1. Framework for Social Work Practice.
Mark A. Bell
406026
HGW512 Practice frameworks for change
April 15, 2015
Introduction
This presentation and paper will describe my practice framework for social work
by detailing, in rough chronological order the writers who have provoked me to
think about the individual, society, power, care, change and knowledge. My
influences come from the fields of applied linguistics, education, nursing and
addiction services, and social work. I identify my framework as positivist, sys-
temic, and person centered (Payne, 2014; Connolly and Harms, 2011). I hope
to explain that we can value people who we don’t understand, we can systemat-
ically learn about the contexts of situation and culture in which we collaborate,
we can help people to clarify their motivations and values and draw on their
individual and group strengths, and we can demonstrate and offer positive tools
like mindfulness, narrative, and reflection.
Applied Linguistics and Education
In the 1960s, William Labov, the founder of socio-linguistics in the United States
visited poor, black school children to record and analyze their spoken language
for the first time (Public Broadcasting Service, 2005; Trudgill, 2000). He found
that, contrary to expectations, their spoken language was not a random, broken
jumble. It was a rich, nuanced, expressive system of meaning creation, very dif-
ferent from, and devalued against, standard white American written language.
He showed in this and other projects that while a speaker’s language was sys-
tematically influenced by their context of situation, perception of power and
agenda, discourse norms, ethnographic and political history, this did not reduce
the individual’s capacity to use language as a creative, meaning-making tool.
Labov and his colleagues showed not just their appreciation of the multi-
leveled nature of context, but they systematically studied it and enacted their
1

2. care by being sensitive to and valuing the individual speaker. Their work cre-
ated change by demonstrating the value of the young, black speakers and their
speech, and the value of learning about people who are different, devalued, or
disadvantaged and their deep context.
The founder of Systemic-Functional Linguistics, Michael Halliday (Halliday,
2004), and the Russian education scientist, Lev Vygotsky (van de Veer and
Valsiner, 1994), provoked me to think about vocabulary, grammar, and ways
of thinking not as arbitrary rules against which speakers and learners should
be judged, but as resources or tools which they acquire and develop through
social interaction in a life long process. It was no accident that the children in
Labov’s study lacked the linguistic and cultural resources to perform against
a white standard of written English. The first step in affecting change was to
recognize that this standard made no sense for them, and to value their own
rich culture and ways of thinking and speaking.
Nursing and addiction services
I was provoked by Miller and Rollnick’s research into addiction recovery and
the language of healthcare interviewing (Miller and Rollnick, 2002; Miller et al.,
2007), to stop asking myself why my patients seemed unmotivated or lacking
in insight, and ask instead what were their real underlying motivations and
thoughts. Miller and his colleague’s research showed that any plan of care
which involves behaviour change, but is not in congruence with the client’s
values (Hayes et al., 2003), insights (Furman, 2013) and strengths (Seligman,
2002, 2012), is unlikely to bring about long term change.
Use of power may force behaviour change in the short term. However, it
is only by helping the client to clarify why and how they are motivated, and
what resources they have to draw on, that it becomes self sustaining. The
client is the expert on their context of care and change, and must be free to
change for their own reasons, according to their own agendas. Our role as caring
facilitators of change, is to express empathy, support self efficacy, roll with
resistance, raise discrepancy between values and behavior (Miller and Rollnick,
2002), help re-frame and reassess narratives, identify strengths, resources and
tools, and collaboratively clarify plans (Furman, 2013). I have not had the
opportunity to work with institutions or organizations, but this client centered
approach also seems a good basis for change with groups of individuals.
2

3. Challenges
My framework for practice is positivist, systemic, and person centered (Payne,
2014; Connolly and Harms, 2011). All the writers who I have cited are re-
searchers who were convinced that it was part of their duty of care to study
what real people said and did in real contexts, not just what prevailing common
sense or intuition said they should do. They also systematically mapped out the
situational and deep context of their subject in order to understand the power
and agendas involved. It is a challenge for me to remember that not only is the
supposedly objective scientific process of meaning making highly contested (Ma-
ton, 2013), but that not everyone has my experience and faith in the scientific
paradigm or shares its vocabulary.
Another challenge that I face is my view of change is based on facilitating a
clarification in an individual’s motivation, values, sense of narrative, strengths
and resilience, and identifying new mental and practical tools to help them plan
and undertake change. It is part of my duty of care to remember that people are
sometimes too traumatized or exhausted for this kind of introspection, or they
may come from a cultural experience where this kind of individualistic paradigm
is less valued (Connolly and Harms, 2011). My challenge will be to learn their
vocabulary and ways of thinking about change, care and their context.
References
Connolly, M. and Harms, L. (2011). Social Work: From Theory to Practice.
Cambridge University Press.
Furman, R. (2013). Social Work Practice with Men at Risk. Columbia University
Press.
Halliday, M. A. K. (2004). An Introduction to Functional Grammar. Arnold.
Hayes, S. C., Strosahl, K. D., and Wilson, K. G. (2003). Acceptance and Com-
mitment Therapy: An Experiential Approach to Behavior Change. Guilford
Press.
Maton, K. (2013). Knowledge and Knowers: Towards a Realist Sociology of
Education. Routledge.
Miller, W. R. and Rollnick, S. (2002). Motivational interviewing: Preparing
people for change. New York: Guilford Press.
Miller, W. R., Rollnick, S., and Butler, C. (2007). Motivational interviewing in
health care: Helping patients change behavior. New York: Guilford Press.
Payne, M. (2014). Modern Social Work Theory. Palgrave Macmillan.
3

4. Public Broadcasting Service (2005). Do You Speak American . What
Speech Do We Like Best? . Sociolinguistics . Labov — PBS.
http://www.pbs.org/speak/speech/sociolinguistics/labov/.
Seligman, M. E. P. (2002). Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psy-
chology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment. Simon and Schuster.
Seligman, M. E. P. (2012). Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Hap-
piness and Well-being. Simon and Schuster.
Trudgill, P. (2000). Sociolinguistics: An Introduction to Language and Society.
Penguin Books Limited.
van de Veer, R. and Valsiner, J., editors (1994). The Vygotsky Reader. London:
Blackwell.
4