Inter-Personal and Critical-Thinking Capabilities in Those about to Enter Qualified Social Work: A Six-Centre Study

Abstract

The 'Process' of intervention is understood to be fundamental to social workevident in, for example, the literature on reflexivity. Little work though has focused on the detailed excavation of the cognitive processes of reasoning in decision making. This is widely recognized as requiring considerable analytic and critical abilities. Although this is long-established, its importance is contemporarily apparent at policy level from the rationale underlying current initiatives such as Frontline. However, it is also long understood the reasoning capabilities underlying these processes cannot, be considered in isolation from the interpersonal-emotional, encapsulated in a longterm theoretical concern for both Heart and Head. Furthermore terms like 'capability' or 'proficiency' in professional qualification imply some standard to be reached in practice. This invites measurement. This novel study seeks to bring together three dimensions of the (1) measurement of (2) the interpersonal-emotional and (3) critical thinking-measurement of key facets of both Head and Heart. A six-centre, six-University collaboration it focuses on those at a crucial point: where individuals are about to enter qualified practice. The findings show they score highly on most interpersonal measures (with room for improvement), but show huge variability in Critical Thinking Capabilities. The implications of this are discussed Interpersonal and Critical Thinking Capabilities in those about to enter qualified social work: a six-centre study How social workers think-the cognitive processes of decision making-is an issue at least as important as what they should know. The latter is the subject of the much more prominent focus on Evidence Based/Informed Practice (Scurlock-Evans and Upton, 2015). How practitioners make sense though is an issue of meaning, but that 'making of meaning' is also a cognitive-reasoning process (thinking about something logically): What are the key facets of reasoning involved? What are the mental processes (rather than, say situational characteristics) by which they decide a course of action? How can they ensure the maximum rigour when conducting practice? How can error be minimized? and so on. These are all-from a cognitive perspectiveissues of reasoning rather than knowledge. This focus on reasoning processes is at the heart of judgement and decision making. However, compared with, say medicine (Patel et al, 2005), there has been little focus on these reasoning processes in social work research. This does not mean that process as a whole has not been of interest in social workreflexivity, with its myriad meanings, multiple theoretical positions and, at times combination of situational factors with process in part does (D'Cruz et al, 2007). But the contribution specifically-of process reasoning has been little examined. Where it has, this has primarily been through theoretical considerations or critical analysis rather than research-based (Munro, 1999; Taylor and White, 2006) Equally, the issue of measurement is at the heart of...

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