Transferable and Negotiated Knowledge: Constructing Social Work Expertise for the Future

In: Journal of social work: JSW, Volume 2, Issue 3, p. 317-336

Abstract

• Summary: This article explores the knowledge of community-based social workers in the context of an action research project aimed at exploring the practitioners' own descriptions of their knowledge and expertise on the theme of spatial marginalization. • Findings: The knowledge of social workers seemed to be based on service users' experiences and case examples, on value and moral constructions, and it was created from experience, by doing and in action. It was local and contextual, in some sense silent but shared through a discussion process. It was not based on empirically based scientific research understood in the traditional sense; rather, social workers resorted to practical knowledge in its various forms. • Applications: The sharing of individuals' social work knowledge, both 'knowing that' and 'knowing how', with other social workers and reflecting together on the knowledge and tradition that social workers carry serves to define, study and promote the transferability of common and shared knowledge.