Research and Social Work

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Abstract
From the beginning there has been a strained relationship between social work practice and research. The choice of moral imperative or empirical knowledge as a base for social work has been debated for decades. The Flexner speech emphasized science as the knowledge base for a profession at a time when social workers were, in fact, establishing practice wisdom as the intellectual foundation for practice. The result has been an official commitment to research but a very limited demand from the field for actual research. In the university the research model of the sciences dominates. Research interests of social work faculty tend to reflect the science model even though the resulting research may have little relevance for practice. There is a need for a nationwide research strategy for social work which focuses primarily on the empirical study of social work practice.

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