Practitioner-researcher
partnerships: Building knowledge from, in, and for practice is Published
Practitioner-researcher partnerships: Building knowledge from, in, and
for practice was published in 1995 by NASW Press. The book includes
original chapters as well as papers prepared for the Center's 1993 conference,
Knowledge for Practice: Practitioners and Researchers as Partners.
It is edited by Peg Hess, CUSSW Associate Professor and Associate Dean,
and Edward Mullen, CUSSW Willma and Albert Musher Professor and Center
Director.
Excerpts from the Foreword
For at least three decades, social workers of all
types, practitioners, administrators, researchers and educators, have inveighed
about the need to build effective partnerships between the worlds of research
and practice. Yet, their actions and accomplishments have lagged far behind
their rhetoric, exhortations and hopes. They have not kept pace with the
ever accelerating demands for productive partnerships and with the enviable
progress made by allied helping professions. The extant literature reveals
few examples of effective practice-research collaborations in social work.
Nor does it provide practical considerations that need to be pondered if
such partnerships are to be realized. If the worlds of social work practice
and research do not soon respond to the growing demands for meaningful
collaboration, it is entirely possible that the profession will squander
a crucial opportunity to improve its effectiveness, to demonstrate that
it merits strong fiscal and moral support, and to sustain, much less enhance,
its credibility and standing in the eyes of clients, policy makers, funders
and fellow professionals. Publication of [this book] is therefore timely,
relevant and of overarching importance for all sectors of the social work
profession. It does not merely add one more voice to the call for effective
linkages between research and practice. Rather, it draws upon the talents
of numerous contributors who consider in depth and breath the myriad variables
that must be understood to bring about such partnerships. It can reassure
doubting skeptics and worried professionals by demonstrating that it is
possible, in fact, to forge effective partnerships between social work
researchers and practitioners. In sum the authors promote effective partnerships
between social work research and practice by addressing in rich detail
the complexities that must be considered if true advances are to be made.
Ronald A. Feldman, Ph.D., Dean,Columbia University School of Social
Work
Alan B. Siskind, Ph.D., Executive Vice President, Jewish Board of
Family & Children's Services
Authors include (in order of contribution): Peg McCartt Hess,
Edward J. Mullen, Donald A. Schön, Irwin Epstein, Claudia Colton,
Juliet Cheetham, Denise Burnette, Audrey Weiner, Rita Beck Black, Virginia
Walter, Arthur Blum, David E. Biegel, Elizabeth M. Tracy, Mary Jane Cole,
Mildred Mailick, Michael King, James Donnelly, Sona Euster, Grace H. Christ,
Karolynn Siegel, William J. Fems, Marion Reidel and John Schuerman.
"This book has profound ramifications for social work education.
It points the way toward practice-based research and research-based practice.
It will change the way social workers practice, and it will change the
way social work educators teach. It is an important book for social work
practitioners, researchers, educators, and students." --- Martha
N. Ozawa, PhD - Bettie Bofinger Brown Professor of Social Policy George
Warren Brown School of Social Work, Washington University
Ordering Information:
Practitioner-Researcher Partnerships (ISBN:
0-87101-252-9, 1995, (#2529), 285 pages, $31.95): By Phone: Call
1-800-227-3590 and use Visa or Mastercard. In the Washington, DC area call
301-317-8688; By Fax: Send your orders to us at 301-206-7989:
By Mail: Send the order and your payment to the NASW Distribution
Center, PO. Box 431, Annapolis, JCT, MD 20701, USA.