Practitioner-Researcher Partnerships: Building Knowledge From, In, and For Practice Is Published

Practitioner-Researcher Partnerships: Building Knowledge From, In, and For Practice will be published in February 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" (see Table of Contents, below). It is edited by Peg Hess, CUSSW Associate Professor and Associate Dean, and Ed Mullen, CUSSW Professor and Center Director. Following is an excerpt from its Foreword. Ordering information is provided for your convenience.

Excerpts from the Foreword

For at least three decades, social workers of all typesópractitioners, administrators, researchers and educatorsóhave 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 sustainómuch less enhanceóits 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 each detail the complexities that must be considered if true advances are to be made.

Alan B. Siskind, PhD, Executive Vice President Jewish Board of Family & Children's Services
Ronald A. Feldman, PhD, Dean Columbia University School of Social Work

Practitioner-Researcher Partnerships: Building Knowledge From, in, And For Practice
Edited by Peg Hess and Ed Mullen

Table of Contents

1. Bridging the Gap: Collaborative Considerations in Practitioner Researcher Knowledge-Building RelationshipsñPeg McCartt Hess, PhD & Edward J. Mullen, DSW

2. Reflective Inquiry in Social Work PracticeñDonald A. Schön

3. Reflecting In and On Practice: A Role for Practitioners in Knowledge BuildingñPeg McCartt Hess, PhD

4. Promoting Reflective Social Work Practice: Research Strategies and Consulting PrinciplesñIrwin Epstein, PhD

5. Research for Initiatives in Low-income CommunitiesñClaudia Colton, PhD

6. Research as an Act of PracticeñJuliet Cheetham, MA

7. Intersecting the Parallel Worlds of Practice and Research: An Agency Practitioner-Academic Researcher TeamñDenise Burnette, PhD & Audrey Weiner, DSW

8. The Practitioner-Researcher Team: A Case ExampleñRita Beck Black, DSW & Virginia Walter, MSW

9. Agency-University Collaboration: Partnerships for Implementing and Studying Practice InnovationsñArthur Blum, DSW, David E. Biegel, PhD, Elizabeth M. Tracy, PhD & Mary Jane Cole, MSW

10. Research Collaboration Among Hospital Social Work AdministratorsñMildred Mailick, DSW Michael King, DSW James Donnelly, DSW & Sona Euster, ACSW

11. Developing a Research Unit Within A Hospital Social Work DepartmentñGrace H. Christ, DSW & Karolynn Siegel, PhD

12. The Expert System as a Metaphor for Professional Knowledge DevelopmentñWilliam J. Fems, PhD & Manon Reidel, CSW

13. Research, Practice and Expert SystemsñJohn Schuemman, PhD

14. Toward Research Practice DevelopmentñEdward J. Mullen, DSW Peg McCartt Hess. PhD