Self-reflective Ethnographies of Practice and their Relevance for Professional Socialisation in Social Work

Abstract

"The article tries to explicate and illustrate a type of qualitative practitioner \nresearch in the field of professional training and to shed light on its practical \nuses for the acquisition of analytical skills and the fostering of professional \ndiscourse. The discussion is based on the author’s work with \nsocial work students who are encouraged and supported to become “ethnographers \nof their own affairs”, especially in the context of their practice \nplacements, which are a mandatory part of their social work course. By \npresenting and discussing students’ ethnographic field notes and a sequence \nof a student’s oral narrative (along with their retrospective reflections) \nhe attempts to convey how such a style of researching one’s own \npractice can contribute to student apprentices’ personal acquisition of \nskills for the analysis of individual and collective cases. This type of work \ncould also become significant for collective concerns of the profession, \ne.g. with regard to generating a research based, self-critical and case \nspecific professional discourse on possible problematic tendencies of \nprofessional work and the discovery of alternatives of action, but also \nwith regard to the emergence of a self-confident and innovative type of \nresearch which is carried out by professional practitioners themselves." (author's abstract)

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