Browsing by Author "Paley, J."
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Item Open Access Accomplishment in adversity : a study of practitioner learning in social work(Cranfield University, 1991-05) Jones, Martyn; Jordan, B.; Paley, J.This study is about how people learn to be good social workers. It is based on thirty-seven tape-recorded interviews with practitioners who were selected by -their, peers and each other as doing the job well. The analysis adopts the view that interviews be seen as situated encounters in which interviewees attempt to provide morally adequate accounts of themselves and their actions. This approach is used as a means of making sense of both the 'interview talk' and of the cultural features to which appeal-is made in producing an adequate account. - The analysis is set in a discussion of new theories of adult learning; a crique of professional literature on theory and practice in social work; and, an appraisal of organisational studies of social work. Whilst the professional literature can be criticised for paying scant attention to the organisational settings of social work, the sociological studies can be criticised for failing to comprehend the accomplishments of social workers. This study aims to avoid both of these shortcomings. The literature from new theories of adult learning provides some promising developments in this regard, and the recent trends in the re-organisation of professional training are subjected to scrutiny. On examining the social workers' accounts, it was seen that there were certain central features in common. They were all structured so as to relate the social worker's identity to his or her role, and to relate learning to experience. The differences as well as the similarities in how this is done are clarified by the analysis. In constructing their versions of good social work, the practitioners differed according to their managing of the tension between the formal dimensions of their practice (law, policy, procedure) and their informal, discursive interactions within the everyday worlds of their clients. The accounts of learning given by the social workers refer predominantly to the place of experience, and to membership within collegiate teams. This is viewed as consistent with their ways of constructing good practice, but it is in marked constrast to the versions of learning dominant within the professional literature and educational methods. Ultimately, however, the social workers' own accounts of their learning falter, as they are unable to construct an adequate version for the rigours of formal rationality. The argument is made that this is due to the suppresion of a different reading of social work: social work as 'practice', a practical activity, and a cultural practice. Finally, the implications of this different reading of social work are considered, and reference made to recent major changes in legislation.Item Open Access Gender variables associated with female self-poisoning(Cranfield University, 1989-02-23) Jack , R. L.; Paley, J.Self-poisoning - the deliberate, non-fatal ingestion of medicinal agents in excess of the recommended dose - is characterised wherever it occurs in Western society by a predominance of women - usually in the order of 2:1, and in over 60% of cases psychotropic medication is employed. Despite this the largely female nature of the phenomenon and its relationship to the 2:1 excess of women among the recipients of psychotropics generally has been virtually ignored in the literature. For many years self-poisoning was regarded as 'failed suicide' and consequently theoretical approaches to it have been dominated by the assumption of pathology - justifiable, perhaps in relation to completed suicide, as there is evidence of significant psychopathology among its perpetrators, but less so among self-poisoners where there is little such evidence. This thesis proposes that not only is the 'pathology paradigm' at odds with the known facts of self-poisoning but that the emphasis on psychopathology has discouraged the development of any convincing theory of female self-poisoning.An alternative account, based not upon pathology but upon processes of normative socialisation, suggests that the sex role system promotes a stereotypic view of women as helpless, dependent and emotionally unstable. This stereotype, when shared by physicians and their female patients, contributes to the excess prescription of psychotropic medication to women who have social, rather than psychopathological problems. Additionally, the sex role system and the social relations based upon it, fosters a 'female' cognitive style - particularly among those women who predominate among self-poisoners i.e. young, working class women with a history of family breakdown. This leads them to attribute the cause of adverse events internally to enduring, and irremediable personal inadequacy rather than - to others or misfortune. Such an "attributional style" externally renders these women vulnerable to "learned helplessness" in such circumstances - to the debilitating belief that their actions will be ineffective in resolving their difficulties. Female self-poisoning is interpretted, not as symptomatic of psychopathology, but as both consequence and expression of this socialised helplessness. The attributional style of male and female self-poisoners is compared in a pilot study with that of other patients and non-patients and support is found for an attributional approach to female self-poisoning.Item Open Access Rhetoric and Anti-Racism in Social Work: A Study in the Philosophy of Language(Cranfield University, 1993-10) Lesser, Danielle; Paley, J.This thesis is concerned with the nature of understanding in multi-racial social work practice (MRP), and in particular with the philosophy of anti-racist social work. After a review of the past and present literature on MRP which charts the development of anti-racism and black perspectives in social work, it is concluded that new approaches are needed to take account of the importance of racism conceived as a linguistic resource. A consideration of the wider literature on race and racism leads on to an exploration of hermeneutic philosophy as a general guide to the analysis of problems of communication and understanding in social work. The work of Gadamer and Derrida is reviewed in some detail, in the context of wider developments in the philosophy of language and in literary criticism and textual analysis. It is argued that analysis of social work texts can offer new insights into the problems of formulating guidelines for anti-racist practice. Two exemplary analyses are presented: the first of Dominelli 's text Anti-Racist Social Work and the second of Ahmad's Black Perspectives in Social Work. Finally, it 1S suggested that this analysis demonstrates the utility, and complementarity, of Gadamerian and Derridean perspectives in this effort - and that we must recognise that the positions we adopt on the best way forward are necessarily provisional, just as the commonly understood meanings of key terms in the debate about race and social work remain provisional.