A Systematic Review of Epistemological Foundations in Social Work

Social workers are confronted with the difficult challenge of incorporating factual and value-based realms that arise from objective and subjective knowledge in their pursuit of evidence-based practice. When they are in conflict, they need to navigate ethical concerns, dilemmas, and challenges that arise in their practice. A misunderstanding of the nature of knowledge has often turned into a misconstrual of how objective and subjective knowledge interact, including the idea that the two are at odds. A solid understanding of epistemic principles can ensure professionals consider multiple alternative viewpoints, seek out evidence, evaluate evidence critically, and be open to revising their beliefs in response to both evidence and new clinical insights.

The main purpose of this systematic review is to (1) examine how epistemology has been defined and interpreted in social work, (2) discover the underlying epistemological orientations of social work, (3) examine how epistemic principles, principles that guides knowledge-seeking activities, are used to evaluate the soundness of social work epistemology. In order to be included for the review, studies have to be published in a peer-reviewed social work journals from 1920 to 2020 and examine the meaning, role, and/or strengths and weaknesses of one of fourteen major types of epistemologies in social work.

The existing social work literature is operationalized by merging core journal lists that developed by Hodge et al., (2011), Perron et al., (2016), & Thyer (2005). There were 532 peer-reviewed studies. Of these, about 60 studies were met the criteria and included in this analysis. To examine the profession’s engagement with epistemology, each study was reviewed and coded for key themes such as: (1) a clearly outlined definition of epistemological paradigms, (2) a discussion of epistemological perspectives that can move us beyond an unfruitful dichotomy between objectivism and subjectivism, (3) the presence of eight key epistemic principles: The principles of non-contradiction, correspondence, induction, coherence, simplicity, falsifiability, justification, and skepticism.

The main findings of this systematic review are as follows: (1) social work literature tends to indicate that constructivist approach to knowledge creation is better as a epistemological framework of social work; (2) evidence-based practice has been criticized for representing a deficient epistemology for understanding and intervening client’s concerns and issues; (3) there is an unfruitful epistemological dichotomy between objective and subjective knowledge, and (4) there is a lack of discussion on epistemic principles that are applied in research, pedagogy, and application in practice.

The application of sound epistemic principles can help to temper some of the problems posed by deficient epistemology by fostering ongoing critical evaluation and modification of beliefs and values, even while holding to certain claims and evidence with a certain moderate degree of confidence, rightly balanced between the extremes of excessive skepticism and dogmatism. The major implication of the study is that deficient epistemologies must be deconstructed and re-assembled into sound epistemologies in order to be able to reconstruct the connections that social workers make from their own new, sound epistemological foundation, on which “thinking” can bear fruit as “doing” in the professions.