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Chapter 2. Evaluating Social Work Theory
Evaluation of social work theories focuses on how we make theory useful in practice. Social workers
should be able to evaluate the range and usefulness of practice theories available to social work in order to
choose among them.
Generalizing through theory helps us to be consistent and well organized in what we are doing; align our
work with the best-informed guidance; and explain what we are doing to others. As a result, being able to
evaluate social work theory is an integral part of successful practice.
Terminology
Psychodynamic theories emphasize the importance of people’s internal feelings and conflicts in generating
behavior and in resolving the problems that they face.
Crisis and task-centered theories focuses on brief, highly structured models of intervention with clearly
definable problems that will respond to active efforts to resolve them.
Cognitive behavioral theories emphasize the importance of rational management of behavior in
understanding the source of people’s problems and managing it.
Systems/ecological theories integrate interpersonal work with individuals with interventions with families,
communities, and social agencies.
Macro practice/social development/social pedagogy theories give priority to the social and education,
engaging people with shared interests and concerns to work jointly to overcome them.
Strengths/solution/narrative theories recast clients’ and families’ apparent problems, seeking strengths
that enable them to build positively for the future.
Humanistic/existential/spiritual theories emphasize personal development through shared experience as
a source of individual and group empowerment.
Empowerment/advocacy theories create experience and alliances that empower people to achieve a
greater understanding of their lives and the changes in them.
Critical theories offer critiques to the present social order that analyze and deal with social factors that
underlie problems or social barriers.
Feminist theories explain and respond to the oppressed position of women in most societies through
collaborative dialogue and group work to achieve consciousness of issues affecting women’s social
relations.
Anti-discriminatory/multicultural sensitivity theories develop an understanding of cultural and ethnic
barriers, conflicts and difference, and practice that respects people’s individual and social identities.
Key Ideas
Eleven groups of theories constitute the current body of practice theory.
A very wide range of practice theories is available to practitioners. Until the 1970s, most theoretical debate
in social work focused on psychodynamic theory. After that time, other theoretical approaches emerged
and differentiated into a number of positions that have remained stable for several decades. This book
reflects an apparent consensus among reviewers in recent years that there appear to be eleven groups of
theories. By using this taxonomy, you can move from a potentially confusing heap of dozens and dozens of
theories into smaller groups that are hopefully much more manageable. Please note that these groupings
should not be taken as separate and isolated from other groups; theories in different groups interact with
each other. However, just because theories are in the same group should not be taken as indicating that
the theories within the group are interchangeable or equivalent.
One conclusion from reviewing the theories is that some occur more than others.
The first conclusion from reviewing these theories is that certain theories occur more than others in
reviews. One observation of interest is that three theories appear in every broad-based review of theories
and many of the more selective reviews. These theories are the psychodynamic, cognitive (or cognitivebehavioral), and systems (or systems and ecological) theories. These three theories appear based on
multiple independent reviews from a wide range of sources to form the basic foundation of social work
theory. As a result, understanding these three theories offer practitioners a solid grounding in the most
widely used theories in social work today. A second group of theories is included in approximately 75% of
broad reviews; these are task-centered and crisis, solution and related, humanistic, and person-centered
and empowerment theories. Task-centered and crisis theories are also well covered in selective reviews.
Understanding this second group in addition to the first would provide a practitioner with a good
awareness of the most widely discussed theories in the practice literature and those theories most likely to
be used in their agency.
Second, there is no universally accepted method of grouping ideas together.
While some theories are covered in all or most reviews, reviews group theories into ten to twelve groups or
more; some reviews identify as many as thirty-five. The most common groups are psychodynamic,
strengths and humanistic and to a lesser degree systems, cognitive and behavioral groups.
Third, there are many occasional inclusions for a variety of reasons.
These occasional inclusions of a type theory often reflect a particular theoretical perspective that is gaining
attention, such as mindfulness, or editorial judgment. Mindfulness is a new formulation of ancient ideas
and presently used in a variety of settings. While not a major concern, the practitioner should be aware of
the idiosyncratic nature of some reviews.
Fourth, selective surveys often provide useful groupings for individual practitioners.
Once you have a broad overview of what is available, it may help you to concentrate on what people have
found in a particular context. For example, there are selective reviews that cover theories in particular
countries, particular client groups, or focuses on an area such as ecological systems theory. These selective
reviews are of course much more limited than the comprehensive ones, but selective reviews provide a
unique tool to examine theories and may serve you quite well in identifying theories of relevance for your
needs.
Finally, differences between regions of the world significantly influence groupings of
theories.
As would be expected, groupings of theories vary depending on the part of the world you examine. For
example, social change theories do not usually appear in books from North American sources except for
feminism and empowerment. Much of the coverage emphasizes psychological, individual problem-solving
theories, often differentiating among many different sub-theories rather than empowerment or social
change theories. Clearly, there is disagreement over the usefulness of theories in particular national or
service contexts. Again, as with selective reviews, be thoughtful in considering the context of the source
your utilize for identifying groupings of theories.
There are two main approaches to identifying theory, one is selectivity.
The two approaches are selection and eclecticism. To use theory selectively, a practitioner can select one
group of theories to begin with. Then, within that group, the practitioner can select a theory particularly
relevant to a client or client group or practice or agency. An important criterion, of course, is evidence
from research and scholarship about the relationship between theories and outcomes. Selectivity is
common in specialized agencies. The advantage of using one main theory is that providers from different
professions can more easily work together. This is especially useful in situations where there is a high
degree of emphasis on close coordination such as crisis intervention in mental health settings.
A second main approach to identifying theory is eclecticism.
Eclecticism means taking ideas from several theories and combining them to produce a ‘style’ of work of
work that suits the agency and the capabilities and preferences of individual practitioners. Research and
debate has led to a wide acceptance that everyday practice is usually eclectic because of a great many
reasons. However, critics of eclectic use of theory worry that it leads practitioners to making personal
choices rather than ones based on evidence for alternative choices of theory. However, to use many
theories requires going in depth and detail that in turn requires considerable supervision and support in
their application. As a result, eclectic use may be associated with theoretical inconsistency as practitioners
use theories inappropriately. Thus it makes sense for practitioners, managers, and policy-makers to come
to agreement and do eclecticism in a consistent, planned manner working in a team and being guided by
agency policy. In effect, eclecticism should be a thoughtful, planned approach carried out in a disciplined
manner that is careful to use appropriate tools to evaluate the resulting eclectic choices.
Practitioners can follow numerous suggestions to eclectic approaches.
There are numerous suggestions regarding the selection of theories and development of eclectic
approaches but no set technique or checklist. Of course, the approach must be relevant to the setting; this
book provides an introduction to working through matching a setting to possible theories. Throughout
such a process, practitioners should evaluate the evidence for effectiveness in the practice that they are
concerned with as well as looking at you’re their own perceptions and feelings. Also, they should make
sure and test their ideas against the needs and wishes of clients, their families and carers, because the
practitioner is selecting ways of working with them and incorporating their objectives into the practice.
One form of eclecticism arises when theory is matched with particular forms of service.
There are many forms of practice. Practitioners work in residential care, family therapy, counseling, or
psychotherapy while others work in schools or use social pedagogy. Theory is often adapted so that it is
relevant to a particular form of practice. For example, Papell and Rothman suggested that use of practice
theory in groupwork depended on the group’s aim: remedial groups seek to change undesired patterns of
behavior and thus may use solution-focused therapy; reciprocal groups emphasize self-help and mutual
support such as used in hospices; and social goals groups use groupwork to pursue external groups such as
community education. Mixtures of the three are found. Many practice theories can be used in groups or
other settings. Or, elements of the theories can be applied across these settings. Overall, many
practitioners transfer and adapt ideas that they are confident in applying to one part of their practice to
other aspects of their work. For example, residential care is a setting in which other treatment theories are
used rather than being a distinct form of social work activity justifying theories of its own.
Issues
The major debate about social work theory has been epistemological.
The major area of debate is about how we organize our knowledge and thinking about human beings to
back up the theories used by practitioners. An evidence-based practice perspective argues that we should
base our practice on knowledge that comes from empirical evidence. Evidence-based practice has become
very influential in the USA. In fact, some arguments for evidence-based practice reject theory as not being
useful in social work because theory is simply ideas not knowledge that comes from evidence. This is a
long-standing debate that goes back to the 1700s and reflects an underlying difference between positivists
and interpretivists.
Positivists believe in an orderly world.
Positivists believe that the world follows natural rules that we can come to understand. The world exists
independently of human beings and we can stand outside it and observe it objectively. Being objective
means that we can observe it independently of our own feelings and beliefs and we can check that we are
right. We can observe human beings like objects and understand the specific rules that govern their
behavior and thus create rules that bring about desired changes. Human beings may be complicated, but
positivists believe that it is possible to eventually explain how one action causes another and so create
scientific interventions.
Interpretivists believe human beings are not objective.
Interpretivists believe that human beings are independent. They are free to follow their will as part of the
world in relationships with other human beings and as a result they cannot be objective. Interpretivists
argue that people inevitably influence the world they study because people participate in human
relationships and in turn their understandings about the world will influence how they behave.
Interpretivists believe that human beings are subjects, meaning that they can freely take command of their
thinking and actions. Although their actions affect others, in acting they also change themselves. This is so
even though they may be constrained by the natural and social order of the environment around us. One
way of saying this is that interpretivists believe that it is just not possible to collect all the necessary
information to understand the rules of human life so it is better to think about the world in a more flexible
way.
The early evaluation of social work took a positivist rather than interpretivist route.
Few interventions seemed to work properly, so researchers tried to identify interventions that did, coming
up with task-centered practice and evidence for cognitive-behavioral models as successful approaches.
Researchers also encouraged practitioners to use single-case or single-system research designs. As a result
of these efforts, numerous changes came about including objectives become highly specified and testable,
goals became more limited, there were more assessments, evaluation feedback increased, and many other
improvements occured. These changes led to evidence of demonstrable success and thus the emergence of
‘aims’ and ‘action sequence’ elements of the shared values principles that held being clear about objectives
as in practice and following clearly identified and transparent procedures improved social work outcomes.
Research continued to expand into multiple areas. One major finding of research was that there were
‘common factors’ associated with success other than the theoretical model used in helping people. For
example, the quality of the relationship between practitioners and clients; organization of the agency
service; and social engagement were associated with success and with the ‘shared elements’ – the ‘alliance’
between practitioner and client.
An emerging EBP movement followed these improvements.
The first principle of EBP was that evidence should determine social work organization and delivery, a
top-down approach. Second, systems of practice should encourage individual practitioners along with
their clients to evaluate the most effective methods for solving client problems. As a result, ‘best practice’
information was disseminated by collecting reviews of research, information about effective agency
services, and practice guidelines with intervention protocols. The second approach put responsibility on
practitioners to work with clients to do research with them. While apparently complex, there are
numerous short cuts. For example, most practitioners work in agencies dealing with specific problems and
so the same research protocols could be used over and over.
From these efforts, there arose several arguments for EBP as a main form of practice.
The first argument is that EBP provides for a planned and systematic practice. Second, EBP argued that
this would make methods that are effective ‘ethical’ and eliminate other methods as unethical. A corollary
to that argument was that it would be unethical to prefer methods on the grounds of practitioner’s
personal preferences or personal and professional theories and values rather than methods that are
proven to be effective by EBP. EBP proponents also argued that EBP is accountable to clients because if
the practice method is used, clients are involved in decision-making and can influence the problems to be
tackled as well as the choice of outcomes and methods. Finally, EBP is accountable to agencies and more
broadly to the mandate of social work, because it sets clear objectives, prescribes methods that have been
demonstrated to be most likely to achieve those objectives.
There are also arguments against EBP that fall into four areas.
The arguments against EBP fall into four connected areas. The first is that EBP is paradigmatic; EBP relies
on a positivist worldview that cannot be integrated with the alternative interpretivist worldview thus
leading to division and irreconcilable arguments. Second, EBP opponents argue that the aims and
practices of social work are broad and not able to be defined in ways that will allow research to provide
enough guidance to make decision that respond to the diversity and complexity of behavior, personality,
and social relations. In addition, that complexity interacts with the equally unsearchable personality and
skills of practitioners. Third, EBP gives priority to certain types of knowledge and disparages others. For
example, random controlled trials are preferred especially comparing one intervention with another and
controlling variables. Such conditions are often not possible. Finally, EBP accept the present social order
including its political and cultural assumptions. As a result, EBP approaches prescribes practice that
encourages behavior change so that people adapt to a society in which there are widespread inequalities
and injustices, thus possibly ‘blaming the victim.’ In this way, EBP accepts Western cultural assumptions,
male orientation, and existing social structures where the aims of social work agencies are set by economic
and political factors rather than by decisions about practice made by practitioners.
These arguments for and against EBP spurred continuing political arguments.
The politics of EBP spurred debates that began in early articles seeking to establish empirical research
evidence. The next phase of EBP develop focused on the validity of EBP and the third phase has been the
development of a body of work concerned with introducing EBP to the social work curriculum particularly
in the USA where using EBP to achieve a wider change in the rigor of social work education has been an
important trend since 2005. Overall, the debate has been connected with political trends toward
managerialism and the new public management, which emphasize the managerial and political control of
professional discretion in practice. The main areas of contention include reductionism, the meaning of
EBP (top-down or every-case), and evidentiary standards—whether they include all empirical research
including small-scale and qualitative studies or it research acceptable only if it provides causal
explanations that define effective practice. These issues point in part to a discussion about the extent to
which different research methods can guide social work practice, given that there are many other methods
of research more effective than EBP. As a result concerns about different research methods lead to
questions about the appropriateness of incorporating EBP into social work education. Finally, there
continue to be questions about whether it is feasible to implement EBP in practice decisions.
Social construction, empowerment, and realist views use evidence is used in a different way
than EBP.
EBP, empowerment, social construction, and realist ideas are alternative ways of looking at evidence, each
exploring different cultural and social forces that influence practice actions. Social construction seeks an
interpretivist’s view of knowledge and theory, as used in this book and explained in Chapter 1.
Empowerment argues that the main basis of decision should be clients’ needs and preferences. Realist
views emphasize the need to reflect the different social contexts for research.
Social construction is interpretivists, postmodernist approach.
This approach proposes that understandings about the world come from interactions between people as
part of many interchanges in a social, cultural, and historical context; knowledge is constructed in those
contexts by way of language which comes to form and represent how people understand their social
experiences. Social construction’s research approach tries to engage people who are the subjects of
research in an equal relationship with researchers. This research often uses detailed analysis of human
interaction such as taped records to identify patterns of communication and behavior that may be hidden
such as covert exercise of power; social constructionists argue that EBP does not reflect this complex
reality.
Empowerment views argue that knowledge comes primarily from clients and should
receive social justice.
Empowerment views of knowledge see clients, as having the best knowledge about their circumstances
and objectives whose expertise should direct practice. The purposes of social work require practitioners to
empower people by responding to that knowledge and understanding of the world, in turn bringing about
social justice.
Realist views suggest that knowledge emerges from human interpretation of events.
These views are a fairly new perspective. Proponents argue that the evidence of reality isn’t always found
by empirical observation but knowledge emerges or is generated from human interpretations of
successions of events that can be captured empirically. This research approach contributes toward the
critical practice shared element of practice theory.
Final thoughts…
Practitioners must be knowledgeable of the range of social work practice theories available today and they
must be able to identify how different theories might contribute to their practice. Practitioners may be able
to select a practice theory to use that is appropriate to their setting, or they may develop an eclectic
practice drawing on a combination of theories in the context of their agency, team, and personal
requirements. As a result, practitioners must be able to evaluate theory in terms of their practice needs.
While evaluation is necessary, the ongoing debate about the role of EBP in evaluating which policy
might be best is unresolved. Certainly there are serious questions about whether social work research can
ever be adequate or appropriate to guide practitioner’s decision-making and actions in every situation that
they deal with. It is unrealistic to review all the evidence relevant to every case every time a practice
decision must be made. Not enough research is available in many areas of practice. Many other factors
affect whether a practitioner’s actions are effective in achieving their desired outcomes, and many of those
factors are based on the social context and the personality, skills, and interactions of the people involved
rather than on researched interventions and techniques.
As a result, it is unlikely that social work will be able to make generalized deductions from
research about what to do in particular situations. Politicians and policy-makers make demands on social
work practice to help manage crime and community problems that research does not or perhaps cannot
help. The long-running debate between interpretivist and positivist views of knowledge suggests that these
questions raise fundamental issues about the nature and possibilities of human knowledge may never be
resolved.