Expanding the Vision of the Social Constructionist Debates: Creating Relevance for Practitioners

The term social constructionism has been associated with the research debates among academic social workers. Recently Atherton offered an analysis of the research debates in an attempt to communicate the significance of these debates to social work practitioners. He argued that these debates are tearing the profession apart. A major limitation of Atherton's analysis is that it failed to provide relevance for practitioners by making connections between underlying themes of the debates and important parallel developments within clinical practice fields. The author offers a different interpretation of the research debates, viewing them as a metadebate about science and social science methods. Drawing distinctions between social constructionism and constructivism expands Atherton's discussion, defining their relationship to both research and practice. Examples from practice models are used to illustrate how constructionism and constructivism are significant concepts and are being used across disciplines as metatheories for practice.