Social Work Practitioners Leading Epistemic Resistance through Community-Based Research

This roundtable emphasizes the need for our scholarship to reorient itself in praxis, drawing a deeper connection between research and practice through the engagement of social work practice epistemology. While the importance of research-informed social work practice is often foregrounded in our discipline, we argue that there is a lack of emphasis and furthermore devaluation of practice-informed social work research. Social work practice epistemology centers collaborative relationships, a critical ethic of care, and meaningful social change in knowledge production - it shapes not only the what (or subject) of inquiry, but importantly the how and why we engage in this inquiry.

Drawing on our experiences in therapeutic work, youth work, and political organizing, we seek to spark a dialogue on the importance of practitioner orientations to social work research. How might these practice orientations (e.g., accompaniment, solidarity, meaningful engagement with difference, accountability, critical ethic of care) guide us in how we engage and collaborate with research partners and participants? We invite roundtable participants to bring in their own lessons from practice and reflect on how these are positioned to strengthen collaborative research processes and impacts. While other roundtable discussions have discussed methodologies committed to socially just research (e.g., participatory action research), this roundtable will emphasize the role of social work practice in these methodologies. Additionally, we will discuss what we lose when we disengage with principles of practice (e.g., privileging the researcher at the expense of community partners/those most impacted by the conditions we seek to transform), and how we can engage a critical care ethic developed through social work practice to mitigate and prevent these harms in community-based research. We will use these examples to argue that a social work practice epistemology can reorient our research to our discipline's values, consistently and authentically connecting this work to the social lives of the communities with whom we work (and may consider our own). In this roundtable, we will 1. Introduce panelists, whose social work practice spans clinical work/therapy, youth work, public education, and community organizing; 2. Discuss how we develop long-lasting relationships with community organizations, communities, and clients within our practice; 3. Reflect on the ethical stakes of our partnership choices and approaches; and, 4. Translate our practice into research, and vice versa