Parting thoughts

Last week was a bit of a summary of the weekly learnings for me. So, as not to repeat myself, I decided to consider what we discussed in class this past week, our duties as instructors.  The comments I created in class included, "because my relationship with my students is like the Chimp and Owl, I have a duty to..."
listen, engage students, be prepared with active learning activities, be inquisitive, be respectful of their knowledge, encourage them to share their knowledge, share my teaching philosophy with them, model my teaching philosophy, be consistent even when it is difficult (actions need to be consistent with words) and learn from the students and be open to the co-construction of knowledge.

I noted in the margin that the duties or obligations we wrote are dependent on how we define our values and beliefs, not anyone else's definition. How I observe myself as an instructor, the paradigm or world view I subscribe to, is my compass. The compass we each use will lead us down the discovery path reflective of that world view, if we are engaging as instructors with honesty and integrity. I use to think how great it would be to teach like so and so and get the reaction from students as they might, but I have discovered through this process that once we are aware of our compass, the question of discovery is much easier, particularly when we maintain consistency between our values, beliefs and actions.

Thank-you to our instructors and our peers for the thoughtful and engaging weekly feedback. Inquiry based learning can be challenging and I can see that the journey for me was a nice self-discovery, in addition to getting closer to my original inquiry question. Engaging in this process from both a student and instructor perspective was really interesting and provided some helpful insights for me that I can use in the classroom.

Week 10 - Finding threads

Week 10 Blog

I am borrowing the format of this blog from my colleagues who reflected on their many previous blogs to find the threads between them.  So what did I discover?

Week one was an identification of the chimp (instructor) and the owl (student) and the curious and wise.  It was a look at identity and how I view myself as instructor and how I view students. I then considered my question, how the teacher/student relationship is challenged through inquiry based learning. This was a nice beginning to identify how this relationship is challenged in a variety of ways including;

1.       relational approach,

2.        sharing of power, openness to challenge and critique, co-construction of knowledge, teacher moves from expert to facilitator, learner assumes responsibility for establishing knowledge base

3.       knowledge created through transformation of experience – with context being critical

4.       Teacher demonstrates or expresses authenticity and empowerment through language

Week two focused on defining terms and being really clear about your definitions. Week 3 urged us to contextualize, to situate and to take ownership of our inferences. How do we get our students to accept that? How is context beneficial in understanding one’s own teaching? This point has me reflecting on students at various stages of their program. If students are exposed to active learning at the beginning of their program rather than the end of their program, how does that differing context shape their thinking and learning? For example, at the beginning of the program, they may have fewer instructors who use active learning techniques to compare to whereas closer to the end of the program may provide more opportunities to have experienced active and deep learning.

Week four explored pedagogical relationships and I was challenged to consider if this is possible with very large classes. Is it possible that connecting with all students in a large classroom would encourage large numbers of students to request your time outside of the classroom and could this lead to teacher burnout? Anna supported the notion that students are more connected to the material when they are connected to the instructor.

Week five, we were each given the gift and mine was articulating constructivism and positivism. This required two weeks and I found myself following up on this again for week six only this time, focusing solely on constructivism. I discovered there is an epistemological constructivist and a pedagogical constructivist. Additionally, I discovered that within the pedagogical arena, there are psychological or cognitive constructivist and the social constructivist.  Although the psychological constructivist is often thought of, I wondered how I might combine the two to ensure a focus on how power is connected to political, economic and social factors.

Week seven was when I discovered that my behaviors/actions were consistent with my thoughts/beliefs, when I wrote, “mixing my thoughts with your thoughts gives me some interesting directions”.  I was demonstrating the value I was espousing, co-construction of knowledge. I was beginning to articulate the broader issues of power relations in the classroom, beyond that of teacher and student. I was connecting social work goals and values to social work pedagogy (disorienting dilemma, perspective transformation and constructivist theory).

Week eight brought me a little deeper considering how reflexive-therapeutic (constructivist) view of social work connects to transformational learning.  Additionally, I was starting to articulate more clearly how power is inherent in relationships and that relationships are key in social work, therefore, it is necessary to pay attention to power relations. I was declaring that social relations can lead to social justice and noting the contradictions between social work values and social work action and the implications for social work education.

Week nine revealed my hidden curriculum and epistemological conflict related to drawing student’s attention to power relations.  I discovered in Schon’s work that it allows instructors to consider ethical implications of our teaching from planning through implementation.

In all of this, I discovered through reflection on action, that my words were demonstrated in action. The weekly blogs allowed me to reflect on my identity, epistemology and ethics as an instructor and my peers and instructors feedback allowed me to engage in co-construction of knowledge and meaning making, two characteristics of constructivism. My pedagogical approach became clearer to me as a result. The culmination of the week’s blogs led me to consider transformational learning and Schon’s work in reflection that provides a space for instructors to consider through reflection the ethical implications of our teaching. Additionally, my hidden curriculum became clear to me. How to help students conceptualize power relations through experiential learning? Could this be an answer to my original question?  How does inquiry based learning challenge relationships in social work education?

Week 9 Blog - Reflection in, on and through action

I’d like to begin this week’s post  by sharing that when I sat down to think about what I would write about this week, I first read over my notes from last week’s class and then I thought about an experience I had in teaching this weekend, what I interpret Schon to mean by “reflection on action” (Wieringa, 2011). I tentatively began jotting down notes about what might have been my hidden curriculum and what examples of epistemological conflicts between the teacher and student that stood out for me. Sitting on my table was an article that I had been meaning to read that caught my eye and I found myself putting together the information from the article with my weekend experience for this week’s writing because for me, the message in the article reflected my experience and process.

I will provide a quick context to my experience. I was teaching in an off campus program that consists of three weekends of classes, with weekends in between. This was the first weekend. The classes are Friday afternoon/evening for 5 ½ hours and Saturday for 7 ½ hours. The students are all working professionals, returning for the master’s degree, which they complete over a sixteen month period, in cycles of six week courses.

In my post last week I ended wondering about the ethical implications of accepting sources that fit with my own values and beliefs. I am interpreting the idea of hidden curriculum to be similar. How do our values and beliefs influence our behavior in terms of supporting our arguments and how is that reflected implicitly in our curriculum; our hidden curriculum?  The epistemological conflict I want to address within this weekend’s class is not addressed in the syllabus explicitly. I use an active learning activity to illuminate this conflict between the instructor and the students. The activity has many purposes and I will use it here to demonstrate my understanding of the epistemological conflict, related to power. The instructor viewed the students as professionals with ‘power over’ service users. The students viewed themselves as professionals who are powerless within the professional/service user relationship. The active learning activity was set up to allow them to experience this conflict.

Included in my lesson plan on Saturday, day two of this weekend’s course, was a structured controversy exercise.  You may recall, I am exploring, as my overall inquiry quest, how inquiry based teaching fits in social work education, so I decided to use an inquiry related activity. First we watched a twelve minute video, A Call To Action, to be used as a springboard to the activity. The video is an example of a homeless coalition who decided to take action in Toronto a few years ago, following the death of three men outside of an abandoned building. The coalition wanted to take back the building and through a demonstration that received the attention of the local MP, they were promised within a month to have the issue of homelessness, through the use of this building, resolved, or the MP would resign. When, three months later, this had not happened, the coalition used a more aggressive strategy and stormed a press conference held by this same politician and demanded his resignation. The structured controversy then begins with half of the class representing the community leaders (politicians, business people) and the other half representing the homeless. Following the structured controversy exercise, the students quickly become engaged in their roles. It is a very emotional exercise that requires reminders of the need to be respectful to one another.

The end of the exercise is time for reflection on the experience. The students representing the homeless were outraged at their perception of how their arguments were received by the other group. They reported feeling dismissed, devalued, disempowered. They talked about how difficult it was for them to reflect back to the other team (part of the requirement of the exercise) the position of the community leaders without adding their emotional reactions. Both groups identified the community leaders having the easier position because both groups identified the community leaders as the people with all the power. The community leaders group identified that it was easy for them to be dismissive and they saw themselves using political strategies of evasiveness and broad strokes instead of committing to a real resolution. After these thoughts and feelings were aired I asked the homeless group to consider themselves now in the role of professional social worker, as the one with power or at a minimum, the ones perceived with power, in their daily work, and the service users they work with as the ones feeling powerless. 

The purpose of this epistemological conflict is to draw awareness. The students initially struggled with this notion of being power holders and I could see that they had not considered this, nor did they want to. As most social workers, they believe they are in the field to be helpful and this idea that people would feel powerless in relation to them, was a challenging shift in thinking and beliefs. The exercise allowed opportunity for discussions of the implications for them in their daily work.

I think this experience for me also reflects what I was reading in the article. Schon’s work refers to knowing in action, reflection in action and reflection on action. The knowing in action and reflection in action are both part of the lesson planning, addressing the hidden agenda through an active learning activity. Reflection in action also occurred for me during the activity itself, providing me an opportunity to facilitate the student’s reflection of the power relations. Reflection on action is illustrated through my experience writing this blog. Wieringa (2011) talks about how knowing on action and reflection in action can help us as instructors to respond to student’s unexpected behavior and then reflection on action allows the instructor to look back on the situation to gain insight for future instructional opportunities. I think Schon’s work allows us as instructors to consider the ethical implications of our teaching from planning through implementation.

I think this exercise helps students to understand how they have power and re-examine power relations. I’m thinking this is related to Jules comment from last week about students needing to come to the table. I also think Schon’s work allows us to be reflective on our own process of thinking, tying into Anna’s comments from last week. For me, addressing power relations through an active learning experience is one example of tying ethics to social justice. It is a hidden curriculum and it creates an epistemological conflict between the teacher and student, for both to reflect upon.

Wieringa, N. (2011). Teachers’ educational design as a process of reflection-in-action: The lessons we can learn from Donald Schon’s The Reflective Practitioner when studying the professional practice of teachers as educational designers. Curriculum Inquiry, 41(1), 167- 174.

Week 8

Week 8 Blog

My colleagues once again provided insight to my further investigations.  Thank-you all for that!  I appreciate that Brenda and Anna made a connection with the transformational piece, what I will refer to as my reflexive-therapeutic (Payne, 2005) view of social work. Jules on the other hand said WHAT??? I don’t get your claim and I don’t see how you are connecting it with Narayan’s article.  That is a pretty clear statement to me that I need to work on it if I want it to be clear to all… and yes, I do want to be clear to all. I value your input and look forward to your thoughts about this week’s post.

Here’s what I was trying to say. My claim is that relationship is key in social work. I was complicating it a little last week by adding the part about power. I was attempting to show how power is inherent in relationships and that if relationships are key in social work, than it is necessary to pay attention to power or power relations. I was using Narayan’s article to show examples of how when we pay attention to power in relationships, we can achieve social work goals of a just society. This fits into social work education because if power is inherent in relationships, then that includes the classroom and all aspects of social work education, teacher/student, student/service user, research/teaching, university/community. At the same time, I was looking for linkages between your thoughts and mine, where identity and epistemology fit and well… it came out disjointed.

In hindsight, I will say that not only was I not explicit enough in the explanation of what I was trying to demonstrate or argue but that my evaluation of the claim requires work.  So, I went back to the Narayan article to see if I could do a better job at demonstrating how the article supports the claim and realized immediately the contradictions. There is some consistency between what Narayan says with what we know and that support my claim. There are also inaccuracies, assumptions and the question of relevance.

Consistency – Is there consistency between the claim and what we know? – Is relationship key in social work? Well, this article does not directly answer this question (relevance) so this is where I stray because I added the power piece. I look at the relationship between Freire, Ghandi and social work values. And yes, there is consistency in some ways, for example, under people-centered, values such as humanism and injustice (social justice) are core values for all three. Faith in people, despite oppression is also consistent between all three with the notion that people have the “potential to create their own lives” (p. 194). Some of the inconsistencies begin to show here when you consider Freire, Ghandi and social work practice from an epistemological and in some ways a methodological perspective. 

Freire and Ghandi both present views that fall in some ways within a constructivist paradigm (reflexive-therapeutic) and in some ways fall within the critical theories paradigm (socialist-collectivist). And although the methods may appear to be more peaceful and transformative, reflecting self-development (reflexive-therapeutic), the major focus for Freire and Ghandi is societal change (socialist-collectivist) or critical theories paradigm. Social work, on the other hand, has primarily focused on individualist-reformist and somewhat on reflexive-therapeutic and far less so on socialist-collectivist – social justice through social action.

For me this raises the question of as a profession, are our values consistent with our actions? What is the relationship between these two things? Can we say we believe in social justice and then focus on fixing the individual, through individual counselling that sees people from a deficit position, needing to be cured by us, the professional? How many of our social work practice theories that we rely on in our daily work fall within this positivist paradigm (psychodynamic, task-centered, crisis intervention, CBT, systems)?  

I think there is a fair bit of consistency between the value of non-violence and Freire, Ghandi and social work so I am going to skip to the last value identified by Narayan, social responsibility. In some ways, there is consistency in belief between the three with social responsibility in that it is viewed as having the ability to demonstrate power in relationships. For example, in social work education, social responsibility can lead to teaching through social action – demonstration projects, academic activism and expressing solidarity with marginalized groups. Additionally, people from marginalized groups can gain access to education through scholarship (in all disciplines). Freire refers to phrases such as praxis and conscientization, resulting in the power of the people to make and remake themselves, their situation and their reality. There is a relationship between social responsibility and a just society, hence I say, relationship is key in social work.

Inaccuracies and assumptions – Through my justification of my claim, I make further statements that are not necessarily justified, could be assumptions and may be inaccurate. When I say, for example, that the majority of social work practice theories fall within a particular social work view, individualist -reformist , reflexive-therapeutic, socialist-collectivist (Payne, 2005), I am relying on one author’s way of thinking or organizing practice theories, Malcolm Payne.  This could be completely inaccurate from another author’s view. Truthfully, I have no good justification for believing Payne except that it resonated with my own values and beliefs, so I accepted it to be a reasonable source to quote and use. The assumption here is that Payne’s work is valid and reliable, when I do not know that for sure. Another assumption here is that organizing practice theories into particular categories that I then translated into paradigms, is accurate or acceptable or the ways other people will accept them. I could be really wrong.  If on the other hand, I do not accept work that fits with my own values and beliefs, what does that say about my own thinking? Is it justified?

Relevance – As noted above, this article in some ways does not answer my claim directly, relationships are key in social work, but I have stretched it to make some linkages and connections. They fit for me. The question is, do they fit for the reader?

Michael and Pierre added to my claim, “the standard of methodology will help us determine whether or not we know that relationships are key in the profession of social work”. This is tricky. How would we know? Is it possible to objectively observe, using the scientific method, to determine that relationships are key (quantitative) or do we have focus groups and individual interviews  (qualitative) to hear people’s views about whether or not relationships are key. Do we choose a mixed methods design and triangulate the data to convince ourselves of the study’s rigor? Have there been studies on the various kinds of relationships, beyond teacher/student, SW/service user? Such as, the relationship between social responsibility and a just society? Do we have any ‘evidence’ of a just society with which to compare? And if there were studies, would we be able to transfer that knowledge over society as a whole or only to a particular population? Making this claim becomes more complicated as it is explored and I may have to settle with what fits for my values. This of course leads into our next section, ethics. What are the ethical implications of what I just said?

Not just, "Because I said so" - Evaluating claims

This is fun!  I am really enjoying the comments from my colleagues.  The best part of this course for me is the varied perspectives. I find myself saying “Um” and “huh” and “ah” a lot while I am reading the comments because your comments give me a snippet into your thinking AND how you are receiving my information (blog). This is important for me because it helps me to be much clearer that the message I am trying to put across is received so differently by each of you. I need to ask myself when I am communicating, am I doing so in a way that illustrates my point in the manner that I am intending. I also wonder if it really matters if I am doing this or is it more interesting to be challenged in my thinking about a particular point; maybe a little of both.  I’ll work on being as explicit as I can and then look forward to how it was received and consider the implications of that because for sure, mixing my thoughts with your thoughts provides me with some interesting directions. Reflecting on this co-construction helps me to consider the implications for the classroom engagement with students.

I am going to assess a claim made by Narayan (2000) regarding similar goals between social work, Freire and Ghandi. To do this, I will start with an introduction to a process that I think helps to connect these ideas and support the claim put forward by Narayan.  This week’s blog is on the longer side. Justifying our positions and thoughts takes time.

Perspective Transformation – what Mezirow identifies as Habermas’s theory of knowledge as it relates to the third area in which humans generate knowledge, the emancipatory area or emancipatory action. This is referred to by Mezirow (1981) as the least well known and he equates it with perspective transformation. Elements of perspective transformation include, (1) a disorienting dilemma;  (2) self examination;  (3) a critical assessment of personally internalised role assumptions and a sense of alienation from traditional social expectations;  (4) relating one’s discontent to similar experiences of other sorts to public issues - recognising that one’s problem is shared and not exclusively a private matter;  (5) exploring options for new ways of acting;  (6) building competence and self-confidence in new roles;  (7) planning a course of action;  (8) acquiring knowledge and skills for implementing one’s plans;  (9) provisional efforts to try new roles and to assess feedback;  and (10) a reintegration into society on the basis of conditions dictated by the new perspective.

Of these many elements, I would like to focus on the disorienting dilemma as it speaks to how a perspective transformation occurs, meaning, how our values, beliefs and assumptions are challenged and reconceptualised to lead us to a perspective transformation.  

Perspective transformation is the emancipatory process of becoming critically aware of how and why the structure of psycho-cultural assumptions has come to constrain the way we see ourselves and our relationships, reconstituting this structure to permit a more inclusive and discriminating integration of experience and acting upon these new understandings.  It is the learning process by which adults come to recognise their culturally induced dependency roles and relationships and the reasons for them and take action to overcome them (Mezirow, 1981).

This process of transformation includes a disorienting dilemma, the process people experience while they struggle with former and new understandings. This dilemma can occur as sudden insight or occur over time in smaller increments, allowing people time to adapt their assumptions and depending on the severity of the challenge to our assumptions, the process may appear more like two steps forward and one backward (Mezirow, 1981). For me, this fits really well with a constructivist paradigm because it is about how we make meaning of our world. This is important in adult education because as instructors, we need to be aware of the learning process the students may be experiencing and how challenging that experience can be for them.  Just as we have struggle in our understandings at times in the classroom on Monday nights as we discuss our values and beliefs, so too do the students in our classrooms as we provide opportunities for them to challenge their values, beliefs and assumptions. “Perspective transformation involves not only becoming critically aware of habits of perception, thought and action but of the cultural assumptions governing the rules, roles, conventions and social expectations which dictate the way we see, think, fee and act” (Mezirow, 1981). This last idea transitions nicely into why this is important for social work education, as social justice is a primary social work value.

The question of power relations in social work education is identified in the literature through the following authors. Each one of these sources could be critiqued/evaluated for their claims.  I will evaluate the claims of one for this week’s blog, people-centered values, non-violence and social responsibility by Narayan (2000).

•          Academic professionalism – reconceptualizing the relationship (Brew, 2003))

•          Use of collaborative, dialogical and student-centered approaches to teaching and learning (Fougner, 2012)

•          Authenticity and intentional self-disclosure (Mangione et al., 2011)

•          People-centered values, non-violence and social responsibility (Narayan, 2000)

•          Critical questioning (Hudspith & Jenkins, 2007)

•          Development of a more equal teacher/student interaction (Narayan, 2000)

•          Use of peers as co-constructors of knowledge (Fougner, 2012)

•          Empowerment-based teaching and learning demand exploration of personal identity in relation to oppression and domination (Zapf, Jerome, & Williams, 2011)

•          Use of cooperation, self-reflection and interaction to reduce power disparity (Tsien, 2007)

•          Blended learning (Cooner, 2011)

I have chosen to evaluate the Narayan (2000) source because it is an article identifying the relevance for social work education of the views put forward by Freire and Gandhi. The third area identified as similar to social work goals include social responsibilities; a look at equitable distribution of power and resources. For social work education this look at power could include how schools of social work involve themselves in macro-level issues, how they support marginalized groups and how social work education can be made available to economically disadvantaged people. Jules wondered if my look at power was related to the relationship between the instructor and student and yes, that is part of it, but it leads to broader issues of power. How do we get to those broader issues includes how instructors negotiate power relations with students in the learning environment.

Both Freire and Gandhi believed in education leading to action. Social work practice has professional obligation to be politically active. Additionally, social work education is organized within the formal education system and is successful to the extent that these ideas support the dominant ideologies in society. Freire advocated student-centered not teacher-centered education including dialogue between instructor and student leading to liberation not domination. I see this as connecting to Mezirow’s perspective transformation. How students experience their perspective transformation and disorienting dilemma or not may determine how they see their role as a professional social worker. I think this links to Anna’s comments as well in terms of the social and political constraints. In what ways were student beliefs challenged and to what extent did a transformation occur may determine their view of their role, for example, do they see a calling in macro practice through a critical theory perspective with a focus on policy change? Your question of leadership training Anna is a good one. There once was a course called Organizational Leadership that appears to have been incorporated into a Macro level course helping students to connect their roles as leaders beyond organizations and towards the broader level injustices.

For me, this article was very relevant to my area of exploration. It helped me to connect social work goals and values to social work pedagogy, disorienting dilemma, perspective transformation and constructivist theory. Are there assumptions in the claim that social responsibilities a common goal between Freire, Ghandi and social work. I think there are many and for a final time, I will connect it with the extent to which students are able to achieve a perspective transformation.whatsocial and political constrains social workers have to deal with on a daily basis. Do we have any data on the variation in how these constrains are challenged or dealt with by social worker who have been References

Brew, A. (2003). Teaching and research: New relationships and their implications for inquiry-based teaching and learning in higher education.

Fougner, A. (2012). Exploring knowledge through peer tutoring in a transitional learning community: An alternative way of teaching counseling skills to students in social work education.

Mangione, L., Mears, G., Vincent, W., & Hawes, S. (2011). The supervisory relationship when women supervise women: An exploratory study of power, reflexivity, collaboration and authenticity.

Mezirow, J. (1981). A Critical Theory Of Adult Learning And Education.

Narayan, L. (2000). Freire & Gandhi. Their relevance for social work education.

Hudspith, B., & Jenkins, H. (2007). Teaching the Art of Inquiry.

 Zapf, M., Jerome, L., & Williams, M. (2011). Team teaching in social work: Sharing power with bachelor of social work students.

 Tsien, T (2007). A participative learning and teaching model: The partnership of students and teachers in practice teaching.

 Cooner, T. (2011). Learning to create enquiry-based blended learning designs: Resources to develop interdisciplinary education.

What we believe is personal

Week 6 Blog – What we believe is personal
I received a number of helpful comments to last week’s blog so I would like to begin this week considering some of that and I believe it will nicely bring me to some thoughts on inquiry based teaching in social work education. To begin, I took a look at constructivism as epistemology. Below is a taken from the Wikipedia website. Next is constructivism as pedagogy. Finally, I will tie in inquiry based teaching strategies in social work from a constructivist pedagogical approach and consider how power fits in.
“Constructivist epistemology is an epistemological perspective in philosophy about the nature of scientific knowledge.^[1] Constructivists maintain that scientific knowledge is constructed by scientists and not discovered from the world. Constructivists argue that the concepts of science are mental constructs proposed in order to explain sensory experience. Another important tenet of Constructivist theory is that there is no single valid methodology in science, but rather a diversity of useful methods.^[2] Constructivism holds the view, that the only reality we can know is that which is represented by human thought. Reality is independent of human thought, but meaning or knowledge is always a human construction”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivist_epistemology

Constructivist as pedagogy is considered relatively new within the last couple of decades of academic research, although constructivism as a learning theory has been in discussion much longer (Richardson, 2003). Constructivism as a learning theory is perceived as meaning making whereby students “create new understandings on the basis of an interaction between what they already know and believe and ideas and knowledge with which they come into contact” (Richardon, 2003, p.1624). Richardson (2003) identifies two ways of understanding constructivism; social constructivism (also referred to as social constructionism) and psychological constructivism. My understanding is that social constructionism and social constructivism are different but this author identifies them the same.

Richarson (2003) contends that psychological constructivism is typically what one thinks of when considering constructivist pedagogy. Within this way of thinking, formal knowledge comes from meaning making within social groups where members participate in the creation of meanings, which are shared meanings.  Social constructivism centers on the ways in which power, economy, political and social factors affect the ways in which meaning is made.  For this reason, psychological constructivism is considered more appropriate and frequently used, in the classroom (according to Richardson). This for me raised the question of what is the classroom in social work education, but that may be too distracting for today, so I will leave that for now and simply say there may be room for both social and psychological constructivism within social work education.

Richardson (2003) identifies characteristics of constructivist pedagogy including;

1.       Student centered

2.       Facilitation of group dialogue for the purpose of creating a shared understanding

3.       Formal domain knowledge presented through direct instruction, for example, website

4.       Tasks allow students to add, change or challenge beliefs

5.       Students meta-awareness of their understandings and learning processes

In searching the literature for articles related to social work education, inquiry based learning and constructivism, I found four articles that consider how constructivist pedagogy is or can be used within social work education. First, from a constructivist or interpretive view, knowledge is constructed through active and deep learning (Brew, 2003; Healey, 2005). Next social work assumes students bring knowledge and take on a participatory role within the classroom (Healey, 2005). Then there was a focus on the development of critical thinking and reflexivity skills (Mangione, Mears, Vincent, & Hawes, 2011; Hughes, 2011). Finally, there are research based and problem based approaches to learning (Healey, 2005).

I would argue that social constructivism as pedagogy is also used in social work education through inquiry based learning. Searching the literature using power as a keyword along with social work education and inquiry based learning provided a number of additional considerations for constructivist pedagogy. If I consider a previous statement taken from Richardson above, “social constructivism centers on the ways in which power, economy, political and social factors affect the ways in which meaning is made”, a look at constructivist pedagogy through inquiry based learning in social work education using a power lens may be appropriate in the classroom.  Social work is concerned with social justice and one could argue social justice is linked to the economy, political and social factors and power. Next week, I will look at how this power lens interacts with constructivist pedagogy.

Brew, A. (2003). Teaching and research: New relationships and their implications for inquiry-based teaching and learning in higher education.

Healey, M. (2005). Linking research and teaching: exploring disciplinary spaces and the role of inquiry-based learning.

Hughes, M. (2011). Do challenges to students’ beliefs, values and behavior within social work education have an impact on their sense of well-being?

Mangione, L., Mears, G., Vincent, W., & Hawes, S. (2011). The supervisory relationship when women supervise women: An exploratory study of power, reflexivity, collaboration and authenticity.

Richardson, V. (2003). Constructivist Pedagogy.

This I believe - A look at Epistemology

Week 5 Blog

My “gift” this week was to “articulate the meaning of ‘constructivism’ and ‘positivism’ and their implications for you as a teacher of social work”. I interpreted (as a constructivist J) this to mean, show how these words resonate for you, as oppose to defining them.

Constructivism, also referred to as interpretivism, is often depicted opposite positivism, also known as logical positivism. According to Guba and Lincoln, there are four major research paradigms, including positivism, post-positivism, critical theory and constructivism (Denzin & Lincoln, 1994). Table 1 identifies and compares these four research paradigms according to ontology, epistemology and methodology. It is believed that the research paradigm determines the research methodology and the paradigm is determined by the epistemological views of the researcher.

Table 1

Four Major Paradigms Guba & Lincoln
	Positivism	Post-positivism	Critical Theory	Constructivism
Ontology	Naïve realism – “real” reality but apprehendable	Critical realism – “real” reality but only imperfectly and probabilistically apprehendable	Historical realism- virtual reality shaped by  social, political, cultural, economic, ethnic, and gender values; crystalized over time	Relativism-local and specific constructed realities
Epistemology	Dualist/objectivist; findings true	Modified dualist/objectivist, critical tradition/community, findings probably true	Transactional/ subjectivist; value-mediated findings	Transactional/subjectivist; created findings
Methodology	Experimental/manipulative; verification of hypotheses; chiefly quantitative methods	Modified experimental/manipulative; critical multiplism; falsification of hypotheses, may include qualitative methods	Dialogic/dialectical	Hermeneutical/dialectical

The epistemological or world view of constructivism includes subjectivity, where knowledge is created through interaction between the researcher and research participant, an inductive method.  A positivist view includes a belief of one truth, achieved through researcher observation and objectivity, a deductive method. Mary Richmond (1917) identified that social diagnosis was the consequence of the scientific method, suggesting that the positivist paradigm includes a belief of the objective researcher as expert.

Reamer (1993) identifies methods typically utilized within the paradigms, quantitative (positivist) and qualitative (constructivist). These are compared in table 2.

Table 2

	Positivist – Quantitative	Constructivist - Qualitative
The nature of reality	One truth	Multiple ways of knowing
The relationship between observer and observed	Researcher as objective expert	Researcher and participant interact and influence one another
The limits of generalizability	Knowledge can be generalized to similar populations	Knowledge cannot be generalized beyond the individual participant
The limits of causal connections	Linear, causal relationships	Linear causal relationships non-existent
The relevance of values	Non-existent	Values are central to research

The flaw in logical positivism lies in the belief that there is an objective reality, without an acknowledgement that the researcher brings with them to every situation, their values, beliefs and experiences that influence their perception of what they observe. Within the constructivist paradigm, the focus is on perceptions and interpretations, “meaning making from narrative structures” (Payne, 2005, p.175). The stories we create are formed by the collective narrative of our cultures and our communities. Within this paradigm, the researcher seeks to open up possibilities that people are often excluded by their stories, building on the positive in people’s lives. Ideas from social construction are used such as what we do with language to create the shared pictures that we build through our interactions with each other in social and historical contexts.

So, how does this all relate to my inquiry question? What potential methods can be used to teach inquiry in social work education? Teaching methods consistent with the co-construction of knowledge will be required, where reality is created through the interactions between instructor and student. These methods will rely on multiple sources so that the shared pictures that have been created can be explored and challenged within their contexts to allow for change.

Considering my colleagues helpful comments, Ahmed challenged me to consider an alternative to the deductive approach to consider Mulder’s position that there are relationships between variables as this might lead to an approach more consistent with my question. Anna shared my thoughts about increased learning when there is a greater connection between instructor and students. She spoke of values and language and wondered about the connection between these two, for example, is it only the language around the values that change, or the values themselves? Jules wondered about the context and could the connection with students be maintained in large classrooms?  These are all great questions to consider and appear to be fitting nicely with the direction I am taking; an inductive approach. I particularly love the values and language piece because I think this too ties in well regardless of the class size. People connect with one another on a variety of levels and the constructivist paradigm provides opportunity to create through interactions. How we teach includes the values we project and the language we use to do so.Next week I will explore more specific teaching methods and approaches within this paradigm.

Denzin, N. & Lincoln, Y. (1994). Handbook of Qualitative Research. Sage Publications. USA.

Payne, M. (2005). Modern Social Work Theory. 3^rd. Ed. Palgrave, Macmillan. New York.

Reamer, F. (1993). The Philosophical Foundations of Social Work. Columbia University Press. New York.

Richmond, M. (1917). Social Diagnosis.