Using Knowledge about Knowledge Utilization

Social work practitioners have many resources for building practice knowledge. In this period of explosive growth in information and technology, the journal Social Work presents only one of a multitude of information resources available to practicing social workers. As the new editor-in-chief of Social Work, my primary interest is to increase the relevance and utility of the journal for social workers nationally and internationally. What We Know about the Development and Use of Knowledge in Social Work Increasing the relevance and utility of the journal requires asking what we know about the development and use of knowledge more generally in social work and other professions. Going back as far as the Flexner Report of 1915, the literature on professions indicates that knowledge relevant to practice is no just an important element in the development of a profession, it is central. The actual work that a profession accomplishes along with the knowledge it uses to do that work are a profession's defining characteristics. The work of a profession and the knowledge used to accomplish that work also are the basis by which professions differentiate themselves from one another and by which they legitimize their activities in the larger society and culture (Abbott, 1988). In the case of social work, we define ourselves as the profession concerned with individual well-being and the just distribution of resources (including social, psychological, political, and economic resources). Our knowledge base is the accumulate d theoretical and empirical work that we use to benefit our clients. Research and knowledge development in our field is a vast enterprise concerned with physical, mental, and economic health; individual, family, institutional, and community welfare; the interests of diverse groups in society; and thinking about problems, defining them, and identifying effective means for ameliorating them. In the 1970s UCLA social work professor Zeke Hasenfeld suggested that our knowledge base produced an "uncertain" technology. Even a brief review of the social work literature in 2002 reveals that research and scholarship in our field is increasingly producing a "certain" technology. Given the centrality of our knowledge base to the social work profession, it is necessary to understand where we find our knowledge, to identify its concrete expressions. Certainly Social Work represents one repository--I would hope a foremost repository--for social work knowledge. Indeed, all of the publications of NASW Press, the journals (Social Work, Health & Social Work, Social Work Research, and Children & Schools), the references such as the Encyclopedia of Social Work and the Social Work Almanac, as well as the expanding list of books, provide rich repositories of emerging knowledge in social work. The increasing numbers of journals and books published by academic and commercial presses also are sources for social work knowledge. Clearly, there are many repositories of social work knowledge, some well-established, and many still emerging. What if we ask social workers and other helping professionals what sources they rely on for relevant and useful practice knowledge? Based on studies that have taken this approach, we know that practitioners list the following trusted, valued sources of knowledge (in decreasing order of usefulness): consultations with colleagues and supervisors, workshops on practice issues, theoretical books and articles, and empirical books and articles (Cohen, Sargeant & Sechrest, 1986). A quick read of the debate on knowledge utilization in the social work literature suggests that social work scholars and researchers are surprised and discouraged that their preferred modes of knowledge dissemination-- articles and books--do not emerge as practitioners' preferred modes. In reality it is not surprising that practice colleagues who can address specific questions with targeted responses represent a highly trustworthy and efficient source of practice knowledge--that is, that knowledge based on relationships (relational knowled ge) represents a primary repository for the social work knowledge base. …