Abstract
There are two purposes to this article. The first is to update the science of social work framework. The second is to use recent discussions on the nature of realist science and on social work science to propose a definition of social work as an integrative scientific discipline that complements its definition as a profession.
This article has two purposes. The first is to update the science of social work (SoSW) framework I have proposed (Brekke, 2011, 2012). The second is to use recent discussions on the nature of realist science (e.g., Bunge, 1988, 2009a, 2009b) and on social work science (Sommerfeld, 2014) to propose a definition of social work as an integrative scientific discipline that complements its definition as a profession.
The SoSW-Redux
The SoSW framework has core domains, core constructs, and aesthetic characteristics (Brekke, 2012). The three core constructs are biopsychosocial, person-in-environment (PiE), and service systems for change. The first two can be seen as constitutive of the “social” in social work, and the third reflects the “work” that is essential to social work practice. These proposed constructs were intended to be essential but not exhaustive. Concepts such as ecological and social justice are also essential to social work and will be considered in light of the proposed framework. This first section of this article will focus on two revisions to the domains of the SoSW framework. The first revision concerns the concepts in the domains, and the second is on the population facets of the domains (see Figure 1). This discussion retains the conceptual background of three realist notions that infuse a SoSW: levels of reality, emergence, and upward and downward causation that were discussed in Brekke (2012).
The domains of a science of social work.
Figure 1 shows the proposed changes to the concepts in the domain framework. Specifically, the word “disease” has now been replaced with the word “disfunction.” 1 The term “well-being” has also been added to the term “health,” so that the concept is “well-being and health.” The meaning of these changes is elaborated below.
Disfunction is a broader term that represents more than disease as a medical construct. It rests on and implies the notion of “functioning” that is central to how social work has defined its scope for many decades (Barker, 1995; Gibelman, 1999; National Association of Social Work [NASW], 2008). When disfunction is combined with the core constructs of PiE and biopsychosocial, it specifies multiple elements and levels to the phenomena we target in social work, such as an individual’s cognitive, emotional and social functioning, family functioning, marital functioning, the functioning of community environments, and institutional performance. Functioning, as opposed to disease, gives the required breadth that reflects a social work focus. Therefore, in our science, we seek to understand and reduce disfunction on multiple levels using models of understanding and change that feature interactions between social and individual factors that have been historically central to social work (Gibelman, 1999; NASW, 2008). This interaction between social and individual factors was central to the models of change and understanding advocated in Brekke (2012), and they remain essential to the revised framework.
But while social work has a long tradition of ameliorating disfunction and suffering, it also has had a long-standing focus on identifying strengths and supporting positive functioning at multiple levels (NASW, 2008). The terms “health and well-being” are meant to capture this focus. Health has been defined by the World Health Organization (WHO, 1948) as “… a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” While this definition has generated controversy, it has endured (Bircher, 2005; Callahan, 1973; Saracci, 1997). It contains two aspects that are particularly relevant to social work. First, it includes mental and social aspects of being, and second, it is an aspiration in seeking complete well-being and health rather than incremental approximations.
There are multiple definitions of well-being (Dodge, Daly, & Sanders, 2012; Jayawickreme, Frogeard, & Seligman, 2012), and other terms such as “wellness” and “quality of life” also appear prominently in the literature (Barwais, 2011; Corbin & Pangrazi, 2001; Theofilou, 2013). In surveying this literature, the following definitional model is proposed (see Figure 2).
Model of central concepts in well-being and health.
In this model, well-being is a set of characteristics derived from previous work (Barwais, 2011; Jayawickreme et al., 2012) that reflect the behavioral qualities of (i) proactive agency and empowerment, (ii) emotional balance, (iii) prosocial behavior, and (iv) personal thriving and optimizing. Wellness and health are states of being, and quality of life is an evaluative outcome that often consists of both objective and subjective assessments of one’s position in life in multiple areas such as the fiscal/economic, physical, psychological, occupational, and environmental (Theofilou, 2013). Since well-being and health yield quality of life, these two constructs are seen as the fundamental drivers relevant to a SoSW framework.
The WHO definition of health was shown above, and it represents physical, mental, and social aspects of life that are central to the mission of social work. WHO defines wellness as the optimal state of health of individuals and groups. These concepts are quite synonymous, with health being the central construct.
The proposed definition of well-being outlines functional characteristics that are central to a healthy life and that are congruent with social work values. Emotional balance suggests that a range of typical human emotions is essential, and when there is an overall balance between positive and negative emotion they reflect adjustment to life’s challenges. Prosocial behavior highlights the significance of productive social interactions for healthy functioning. Personal thriving and optimizing reflect the notion that human potential and growth are core ingredients for promoting health and meaningful activity. Finally, proactive empowerment and agency constitute an approach to helping people gain control over their own lives and exercise influence on their environments. It is a process that fosters power in people for use in their own lives, their communities, and in their society. Agency is a notion from anthropology and it is an individual or collective capacity for action in terms of self-consciousness and resistance to power structures (Ahearn, 2001). Agency is the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices. Taken as a whole, well-being as defined here suggests essential functional characteristics congruent with social work values and mission.
With some adjustments, we can apply these concepts in a useful manner to other levels of social reality such as groups, organizations, communities, and societies. For example, we can understand the well-being of organizations that are proactive and empowered, balanced in their essential qualities, prosocial, and thriving. The capabilities model (Nussbaum, 2000; Nussbaum & Sen, 1993) also has particular relevance to these issues when analyzing societal well-being.
Overall, these changes to the concepts in the domains of a SoSW are meant to more adequately reflect the core constructs and values of social work and to provide an improved foundation for a SoSW. In addition to changes in the concepts in the domain, it is important to develop more fully two facets of the domains in the framework (see Figure 2). The first facet concerns the two scientific aims of understanding and change. The second facet concerns the focus on subpopulations of the marginalized or disenfranchised, and on the general population. The bolded horizontal line in Figure 1 is meant to illustrate this dual population focus. Above the line is the focus on the marginalized and disenfranchised that reflects a central commitment to social justice. Below the line is the focus on the public’s health and well-being which is seen in the ecological context of the interaction of individual and social factors within multiple levels of reality (Brekke, 2012).
More than any other profession or field, social work reflects a fundamental focus on models of understanding and change strategies for subpopulations who are marginalized and/or disenfranchised (Brekke, 2012). These subpopulations are a central feature of social work, for example, the poor, the disabled, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT), immigrants, race/ethnicity/culture, and their intersections (NASW, 2008). There are models for understanding the process of marginalization and disenfranchisement. The fields of economics, international development, sociology, and anthropology sometimes use the construct of social exclusion. It has involved the study of how individuals and groups become marginalized or excluded with a focus on a multilevel model of society and interactions among those levels (Ferguson, Gever, Minh-ha, & West, 1999; Hills, LeGrand, & Piachaud, 2002; Murphy, 2005; Sen, 2000; Sen, 2005).
In an attempt to see what the social work literature reveals, an abstract search was done of four social work journals from 1993–present (20 years). The journals were Social Work, Research on Social Work Practice, Social Work Research, and Social Service Review. The key words were exclusion, marginalized, and disenfranchised, which resulted in about 90 articles with one or more of these words in the abstract. In the articles, these terms were almost exclusively used as nouns or adjectives. In essence, we typically identify or describe these groups in our literature; we take their existence as given in our social structure. There was no study or articulation of a process of marginalization, social exclusion, or disenfranchisement. This poses a problem for a SoSW, for if we do not embrace this focus of understanding, we will have little knowledge about how these subpopulations arise, what causes them to occur, or how the causal factors interact. Our research needs to move beyond identifying and describing these vulnerable populations to understanding the processes and causes that lead to their emergence and ongoing existence. This will have direct relevance to developing strategies to prevent or alter these social processes and to intervening with these populations, both of which are central to the mission of social work.
Concerning change strategies for populations that are marginalized or disenfranchised, the previous definitions of health and well-being would suggest that the empowerment of individuals and groups is central to the SoSW. Social work change strategies are constructed to reduce disfunction and to develop well-being and health through growth, independence, interdependence, and skill acquisition. This can be done through self-help strategies, therapy, group work, and community organizing, while strategies for increasing inclusion can occur through advocacy and policy practice, all of which are well articulated in social work literature. Our science will, therefore, focus on the rigorous development and effectiveness of these change strategies using methods from intervention science (see Fraser, Richman, Galinsky, & Day, 2009; Research on Social Work Practice, #5 2010) and implementation science (see Research on Social Work Practice, #5 2009).
The second population issue (below the bold line in Figure 1) concerns the general population focus or the public’s health. This is based on the notion that all individuals experience ruptures in their lives, careers, marriages, families, institutions, and systems, and these ruptures receive a scientific focus from social work in terms of understanding and change strategies. The SoSW will focus on individuals, groups, families, neighborhoods, organizations, communities with notions of health, and disfunction at all levels. In terms of general population understanding, our science focuses on how individual and social factors interact in producing disfunction at multiple levels. At the individual level, this disfunction may never become a diagnosable clinical condition as in Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), but it can reflect considerable disfunction and consequence. The V codes in DSM reflect these problems in living that are a focus of attention while not reaching a diagnostic threshold. But, importantly, the lens of scientific understanding in social work is on how individual and social factors interact to produce well-being and health at multiple levels.
In terms of general population change strategies, our science focuses on reducing disfunction through crisis intervention, individual therapies, marital therapy, family therapy, school-based interventions, child welfare, workplace interventions, and advocacy. We also focus on increasing well-being and health through prevention, psychoeducation, lifestyle and wellness skills, management development, organizational coaching, and advocacy. There is research and practice literature in all of these areas from social work practitioners and researchers.
The dual scientific focus in social work includes the general case and the subpopulations. The professional and scientific mission of social work with the subpopulations who are marginalized is inherent and manifest. The focus on the general case, or the public’s health, has been less well embraced and articulated, but it is explicit in the NASW mission statement. This combined population focus suggests an elaboration of the scientific mission of social work that will be reflected in the questions asked and the methods used.
These revisions and elaborations of the original SoSW framework are the result of feedback from informal and organized discussions of this framework (e.g., Brekke & Marsh, 2013). As originally stated, the goal of the framework was to generate discussion, controversy, and hopefully progress through the refinement to this framework, or the generation of other approaches altogether. However, even with this proposed framework for a SoSW, there is another fundamental issue that needs to be addressed: Can social work be a scientific discipline?
Social Work as an Integrative Scientific Discipline
Having refined the proposed framework for a SoSW, a second issue concerns the implications of this framework (or any SoSW framework) for how social work is defined. Specifically, it is important to consider the question of whether we can define social work as a scientific discipline. To do this, several issues need to be addressed: (i) the definitions of a profession and a scientific discipline; (ii) types of knowledge; (iii) types of science; and (iv) supradisciplinary scientific activities. In doing this, a distinction between core scientific disciplines and integrative scientific disciplines will be proposed, and it will be argued that social work should be defined both as a profession and as an integrative scientific discipline.
Profession and Scientific Discipline defined
A profession has been defined as a paid occupation that involves prolonged training and a formal qualification process based upon a systematic and scientific body of knowledge and anchored in the creation of legal boundaries (e.g., a scope of practice; Dall’Alba, 2009). Social work has been defined as a profession with a professional organization (NASW) educational certification (Council on Social Work Education [CSWE]) and licensing protocols that vary by state. This provides the definition and sanctioning of the social work profession.
An academic scientific discipline is the organization of learning and the systematic production of new knowledge with several features: (1) a particular object of research, (2) a body of accumulated specialist knowledge referring to the object of research, (3) theories and concepts that effectively organize the accumulated specialist knowledge, (4) using specific terminologies adjusted to the research object, (5) using research methods according to the discipline’s specific research requirements, and (6) institutional manifestation in the form of subjects taught at universities or colleges, respective academic departments, and associated professional organizations (Krishnan, 2009). While most accredited schools of social work (or departments) reside within universities, social work has not defined itself as a scientific discipline. As I have argued, the place for research and science in social work has been expanding (Brekke, 2012), but in order to define social work as a scientific discipline, several other considerations need to be addressed.
Types of Scientific Knowledge
Sommerfeld (2014) uses the work of Bunge (1988) and defines three types of scientific knowledge: factual, nomological, and technological. These types of knowledge are relevant to how scientific disciplines are defined. Factual knowledge concerns the products of observation and research. For example, we know that the temperature at which water boils varies based on altitude; or, there is the finding that objective and subjective quality of life are only modestly related in population studies (Cummins, 2000). These facts are based on repeated observations in physics and sociologically oriented research.
Nomological knowledge concerns theories or laws that describe and explain the relations between facts; it explains the cohesion of an entity and the underlying mechanisms, dynamics, or regularities in observed or latent phenomena. Theories can be called nomological if they describe and explain the regularities among related phenomena, reveal or construct the underlying mechanisms that explain their operation, and suggest why a mechanism does not work in all cases. For example, the Ideal Gas Law provides an explanation (in the form of an equation) of the relationship between water’s boiling point and altitude. In terms of objective and subjective quality of life, the strength of the relationship between them has been determined to be nonlinear, moderated by extreme (low) living conditions. The theoretical mechanism used to explain this is the homeostatic control of subjective quality of life which makes subjective and objective quality of life largely independent and modestly related. However, this is interrupted by an objectively low threshold of life condition that overrides the homeostatic mechanism and thereby strengthens the relationship between objective and subjective quality of life (Cummins, 2000). This is nomological knowledge that concerns general laws or the explanation of facts and phenomena of interest, which are embedded in theories.
Finally, technological knowledge applies nomological knowledge, or builds new knowledge, directly relevant to promoting changes in life conditions. For example, technological knowledge would concern building a device to promote boiling water practices and sterilization of eating utensils to prevent water-borne disease in different geographic locations; or, developing and testing social interventions for improving the quality of life for poor urban children. As Sommerfeld (2014) suggests, technology is value laden and rests on the use of factual and nomological knowledge for science that is action oriented and aims to promote change (take action) in life situations. These types of knowledge are also reflected in different types of scientific activity.
Types of Science
Bunge (1988) makes a distinction between basic science, applied science, and technology that is relevant to our discussion. The fundamental distinction is not in worldview, the mathematical tools, or the rigor of the methods, since they all share those. The basic distinction is in their aims. Basic science is concerned with fundamental cognitive problems: the regularities and laws that govern the phenomena of interest, whether that is molecules, mammals, or economic models. The search is for theories and models that represent progressively truer partial reconstructions of reality (Bunge, 2009b). Bunge then argues that applied science differs from basic science in three ways. First, the applied scientist generates new knowledge by building on, enriching, and exploiting the knowledge of basic science. Second, the focus of applied science is narrower. Rather than studying basic human cognition, the focus might be on cognitive patterns in different mental illnesses. Third, applied science always has a potentially practical target, even if it is long term and not immediately applicable. The target might be the issue of forestation of particular trees, or understanding compound interactions relevant to drug development, or human learning mechanisms that could be relevant to behavioral treatment development.
Technology is distinct from both basic and applied science. The aim of technology is to control and change reality through the design and use of artificial (constructed) systems and plans of action based on scientific knowledge and methods. All technology involves invention of the artifact, rigorous testing of it, implementation, and eventual dissemination. Applied to the field of behavioral interventions, this would involve the theories and methods of intervention science and implementation science, as discussed above. Bunge (1985, cited in Sommerfeld, 2014) also defines four criteria that a technology (for this purpose, we will call the technology a “treatment”) has to fulfill: (a) it has to be based on verified theories that explain the causal factors that lead to the emergence of a problem of concern in a field of practice, (b) the treatment has to be described and there has to be at least plausibility that this treatment affects the causal factors, (c) a scientific explanation of how the treatment affects the causal factors (how the treatment works) is developed, and (d) the treatment has been proved effective. This definition implies the use of rigorous scientific methods and the combination of factual and nomothetic knowledge in technology. The primary goal of technology is not to understand the world but to actively use scientific methods to change it in planful ways based on understandings revealed from basic and applied science.
Describing the types of knowledge and science lays a critical foundation for defining social work as a scientific discipline. However, there is also a growing awareness of the importance of supradisciplinary scientific activity.
Supradisciplinary Scientific Activity
Recently, in social work and across many disciplines, there has been an increasing focus on interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and transdisciplinary research activity (e.g., Nurius & Kemp, 2012). It is being argued that a supradisciplinary team approach to research and science can yield breakthroughs about complex problems in basic or applied sciences and lead to technological advances that could not come from a single discipline working in isolation. The definitions of these supradisciplinary terms have been debated, but here are summary attempts at defining them.
Multidisciplinary research is several academic disciplines working in parallel from their disciplinary-specific individual bases to address a shared problem. This could result in distinctive approaches to a single problem. Interdisciplinary research is several disciplines working jointly from their discipline-specific bases integrating or combining perspectives, concepts, and/or theories to address a common problem. Transdisciplinary research is a collaboration between several academic disciplines to address a complex problem. It requires that scientists transcend their disciplinary boundaries to build a new approach made up of novel concepts, theories, or methods that reflect this blending of perspectives (e.g., Hirsch et al., 2008; Rosenfeld, 1992).
While the nuances of these definitions might be more or less relevant to the actual practice of shared disciplinary research, it is clear that some of this work is more characteristic of basic science, applied science, or technology. It is also clear that as the problem focus becomes more applied and technological, the focus on real-world problems and problems of living becomes more acute.
Social Work as a Scientific Discipline
The coaptation of the four notions discussed above can be used to propose a definition of core and integrative scientific disciplines (see Table 1). The core scientific disciplines push a depth of science within well-defined (and evolving) boundaries. For example, sociology, psychology, economics, mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology are core scientific disciplines. These disciplines typically grow from the social science and natural science departments in universities. The central issue is not solving problems in living but building a body of theory and research that targets the understanding of phenomena that the discipline defines as central to their knowledge. In biology, one example would be cellular mechanisms, from psychology it could be the mechanisms of human learning, from sociology it could be group dynamics. Core disciplines ask how to develop, refine, and test theory for understanding specific phenomena, and by necessity they are removed from essential concerns about how this knowledge can be applied to solving problems in living. These disciplines can be basic or applied, and they focus primarily on factual and nomological knowledge. For example, there is basic neuroscience and applied neuroscience. Basic neuroscience has studied learning in sea slugs and tries to isolate basic molecular mechanisms of learning that might generalize to humans (Ho, Lee, & Martin, 2011). Applied neuroscience, for example, generates insights about learning patterns in mentally ill adults (Green & Junjhee, 2012). In core disciplines, supradisciplinary activities can be done but they are not essential or required. A technological focus is not essential but can be used, for example, in clinical psychology to develop treatments for mental disorders. High levels of scientific rigor are essential to the core disciplines.
Defining Features of Core and Integrative Scientific Disciplines.
The integrative scientific disciplines, on the other hand, seek to push disciplinary boundaries for solving “problems in living.” The integrative disciplines are defined by their explicit focus on the application of disciplinary knowledge in integrative ways, applied to selected problems in living. Their focus is always applied and technological. When this is done we have, for example, medical science, social work science, public health, and engineering. Integrative disciplines provide new applications of theory to problems in life, the development of new integrative theories and models that span disciplines and are based on the foundation of strong disciplinary knowledge from core disciplinary sciences. The integrative disciplines ask how we can use existing theory, or create integrative theories, to guide us in solving critical problems in life. What is a critical problem is defined by each integrative discipline. Supradisciplinary research activity is a defining feature of the integrative sciences. The integrative disciplines derive from and are often allied with professions: for example, medicine, public health, social work, business, occupational therapy, engineering, and nursing. This provides the “problems in living” focus that distinguishes them from the core disciplines. A final feature of the integrative scientific disciplines is that they are essentially engaged in the worlds they study. High levels of scientific rigor are essential to the Integrative Disciplines, and the focus on engagement and problems in living requires that a range of designs and methods be used to deal with complex human interactions in situ.
It is important to note that the integrative scientific disciplines, like the core disciplines, will each have a distinct identity that is based on a framework of constructs, domains, and characteristics as articulated in Brekke (2012, 2014; see Kajikawa, 2008, for an example from sustainability science). While the debate should continue as to whether we are moving in the right direction with the proposed framework, being an integrative scientific discipline is only one aspect of defining a SoSW. A critical task is to continue to distinguish social work from other integrative scientific disciplines.
In a somewhat parallel argument about the essential qualities of social work as a scientific discipline, Sommerfeld (2014) proposes that social work is a transdisciplinary action science. He points out that most, if not all, other professions have coevolved with a closely related scientific discipline. In the United States, this includes, for example, medicine, nursing, occupational therapy, and engineering (Brekke, 2012). He suggests that an action science provides a blending of scientific (technology) and practice knowledge considerations, which is essential for sound professional action in social work. Further, that it establishes “… the construction of a professional knowledge base as the main goal of a science of social work.” While there are some differences in focus and in the ways that we have articulated and supported our positions on a SoSW, the fundamental proposition of social work as a scientific discipline links the two approaches.
Another point is critical. This is not an argument for the dissolution of disciplinary boundaries or of disciplines themselves. There are certain problems that can be best solved within a core discipline, for example, mathematics, statistics, or psychology, which require a depth of discipline-specific theoretical knowledge and method. Core disciplines are also essential for the integrative disciplines to thrive, and for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary scientific work to occur, make sense, and yield progress. But problems in life, for example, how to ameliorate poverty, provide clean water to third-world villages, or help juveniles in the justice system to rehabilitate, can best be solved using integrative approaches that move knowledge from the core disciplines to the integrative disciplines, and build new scientific knowledge within and across fields such as social work, medicine, engineering, and public health.
The Definition of Social Work
This discussion provides a basis for arguing that social can be defined as an integrative scientific discipline. Using the SoSW framework proposed above, social work as an integrative science has core constructs, domains, and essential characteristics that distinguish it from other integrative sciences.
Therefore, using the propositions discussed above, the definition of social work is 2-fold: (1) the social work profession with trained and licensed social workers who apply a range of theories and change strategies at the micro-, mezzo-, and macro levels, with a focus on vulnerable populations as well as the general well-being; (2) social work as an integrative scientific discipline with domains, core constructs, and characteristics, and a growing literature critically explicating its foundations. This definition expands the scope and purpose of social work. But the notion of the integrative sciences with a primary focus on applied science and technology provides the frame for understanding and solving problems in living that are central to the historical and professional mission of social work. Social work as an integrative science allows for the blending of values and scientific rigor that are crucial for maintaining the identity of social work, and for increasing its relevance and capacity for solving critical problems in living.
A Final Issue: Which Preposition?
The framework articulated here proposes a SoSW. There are other prepositions that could be used: science and social work, science in social work, or even other phrases such as scientific social work or social work science. There is little doubt that social work should use scientific knowledge in its approach to practice, that it should use scientific methods in its research, and that scientific knowledge should infuse its education and practice guidelines (Fong, 2012). An SoSW suggests that we have a framework that can yield a discrete disciplinary scientific approach that is meaningful both within and outside social work, and further, that social work makes scope of knowledge claims (for a science) as well as scope of practice claims (for a profession) that define who we are and who we want to be.
Footnotes
Author’s Note
This article was presented at the Islandwood Roundtable on Science in Social Work, July 17–18, 2013, Bainbridge Island, WA. It was invited and accepted by the Editor.
Note
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.