—S. Firestone, The Scientific Component in the Casework Field Curriculum
Changes in Epistemology
Human behavior theory needs to be understood within the context of the history of scientific thought. History suggests that the social work profession has moved from a position of little practice theory to an over abundance of theoretical approaches (Turner, 1995). Each theory stems from a particular paradigm, the configuration of beliefs, values, and techniques that are shared by members of a professional community. Each paradigm is a reconstruction of prior thinking (Schriver, 2003) and may have dramatically different philosophical assumptions, so much so that Kuhn (1970) said that “it is rather as if the professional community had been suddenly transported to another planet.”
Guba (1990) has described the shifts in paradigm—from positivism, the belief in universal laws; to postpositivism, the belief that knowledge is conjectural; to constructivism, the belief that each person constructs meaning for themselves. Positivists theorists argue that objective laws and universal truths can be discovered through scientific activity, logic, and reason, leading to objective social work practice (see Burrell & Morgan, 1979; Martin & O’Connor, 1989). Postpositivists suggest that although natural laws exist, people cannot possibly perceive them and that social worker objectivity would be an ideal. Social constructionists have proposed that many realities are created at the local level through human interaction (Foucault, 1980). Therefore, they believe that no social work endeavor is value free, but must be understood through individual mental frameworks. Theories that stem from these various philosophies are presented throughout the text.
The Value of Theory
The usefulness of theory to social work practice can be viewed in a number of ways (Table 1.1). Social workers who use theories of human behavior that stem from positivist tradition, such as Freudian theory and systems theory, rely on information, facts, and data to guide their clinical practice. They view theory—a logical system of concepts that provides a framework for organizing and understanding observations—as the primary tool in planning assessment and intervention processes (Table 1.2). Theories—intended to offer comprehensive, simple, and dependable principles for the explanation and prediction of observable phenomena—assist practitioners in identifying orderly relationships (Newman and Newman, 2005).
Table 1.1
Value of a Theoretical Framework
Theories provide the framework for organizing social work practice.
Just as social scientists used theories to deal with vast quantities of data by formulating significant questions, selecting and organizing data, and understanding the data within a larger framework, social workers also sought theories to help guide and organize their thinking about a client’s presenting problem. Theories also helped social workers explain why people behave as they do, to better understand how the environment affects behavior, to guide their interventions, and to predict what is likely to be the result of a particular social work intervention (Wodarski & Thyer, 2004). For example, social workers who base their practice on Freudian theory may choose to help a client examine the uses of defense mechanisms in the belief that modification of overly rigid or ineffective defenses will lead to a healthier personality configuration (see Chapter 3). In contrast, the practitioner who bases his or her practice on a social systems approach may evaluate the relatively closed or open quality of a family system with the idea that helping a family communicate more openly will improve its functional capacity (see Chapter 7). Each theory has its own set of assumptions about the cause of the presenting problem and its resolution. Questions that guide the interview suggest that the social worker has an understanding about what constitutes a healthy individual or well-functioning family.
Positivist theorists suggest the social worker take a neutral stance during the helping process and that theory can help the social worker guard against the temptation to act on personal bias. Briar and Miller (1971) underscored the idea that a social worker needs to be able to separate fact from inference and to make explicit his or her assumptions about human behavior to make sound professional judgments:
The choice for the practitioner is not whether to have a theory but what theoretical assumptions to hold. All persons acquire assumptions or views on the basis of which they construe and interpret events and behavior, including their own. These assumptions are frequently not explicit but are more what has been called “implicit theories of personality.” Thus, the appeal for practitioners to be atheoretical amounts simply to an argument that theory ought to be implicit and hidden, not explicit and self-conscious. It is difficult, however, to defend an argument favoring implicit theory that, by definition, is not susceptible to scrutiny and objective validation and therefore cannot be distinguished from idiosyncratic bias. (pp. 53–54)
Social workers often turn to the theories of human behavior in the social environment they believe will provide a knowledge base for understanding and action (Bloom, 1984).
Table 1.2
Definitions of Theory
The use of theory is the hallmark of professional helping.
Those theories that help in understanding the causal dynamics of behavior that has already occurred and in predicting future behavioral events meet this definition for action oriented knowledge. In short, theoretical frameworks are useful to those in the helping professions to the extent that they provide a conceptual foundation that shapes the direction of professional activities and gives context to specific actions.
Whatever their choice of theory, a social worker’s actions are not random but tend to reflect the theories, implicit or explicit, that he or she accepts and uses. Theory tends to shape the practitioner’s viewpoint, what he or she makes of it, and what he or she decides to do about it. How the practitioner defines a need, situation, or problem largely determines the action he or she will take. If the practitioner views the problem as being within the person, the theory will lead him or her to take a different course of action than if the problem resided within the environment. The social worker who does not believe in a problemladen social work approach will take another course of action (Laird, 1993; Saleebey, 2005).
During the past three decades, there have been several concerns about the use of theory and whether it is evidenced-based. There are, of course, limitations to the rigor of scientific theories and their capacity to explain or account for events. No single theoretical construction can encompass all aspects of a phenomenon (Turner, 1995). By their very nature, theories are selective about the factors they emphasize and those they ignore. In addition, a growing number of social work theorists have challenged positivist tradition. This challenge has involved an interest in an...
