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Creating Continuous Conversation:Social Workers and LearningOrganizationsLiz BeddoePublished online: 04 Sep 2009.
To cite this article: Liz Beddoe (2009) Creating Continuous Conversation: Social Workers andLearning Organizations, Social Work Education: The International Journal, 28:7, 722-736, DOI:10.1080/02615470802570828
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Creating Continuous Conversation:Social Workers and LearningOrganizationsLiz Beddoe
This article presents some findings on one aspect of a qualitative study of the continuing
education of social workers in New Zealand. Social workers interviewed were aware of
the contemporary discourses of lifelong learning and in particular, the concept of learning
organizations. Analysis reveals that while practitioners are positive about the ideals of the
learning organization; this is tempered by practical considerations and constraints which
reflect the critique of the learning organization found in the literature. When asked to
define their hopes for post-qualifying learning, participants identified intellectual
refreshment, critical reflection and acknowledging successful work as priorities. Social
workers clearly want ‘learning workplaces’ and as educators we need to support their
development. Top-down models may not provide the answer and small-scale local
initiatives which engender critical, reflective and inquiring ‘continuous conversations’
may serve practitioners better.
Keywords: Social Work; Continuing Professional Education; Learning Organizations
Introduction
The ideals of lifelong learning, continuous improvement and critical reflection are
popular concepts within social work; however practitioners struggle to maintain
these in the face of intense political pressure to meet demands and public intolerance
of risk and uncertainty (Webb, 2006). These conditions plus the managerialist
emphasis on the control of social work processes, exert pressures that are directly
counter to ideals of empowerment (Kemshall, 2002). The ‘learning organization’
represents one of a number of elements of the global discourse about learning in
contemporary society. The idea of ‘the learning organization’ (Senge, 1990) has
Correspondence to: Ms Liz Beddoe, Head of School Counselling, Human Services and Social Work, Faculty of
Education, University of Auckland, Private Bag 92-601, Symonds Street, Auckland 1035, New Zealand. Tel: +64 9
6238899; Email: [email protected]
Social Work EducationVol. 28, No. 7, October 2009, pp. 722–736
ISSN 0261-5479 print/1470-1227 online # 2009 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/02615470802570828
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captured much attention in the human services. Protagonists hope to see the
democratization of workplaces and the empowerment of social workers. In this
article, these claims are regarded as more aspirational than realistic within
contemporary New Zealand workplaces and therefore clearly worthy of closer
scrutiny. This paper presents some findings from a study of continuing education in
social work and discusses this with reference to a critical approach to ‘the learning
organization’, as it has been adopted in social work. A brief review reveals four
consistent points of critique: the domination of the organization as the site of
learning; the dominant role of managers; cautions about the problem of power in
worker ‘empowerment’; and the preponderance of instrumental approaches to
workplace learning. These points are reflected in the findings presented in this article.
The Study
During 2004–2005 the author conducted a study of continuing education with social
work practitioners and managers during a period of intense change in New Zealand
social work, brought about by the requirements of new legislation to register social
workers (NZ Government SWRA, 2003). Registration has brought with it a stronger
mandate for continuing professional development. This provides practitioners,
managers and educators with both challenges and opportunities. While the registration
process has required pre-service social work qualifications to be ‘recognized’, there is
minimal central control of curricula. Professional development for social workers is
provided largely through the efforts of employing bodies or through formal
programmes within universities. While the focus of the larger study was on continuing
professional education at the time of implementation of registration in social work, the
role of learning and development policy within social work agencies was often raised by
participants. The study employed a series of semi-structured individual and group
interviews with 40 social workers, professional leaders and managers. A qualitative
approach was chosen to enable the findings to be grounded in personal encounters with
others, within the natural environment of the phenomena under study. Schram suggests
that the ‘perspective and subjective lens’ that the researcher and research participants
bring to the qualitative study provide ‘potential for the … understandings of [both] to
be changed in the course of the inquiry’ (Schram, 2006, pp. 8–9). Questions asked about
policy and practice within large social work organizations generated responses that
demonstrated a strong awareness of the contemporary discourse of lifelong learning.
The transcribed data from the interviews were stored, coded and analysed with the
assistance of N6 qualitative research software.
The Contemporary Learning Discourses
Post-school learning has become a significant component of social and economic
policy over the past few decades. In particular there is sustained political support for
whole societies to be engaged in continual learning and development (Jarvis, 2000,
2001). This trend is crystallized in such terminology as ‘lifelong learning’, ‘the
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learning society’ and ‘the learning organization’. This discourse is of relevance here
because the ideal is, on superficial examination, one of those rare points where
government policy, organizational policy and the professional values of social work
seem to be in harmony. On the surface what could possibly not be ‘good’ about
‘lifelong learning’?
Welton suggests that while these terms are relatively new, the ideas underpinning
them are not. They are manifestations of the ideology of human improvement that
can be traced back to the late fifteenth century and expanded through the intense
period of discovery that the world was not static (Welton, 2005, pp. 1–3). He asserts,
as have others in a similar vein (for example Coffield, 2002; Olssen, 2006), that the
‘self-conscious discourse of the learning society is worth careful and critical scrutiny’
(pp. 2–3). The emergence of ‘lifelong learning’ in official policy can be linked back to
post-war changes in worker education (Casey, 2003); the political rhetoric of the
‘information society’ and the ‘knowledge society’ with its explicit links to neo-
liberalism. Learning in this realm is conceptualized as an aspect of humanity that can
be harnessed to business. Workers are human resources, or ‘human capital’,
objectified in this language but also capable of being empowered to work to
maximize profit. Olssen (2006) offers this analysis: ‘In Foucault’s sense, lifelong
learning represents a model of governing individuals in their relation to the
collective. More specifically it constitutes a technology of control’ (Olssen, 2006,
p. 216). Coffield argues that there is a ‘powerful consensus developed over the last 30
years to the effect that lifelong learning is a wonder drug or magic bullet that, on its
own, will solve a wide range of educational, social and political ills’ (Coffield, 2002,
p. 174).
This movement towards greater workplace control of knowledge and learning for
professional practice has obvious links to risk management in social care. Recent
research findings suggest that much current learning and development policy in
social work utilizes ‘technologies of training’, for example, learning contracts or
professional development plans. Strong managerial control is exercised over learning
opportunities (Reich, 2002). This reflects the ‘diagnostic and prescriptive discourse of
managerial experts in their quest for the perfectly controlled workplace’ (Kincheloe
and McLaren, 1994, p. 147).
The learning organization concept arose in the 1980s (see Garratt, 1986) and its
rise in prominence has been attributed to Peter Senge (1990). Its development was
informed by the work on organizational development of Argyris and Schon in which
workplace learning was viewed from a systems perspective (Argyris and Schon, 1974,
1978; Senge, 1990). Common features include a systemic view of organizational
learning and development, the notion of a cycle of continuous critical reflection on
the work, the empowerment of individuals in the workplace, emphasis on
communication, and the harnessing of knowledge and energy through commitment
to teamwork, promotion of inquiry and dialogue (Watkins and Marsick, 1993).
Casey asserts that ‘The concept of the ‘‘learning organization’’ is premised on an idea
that human knowledge as human capital is now the principal productive force in
contemporary capitalism’ (Casey, 2003, p. 263). Learning organizations are attractive
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to public services as they seek to build highly flexible organizations, able to operate
competitively in constantly changing external environment and committed to a rapid
response to policy requirements. They tend to be envisaged as addressing four key
elements: organizational strategy; technical and structural issues; human learning
processes; and human resource management focused on flexibility and responsive-
ness (Grieves, 2000).
The influence of the learning organization beyond the business sector is
demonstrated by its inclusion in the professional literature of health, social services
and education (Kurtz, 1998; Gould, 2000; Carnochan and Austin, 2001; Gould and
Baldwin, 2004; Hawkins and Shohet, 2006). Gould and Baldwin’s significant edited
work provides a range of perspectives on the learning organization in social work
(Gould and Baldwin, 2004). Aspects of business strategy have been adopted with
great enthusiasm in social work (Harris, 2003) and by the uncritical and often
superficial adoption of the rhetoric of the learning organization, public sector
agencies often focus on problems (or ‘organizational dysfunctions’) which can be
fixed with technical solutions. However review of the robust critique of ‘the learning
organization’ found in the literature reveals four consistent points of challenge: the
domination of the organization as the site of learning (Field, 1997; Fenwick, 1998);
the dominant role of managers (Coopey, 1996; Fenwick, 1998); cautions about the
problem of power in worker empowerment (Field, 1997; Owenby, 2002; Casey,
2003); and the preponderance of instrumental approaches to workplace learning
(Battersby, 1999; Reich, 2002).
Reliance on the organization as a site for learning leads to a consequent focus on
learning processes occurring within the organization’s current culture. Field argues
that organizational culture often reflects the assumptions and lessons of the past, and
this is likely to impede the power shift required and may hinder learning (Field, 1997,
p. 51). Remuneration and recognition systems, approaches to disputes, work
processes, the design of the workplace, the role of supervisors and so forth can
‘perpetuate control oriented ways of operating long after management has made a
genuine effort to support empowerment and learning’ (p. 51).
The second point in this critique is that the ‘learning organization’ posits a very
dominant role for managers and a subordinate role for workers (Coopey, 1996;
Fenwick, 1998; Owenby, 2002). There are two aspects to this, the first being a shift
towards control of workers’ learning to serve managerial imperatives (Olssen, 2006)
and secondly a move away from earlier notions of worker education that focused
more on broad social and democratic participation (Casey, 2003). Owenby argues
that ‘In corporate learning organizations, management exercises a monopoly of
language … exercised through statements of corporate mission, vision, values,
strategic business objectives, and the formal learning objectives of education and
training programs’ (2002, p. 54). Thus learning goals are decided far away from the
learners and the consumers of the social work agency’s services or products. In social
care this can silence the voices of social workers and service users. In a similar vein,
Fielding suggests that Senge ‘skirts round issues of power, places too much weight on
the harmonising capacities of dialogue, and fails to locate the learning organization
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project within a reality which is socially, politically and historically contested’
(Fielding, 2001, p. 27). Coopey argues that while learning organizations may be less
hierarchical than conventional bodies, the ‘incumbents of such positions will
typically occupy quite crucial roles at internal and external boundaries’, giving them
informational power as well as the usual command over people and resources
(Coopey, 1996, p. 357).
Identifying a third critical theme, Field argues that employees may also be very
cautious about moving into the role of empowered learner. Field’s (1997) research
showed that workers approached changes in work culture with some trepidation
because of the underlying need for security and both overt and more subtle
hierarchies in the current culture. Without acknowledgement of power differentials,
the reliance on ‘open dialogue’ for learning may be shaky. Owenby considers there is
a risk of organizational self-deception and that to be successful organizations ‘must
commit to uncovering hidden power relationships and eliminating surplus control’
(Owenby, 2002, p. 59).
A fourth theme acknowledges the emphasis on problem solving and instrumental
knowledge as a commodity (Fenwick, 1998). Fenwick suggests that there is a focus on
‘learn how’ rather than ‘learn what’, and ‘there is no explicit curriculum’; rather, long
term commitment is deferred to meet short term objectives in order to keep up with
change (p. 147). There is a risk that in appropriating workers’ learning processes to
promote organizational goals, the value of learning for its own sake, self-directed and
free from manipulation, is jeopardized. Other kinds of knowledge—cultural,
transformative and personal—may be relegated to the private sphere.
In summary, a critique of the learning organization is grounded in concerns about
power and agency and who sets the learning agenda (Casey, 2003). In a recent
relevant study of internal training policies in child protection agencies, Reich argues
that ‘the learning organization’ is a technology used to implement neo-liberalist
management through the governing of practice for corporate aims. Reich found an
emphasis in learning and development policy on the implementation of quality
management systems and other aspects of corporate strategic management (Reich,
2002, p. 225). In her conclusions she suggests the research ‘destabilizes the notion of
neutral techniques, such as ‘‘the learning organisation’’, spreading vision and
goodness to workers and increased productivity to organisations’ (Reich, 2002,
p. 229). Baldwin (2004) acknowledges that there are problems with the profession’s
aspiration towards learning organizations. His main argument is that there is a
paradigm clash in terms of approaches to implementation, for example top-down,
and bottom-up and so forth (Baldwin, 2004).
Findings from Research: Practitioners Speak about the ‘Learning Organization’
This study finds that New Zealand social workers, while recognizing the potential of
learning organizations, are not confident that their employing agencies are aware of
the problems inherent in these paradigm clashes. The findings are presented around
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four main themes: (1) the learning discourses; (2) learning from mistakes; (3)
feedback loops; and (4) the impact of constant change.
Learning Discourses
The concept of the learning organization is strongly linked to the contemporary
lifelong learning discourse. Social workers were aware of this discourse and
recognized that while this was inherent in the strategy to professionalize social
work, it could also become a matter of compliance rather than personal volition
(Beddoe, 2006). Managers were more likely to articulate a view that learning has an
economic value; in this sense learning is an investment:
People talk about it, I mean I think it is rhetoric and what is a learningorganization? I mean sometimes it can mean many things to many people but …learning is a thing that has to be valued and there has to be a sense of sharedownership you know, learning is an investment, and training is an investment.(Senior manager)
Professional leaders in the study demonstrated a fairly general understanding of
the learning organization ideal:
Well broadly speaking, again that is another term that gets thrown around. I mean,my sense of it would be that it is a way of, it’s a model of recognizing that learningis important and that it needs to be integrated … especially in a complexorganization, absolutely. (Professional leader)
A learning organization, there are several ways you can read it … one is that weeducate people and we support education, the other is that we supply theorganization so that others can learn in it, student doctors [etc.] can learn in it, andthe other is that when you make a mistake you learn from the mistake, so you knowwe are not a punishing organization. (Professional leader)
There was recognition that while there might be top-level support for the ideal of
the learning organization, this would be enacted differently in many units and
services within a large corporate agency:
How it is supplied in each service which is different we have separate services runby different management systems, different budget, different philosophies andactually a different culture … (Professional leader)
Many larger corporate employers strive to offer extensive internal training activity
but practitioners were cynical about in-service training; particularly compulsory
courses that offered packaged learning to all, regardless of entry and other
qualifications. An advanced practitioner felt that this ‘dumbed down’ any application
of theory to practice and that it was aimed at the lowest common denominator.
Another questioned whether offering many courses was sufficient to meet lofty aims:
We were experienced [workers] and it was just like they treated us like dummies.You know there was nothing that was challenging or stimulating or you know thatmeant you came away feeling fed which for me is what education’s about … wellthey sure didn’t touch my learning edge. (Senior practitioner)
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Well yes we have a policy, we are a learning organization, the [health board] pridesitself as a learning organization. We have a learning and development unit and theyrun a lot of courses, whether that constitutes their commitment to learning anddevelopment I am not sure?
Social workers felt that managerialism had made things worse for practitioners
despite rhetoric about learning. The practitioners’ comments echo Fenwick’s question
‘learn what’ and support a critical view of organizational learning approaches. A sense of
agency and self-determination was missing in their accounts. Many participants
indicated cynicism about top-down approaches to learning and development and
questioned central decision making, especially by those who lack professional
qualification or experience:
The whole managerial agenda here—they have removed a requirement to have anykind of social work background with [recent restructuring] and they [don’t] wantto hear what we have got to say about practice and our learning needs aroundpractice. (Senior practitioner)
These concerns reflect the risk of deconstruction of professional knowledge
which naturally emerges from critical reflection and meaning making in practice,
and over time, and its replacement with ‘best practice’ imposed from ‘head office’.
Within these discussions there was awareness that the organizations in which social
workers were employed were fairly dominant in determining the continuing
education agenda. In a practical sense the implementation of the rhetoric was
questioned:
Managerial philosophy is certainly that everybody should keep on learning andblah blah blah and everybody should keep on working 60 hours a week too! (Socialwork manager)
Learning from Mistakes
An intended outcome of the learning organization is critical reflection and the aim
of continuous improvement: however, in reality this may lead to disengagement,
especially if there is a focus on ‘short term objectives and political considerations’
(Taylor, 1997, p. 11). Field suggests that workers were cautious about their
‘empowerment’ to be critical about their work (Field, 1997) and in this current
study practitioners were acutely aware of the need to learn from mistakes but with
few exceptions, little support was found for the idea that learning organization talk
changed the way in which mistakes were managed by higher levels of the agency:
I mean we just get hammered if there is a mistake and the heads go for the chop, weget hammered, nobody else gets hammered, the frontline gets hammered, certainlymanagement don’t take it on the chin because they make sure it goes down to you.It would be nice to learn from other people’s mistakes as well. (Supervisor)
They have largely had almost a corporate cleansing, going back a year or two ago.Several years ago there was a body count …, managerialism has of course been rife
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and managerialism never admits its mistakes, never, managerialism is always right.(Senior manager)
Fenwick suggests that organizational appropriation of critical reflection focuses on
the individual and puts their practices, beliefs and values up for challenge. In this way
‘critical scrutiny is deflected from the power structures and the learning organization
itself’ (Fenwick, 1998, p. 149). In social work this can lead to critical reflection becoming
focused inwards on practitioners and not onto the social structures and power relations
that may impact on practice. Practitioners in this study frequently expressed doubts
about the ‘safety’ in any critical examination of practice. They had few doubts that the
focus was on practitioners rather than the practice. As a consequence they were afraid to
talk about mistakes in case they were judged incompetent:
People have gone into survival mode and think ‘‘I have to do this, I have to prove[myself] so I cannot speak about my weaknesses and basically I am perfect’’.(Practitioner)
To counter workers’ caution about constructive review of mistakes, Field argues
that there needs to ‘be frank and open discussion between managers and employees
that encompass management’s need to maintain control; employees’ rights to
minimize blame and hostility and to have a reasonable degree of security’ (Field, 1997
p. 156). The participants in this research in general clearly supported this premise;
they did not feel safe because the organizations they worked in were reluctant to look
critically at management processes and were too quick to focus on worker error.
If the organization is committed to being a learning organization it has to acceptculpability and responsibility and not necessarily place that as a performance issue withthe individual employee as a way of minimizing [management] accountability orresponsibility that has been a source of tension within the organization. (Seniormanager)
In an echo of these concerns, Connolly and Doolan, in a discussion of the
usefulness of child death reviews, ask the question
why do we undertake reviews of practice when a child dies? If our response is ‘‘tofind and punish the culprit’’, then our enquiry will not only fail to offerunderstanding in terms of the complex dynamics surrounding these situations, butis also likely to feed the very fears that produce risk-averse practice thatdisadvantages the majority of children who are notified to protective services.(Connolly and Doolan, 2007, p. 7)
They suggest that reviews need to focus on an exploration of the issues and that this is
unlikely to happen if processes reinforce a culture of blame. In this present study social
workers in a wide range of settings were acutely aware of the public desire for scapegoats.
Feedback Loops
Jones argues that ‘in the professional sphere, identity concerns striving for the
convergence of practices and espoused values’ (Jones, 2000, p. 366). In the main,
social workers did not find this convergence within their organization at large. The
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need for healthy organizations with two-way feedback was certainly recognized. One
practitioner felt that not only were workers not encouraged to provide feedback,
service user voices were missing as well:
We should be feeding up that information and doing that analysis for theorganization and saying here is what the practitioners are saying, here is what ourclients are saying. I mean my wish-list would include a whole lot of work with ourclient group … that our practitioners are working with to see what does make adifference when you are intervening in their lives, what was it about the quality ofsocial work that enabled them to even be civil, to engage with people, makechanges.
Genuine critical reflection was more possible at the local level. The participants in
this study did not generally find mechanisms for effective feedback loops within their
large corporate organizations; although some felt some success was possible at a team
level. Participants felt strongly that their organizations could learn from workers but
that the culture did not value these opportunities and that financial management
drove processes rather than a genuine wish to engage in the rich creative dialogue
suggested by Senge:
I think one of the things that stood out for me is the lack of human empathy fromthe top hierarchy … there is a lot they could learn from us but they are not inclinedto, so poor people skills, poor communication skills (1st speaker) … It might alsocost money (2nd speaker) … And that’s what’s at the front of their minds (3rdspeaker). (Practitioners)
One of the noticeable features in many social work organizations heavily
influenced by managerialist approaches is what it often termed the audit society or
culture (Power, 1997). This is linked to the current focus on risk management
strategies and in the human services is manifest in the technologies of risk
assessment, notions such as benchmarking, quality assurance systems. Practitioners
were aware of this and there was much cynical talk in the focus groups about
compliance, which was generally equated with less service-user centred social work.
One social worker felt strongly that the current focus on external auditing and
compliance had:
created a level of fear in the people that I work with, is that you are being watchedand scrutinized so I have probably seen more of a survival thing really, and I thinkwhen you are in survival mode that is not a good environment for learning, youwant to learn from each other but everyone is too scared to show that they arestupid. (Senior practitioner)
There was little sense of the organization being able to learn from practitioners and
rather a feeling that learning programmes were imposed on social workers.
How often have we ever been part of any evaluation programme? I mean they willput something in and there is not even a pilot [and] there is no feedback. Don’t youthink it would be fair to say though that what this is dominance around excellenceand experts imposing, there is an imposition isn’t there? As opposed to anegotiation. (Practitioner)
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There are clear messages from this research to social work managers. Social
workers are keen to be involved in active workplace learning but they need to feel
engaged in the processes, including deciding what to learn. They need to feel heard,
respected and acknowledged for the practice wisdom they develop in the field.
The Impact of Constant Change
Human services by nature need to be responsive to changing environments; ‘learning
organizations are essentially flexible … committed to a rapid response to a dynamic
external environment … to change strategy, technology, internal and external
relationships fast and effectively’ (Grieves, 2000, p. 64). This assumes that the
organization is in some sense an organic entity; in reality of course it can only ever be
a shifting set of policies, practices and individuals held together in that peripatetic
dance of change. Policies implemented by one set of ‘change managers’ are
dismantled by another set. The rhetoric of ‘learning to love change’ (Peters and
Waterman, 1982) will often seem threatening to frontline workers. In New Zealand,
many large organizations have experienced multiple regular ‘restructurings’ and have
learned to be suspicious of change. Rather than viewing change as bringing growth
and creative solutions, heralding a new dawn, it has been experienced as the lead-in
to an attack on essential synergy of values and practices based in practitioner culture.
As Jarvis (2006) suggests, it is doubtful with such inconstancy that organizations
could ‘learn’. Social work practitioners and managers consistently identified constant
organizational change as corrosive of the good intentions of learning and
development models. One manager felt that the environment left social work at
the mercy of change: her approach was to pull back and try to get social work making
its own decisions:
I don’t know if it’s to do with the managerial philosophy, or if it is just to do withthe government continuing to shuffle the deck chairs but what we hear in health is:‘‘this year we are going to be striving for this particular way of delivering a healthservice’’ and so you might well think oh good okay we will need to up skill peoplein blah blah blah and then next year you are thinking about delivering it someother way. This is what leads me to thinking that we need to actually pull backinside the department, and inside the profession, and make some decisions forourselves about what’s needed. (Social work manager)
While critics of the learning organization have been critical of its positioning of
managers in a dominant role, it is clear that managers themselves are often not
empowered by learning and development policies. The managers in this study clearly
felt as buffeted by changes as those in their teams. Practitioners, supervisors and
managers alike shared some frustration with their ability to engage in meaningful
learning in their professional practice. While not the focus of this article, the larger
study reveals some ambivalence about the credentializing tendency that follows
registration and a degree benchmark. While qualifications were valued, there was
little sense that engaging more people in postgraduate study was necessarily the
answer. Instead, those at the frontline sought to have greater control of time and
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resources in order to create reflective learning opportunities in the workplace. A
general theme emerged that proposed more locally led initiatives to meet continuing
education needs.
The ‘Wish List’—What Do Social Workers Want?
On the basis of the four themes described above, there emerges a strong sense of
interest and commitment to making professional development better by working to
establish more congruent ‘learning organizations’ through a greater engagement of
frontline staff. This requires the genuine commitment to cultural change in
organizations suggested by Kofman and Senge: ‘Learning organizations are spaces for
generative conversations and concerted action. In them, language functions as a
device for connection, invention, and coordination. People can talk from their hearts
and connect with one another in the spirit of dialogue’ (1993, p. 6).
So what do workers want? To gain some sense of what frontline workers would
value all participants in the study were asked: ‘if the world changed overnight and,
magically, you had a huge bucket of money to spend on continuing education, what
would be on your wish-list?’ There was some difference here in the responses of
practitioners and managers. Practitioners identified specific learning opportunities
related to the focus of their particular work with clients. Managers and professional
leaders indicated two areas where there was fairly broad agreement: the first that there
was a need for very local initiatives to meet gaps; and secondly that workers needed
time away from the frontline for intellectual refreshment. Managers were very keen
on the possibilities offered by sabbaticals as they recognized that the stress of the job
made continual reflection on practice difficult for most practitioners. Time away
from the frontline was crucial:
For me sabbaticals are really the crux of it because you not only get the intellectualrefreshment but you get the actual physical and emotional refreshment of being offthe floor for a few months. (Professional leader)
We don’t give them enough time to catch their breath, [understand] what it meansto be here, and evaluate their practice. (Team leader)
[We need] a total assessment of every social worker to enable them to up-skill, takesabbaticals, whatever it takes to re-energize, refresh, renew and up-skill. (Clinicalleader)
Social workers and their managers wanted flexibility to act locally to develop
professional development opportunities for their teams. A common concern was that
good practice was rarely noted and that the role of case studies in identifying and
building practice wisdom was under-rated. One manager of an NGO social work
agency felt ‘we learn best from hearing stories’ and another echoed this sentiment:
I would love to have the mandate to develop some stories in this organizationabout good practice. We have stunningly good practice in the organization but allwe ever hear about is when things go wrong—[it’s the] same story world wide—
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but the opportunity to capture practitioners’ practice in the form of stories and tobe able to use that in reflective supervision and coaching … (Manager)
Social workers noted that there were examples of excellent practice that were never
given a wider airing because the workers lacked the energy to write them up, even for
internal purposes:
there was a piece of work that I thought was exceptional, a really complex difficultpiece of work and I would have loved to have supported the social worker and thefamily to actually do some reflection and write it up and present it but it is like, inthis place the idea is there, but you have to work 60 hours to just do the life savingstuff. (Manager)
The messages from the frontline signal a desire to close the gap between ways of
delivering professional development and the world of practice. Dirkx (2006) argues
that current models of development privilege abstract thought, development of
practical expertise avoids the separation of analysis from application and develops
wisdom from many sources including ‘relevant technical or scientific knowledge, the
sociocultural context of practice, and the practitioner’s self’ (Dirkx, 2006, p. 38).
These frontline workers confirm Dirkx’ argument that practitioner stories ‘suggest
that lifelong learning and change in continuing professional development reflect an
ongoing struggle to keep the rational deeply connected with the richly felt experience
of practice’ (2006, p. 38).
Conclusion
The participants in this study demonstrated strong awareness of the impact of the
major discourses about learning on social work organizations. While they understood
the inevitability of an organizational learning agenda, they were passionate advocates
for inclusion of practitioner voice in policy and decision making. Practitioners
needed to tell their stories and be able to voice their needs and meet more flexible
institutional responses—only through this feedback loop would there be a match
between worker and organization aims for learning: for one senior manager this was
seen as a constant dialogue between workers, frontline managers and the ‘head office’
personnel that was respectful and open:
I think that there should be a continuous feedback loop. There has to be a matchbetween what practitioners want and what the organization wants, because if thereisn’t, that is when we lose people and we get practice that is contrary to the sorts ofstandards and values that we need … there has to be a joining from the beginningand a continuous conversation. (Social work manager)
This study identifies that although the ideal of the learning organization has
considerable traction within social work, there are levels of cynicism that suggest we
question whether it is, in reality, more than a metaphor. The learning organization
concept has had many positive influences. It has encouraged employers (and
professional bodies) to move away from outdated notions of training, and to
acknowledge the workplace as a site of learning and it has enabled learning and
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development to become more centre stage in organizational activities, thus making
professional development less easily expendable, when spending must be constrained.
Postle et al., however argue that for continuing education to go beyond rhetoric, a
‘cultural shift’ is required in which learning organizations become ‘truly collective
enterprises’ (Postle et al., 2002, p. 160). The danger is that the rhetoric may be too
grand and too hard to live up to. As Fenwick argues, the learning organization
discourse ‘presents itself as a romantic ideal encouraging workers’ personal growth
and imaginative engagement—yet this discourse continues the workplace tradition of
dictating which kind of growth counts most’ (Fenwick, 1998, p. 152).
Social work is, by nature, characterized by ambiguity and unpredictability.
Prescriptive, top-down ‘training’ approaches may be less helpful than professional
development which fosters value based, critical reasoning and is grounded in an
understanding that social workers operate within a climate of uncertainty. The
profession seems too easily manipulated by the next ‘best thing’ as we reel in the face
of the latest public scandal. Too often ‘training’ is a response to practice failures and
is dominated by attempts to reduce corporate risk (Stanley and Manthorpe, 2004;
Beddoe, 2005). The prevailing learning and development approach in the human
services is to adopt technical responses to what are complex social, emotional and
moral problems. While these responses have their origins in technology of control
suggested by Reich, they seem antithetical to the empowerment ethos espoused by
proponents of the learning organization.
Participants in this study expressed doubt that the essential conditions of the
learning organization were in place, particularly the conditions of trust that enabled
practitioners, managers and policy makers to learn from mistakes. This research
strongly indicated that social workers and their managers want resources (money,
time, opportunities and expertise) available at a local level to meet local learning
needs. Continuous conversation, of the kind that might support social work agencies
to become learning organizations, requires listening as well as the ‘talking’ which is
far too often done ‘top down’ through policy directives. Without the democratization
of learning policy social workers will not feel that they are ‘empowered workers’, and
as Fielding suggests ‘it seems likely that, in the end, the self-induced invisibility of
power may well turn out to be the ghost of Banquo at the table of the learning
organisation’ (Fielding, 2001, p. 7).
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