Topics and epistemological positions in Swedish social work research

Abstract

At the end of the 1970s in Sweden, social work was established as an academic discipline with research, professorships and PhD programmes. This article is based on a number of studies on the production of academic knowledge with special attention given to implications for the relations between education, research and social work practice. The following empirical data is analysed: (1) the first 89 PhD dissertations in social work between 1980 and 1998; (2) more than 500 theses written by students at Bachelor's and Master's level 1977–97; (3) two examples of comprehensive theory for social work practice; (4) curriculum and courses in PhD programmes; and (5) literature on research methods within BSW programmes. Our aim is to describe profiles of topics, research methods, use of theory, and to discuss important factors behind these patterns and some crucial aspects of the development of the discipline. Both PhD dissertations and undergraduate theses are heterogeneous and include a wide range of different types of social problems and interventions. Regarding methodological positions, qualitative methods dominate. To explain the predominance of qualitative methods a number of hypotheses involving both cognitive and social components are presented. On the whole the PhD dissertations give the impression of a discipline with a great deal of knowledge import, theoretical pluralism and a high level of paradigmatic openness. A metaphor describes the direction of social work science as an initial rural landscape of knowledge with a certain degree of urbanisation. The result may be an exclusion of certain areas and a troublesome narrowing of social work.

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