The focus of this project is professional development of practice and learning taking place in the workplace through an action research project. The projects specific interest is of developing practice in social work helping people with disabilities gaining growth and well-being through reflection.
The starting point of the project is the challenge often seen of combining general theory and principals into real action. By action research the projects’ goal is to make professionals working on a specific workplace housing young with developmental disabilities overcoming the gap between theory and practice and at the same time make knowledge about it.
The Danish association for municipalities, Kommunernes Landsforening (KL) and the association of the social pedagogue (SL) stands that the social section of the municipalities section is under pressure due to a growth in the complexity of the cases. A complexity that has to do with fact that each citizen and therefore also each citizen with mental developmental disabilities has a right to receive a help and support from the pedagogues that matches there need. The problems can be defined as “wild problems” meaning that the best solution to a problem cannot be predefined. Also, problems are under constant chancing which makes a need for developing new practice by new strategies and new methods which as mentioned has to be transferred in to everyday practice of the pedagogues.
This project starting point is within the developing of the praxis in a municipality that has developed a specific strategy and how parts of it can be transferred into practice at the prementioned specific workplace.
The goal of the project is supporting the practitioners to transfer the new strategy and to make knowledge about it at the same time due to the method of action research. The specific research question is:
”How can co-researcher by reflections transfer the specific strategy into their everyday practice in an action research project?”
The project is based on the scientific theory of social constructivism which entails a dynamic understanding of knowledge where knowledge continuously is chancing though interactions in a specific context. Naming is here a condition of knowledge because the naming sets the boundary of what we can think and thereby also of what we can make reflections about. And the reflections are the theoretical starting point of this project as mentioned.
As mentioned, this project methodological approach is action research. Action research a is participant-oriented and democratic researching process that wishes to blur the gap between theory and practice.
Our theoretically starting point is Donald Schön concept of developing the reflection practitioner.
The project shows that practitioners through action research that focuses on helping them to transfer a general strategi into their everyday practice better can do so by using reflection. That means that professionals can develop their practice by reflection on their practice and thereby constantly change their practice to the needs of the people that needs them and to society.