Practice -based research and the development of a reflective organization.
Item
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Title
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Practice -based research and the development of a reflective organization.
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Identifier
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AAI9969716
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identifier
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9969716
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Creator
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Peake, Ken David.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Irwin Epstein
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Date
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2000
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Social Work | Health Sciences, Health Care Management
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Abstract
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This dissertation is a retrospective case study of a practice-based research (PBR) effort within the mental health component of an adolescent health center. The study employs a qualitative, retrospective analysis based primarily on participant observation. It provides an exemplar of PBR as a strategy for building reflective organizational processes---which, in this context, had the goals of building elemental decision-making capacity and enhancing effectiveness.;A group of social worker practitioners used a PBR method to develop an organizational intervention called "the risk project," implemented between 1996 and 1999. Indigenous clinical assessment instruments were developed to help better identify individual adolescent risk behaviors and assess client attitudes toward help, while simultaneously forming the basis for an aggregated information system. The risk project emerged out of a PBR support group composed of practitioners who used an informal and incremental approach to foster research in the agency.;The analysis utilizes Schon's (1983) concept of "reflective practice" to identify the central theoretical assumptions and "guiding metaphors" that were in play during the project's development. It examines where these conflicted with one another or with observed phenomena. Although the cold and impersonal metaphor for the risk project as "research" gradually evolved into one of an "engagement tool," the continued power of the research metaphor suggests that the organizational culture was threatened by clinical innovation. However, the study also indicates that informal, seemingly "idiosyncratic," practices---an element of autonomous practice---may be necessary in the engagement of adolescents, thus shedding new light on practitioner resistance to the standardization implied by evaluation and research methodology. This aspect of social work's practice-research divide has been neglected, both in the literature generally and by PBR advocates. The study also suggests that the literature's focus on the impact of published, peer-reviewed, experimental studies on practice has failed to consider the ways in which practitioners and managers might utilize less rigorous, but nonetheless research-derived methods. Instead, a lopsided view of practitioners as research-aversive has resulted. Alternatively, studies conducted "from the ground, up" as this one was, might be used to investigate the utilization of "research-like" approaches in management and direct practice.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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D.S.W.
