguistic and cultural knowledge of the Deaf community when they are involved in parenting assessments with Deaf parents who are subject to safeguarding concerns. Data about these professionals’ actual experiences of navigating Deaf cultural-competency in contemporary child protection practices were collected through seven video-recorded, semi-structured interviews conducted in BSL. Using interpretive phenomenological analysis, data were analysed in their source language (BSL). This article focusses on one key theme, termed ‘Professional Recognition’, which incorporates a) the identification of specialist roles and b) the impact of referral processes and protocols on assessment outcomes. The findings highlight participants’ perspectives on the benefits and disadvantages of their specialist role in this context. Although their brokerage skills, cultural competence, linguistic fluency and specialist knowledge of the Deaf community are highly regarded and valued by some colleagues, there is insufficient recognition of their existence by the majority. Secondly, participants are concerned by the inefficiency and inconsistency of the referral processes and protocols which they consider have adverse effects on assessment outcomes, and consequently the parents involved.
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Pub Date : 2023-07-01Epub Date: 2022-06-02DOI: 10.1177/14733250221105081
Naomi Katie McGookin
This article examines a recent research project that explored the lived experiences of 5 final year social work students in Scotland who graduated during the coronavirus pandemic. The project used Photovoice as the primary data collection method, followed by a 3 hour long online focus group where the participants and the researcher worked collaboratively to identify themes for further analysis. The findings demonstrated that while the data collected by participants through the photographs and captions were highly personal to each participant, there were recurring themes that connected all of them which were identified broadly as; (dis)connection, closure and identity - all of which were discussed in great detail in a virtual focus group after the data was collected. This article focusses predominantly on the Photovoice method adopted for the study and how this was an effective method for participatory research. This article also focusses on how the pandemic affected the transitionary period between the participants' identity shift from students to professionals. This study followed the principles of Participatory Action Research which meant that participants and the researcher worked together to cultivate and analyse the data collected and the findings that are discussed here reflect this collaborative process. As this report is being written, numerous new studies, reports and predictions as to the pandemics impact on our collective mental health emerge daily and so it is hoped that this project will serve as a small time stamp as to how the pandemic impacted this small group of students in Scotland and will honour their stories, creating a lasting space for them to be heard among the ever-increasing bombardment of news.
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Pub Date : 2023-07-01DOI: 10.1177/14733250221088208
E. Skoura-Kirk
The way social workers discursively construct ‘service user’ identities in everyday interactions (interviews, conversations and text) can affect quality of relationships and practice outcomes. Even though research has focused on the construction of ‘service user’ identities by professionals and service users, little has been done to explore such discursive formulations by pre-qualifying social work students. This is especially relevant, given the strengthening of the ‘expert by experience’ identity in social work education. This paper seeks to make visible mechanisms of student identity constructions as to ‘who a service user is’, and implications for practice through the examination of student written work pre- and post- a module focussing on lived experience. A critical discursive psychology approach was followed, recognising the interplay between localised professional encounters and wider contexts of power relations. The findings show a shift in the ‘service user’ identities employed by the students mainly based on individualistic discourses and deserving/undeserving themes (substance misuse the result of vulnerability, rather than selfishness, domestic abuse narratives denoting resilience rather than victimhood). The effect to practice showed shifts between the reflective, expert, person-centred and critical/radical practitioner, mainly stressing the need for professional growth at an individual level, with less emphasis on addressing social inequality. The paper argues that predominantly individualistic discourses can perpetuate de-politicised or oppressive categorisations of ‘service users’ and calls for further critical engagement with the discursive micro-practises enacted and developed in the social work classroom, if we are to unveil and challenge narrow, or stigmatising categorisations early on.
{"title":"‘Through no fault of their own’: Social work students’ use of language to construct ‘service user’ identities","authors":"E. Skoura-Kirk","doi":"10.1177/14733250221088208","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14733250221088208","url":null,"abstract":"The way social workers discursively construct ‘service user’ identities in everyday interactions (interviews, conversations and text) can affect quality of relationships and practice outcomes. Even though research has focused on the construction of ‘service user’ identities by professionals and service users, little has been done to explore such discursive formulations by pre-qualifying social work students. This is especially relevant, given the strengthening of the ‘expert by experience’ identity in social work education. This paper seeks to make visible mechanisms of student identity constructions as to ‘who a service user is’, and implications for practice through the examination of student written work pre- and post- a module focussing on lived experience. A critical discursive psychology approach was followed, recognising the interplay between localised professional encounters and wider contexts of power relations. The findings show a shift in the ‘service user’ identities employed by the students mainly based on individualistic discourses and deserving/undeserving themes (substance misuse the result of vulnerability, rather than selfishness, domestic abuse narratives denoting resilience rather than victimhood). The effect to practice showed shifts between the reflective, expert, person-centred and critical/radical practitioner, mainly stressing the need for professional growth at an individual level, with less emphasis on addressing social inequality. The paper argues that predominantly individualistic discourses can perpetuate de-politicised or oppressive categorisations of ‘service users’ and calls for further critical engagement with the discursive micro-practises enacted and developed in the social work classroom, if we are to unveil and challenge narrow, or stigmatising categorisations early on.","PeriodicalId":47677,"journal":{"name":"Qualitative Social Work","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.7,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44982477","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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