Course summary
This short course is aimed at social care practitioners/organisations who wish develop reflexive practitioners by promoting research mindedness in the work place. The course runs with up to ten social care practitioners who will be facilitated, through this bespoke programme, to complete a piece of collaborative practice research relevant to their shared practice. When engaging in Practice Research, practitioners can experience barriers due to perceptions of what research is and what it involves.
This module aims to address these barriers by focusing on the idea that social care practitioners already have the skills and knowledge to conduct practice research due to their existing experiences from education and practice. Reflexivity will be utilized throughout the module to support practitioners to reframe their skills by making evident, the links between practice and research. Reflection, as a concept, can be seen as a static process during or after an event, whereas Reflexivity is a sociological concept that is circular and constant. Reflexivity will be utilized to encourage practitioners to explore their own values, beliefs, and experiences to develop a better understanding of themselves and the position of others.
This process is achieved through the act of doing a co-constructed collaborative piece of group practice research together, with the whole cohort, including the practitioners and the teaching facilitators. It is based on Emancipatory Practice Development where service evaluation takes a bottom-up approach, looking firstly at how practice is received. The topic of the practice research will emerge through the teaching process and will be based on an area of practice research relevant to the practitioners.