Browsing by Subject "koulukuraattori"

In my thesis, I examine how the professional expertise of school social workers is constructed in official documents. My research material consists of the 'Memorandum of the Working Group preparing a reform of the pupil welfare legislation' (Sosiaali ja terveysministeriön selvityksiä 2006: 33) and the thirty-six comments issued in response by different organisations and institutions. I analysed these texts using rhetorical discourse analysis relying mainly on Jonathan Potter’s terminology of rhetoric devices. The main concept of my research is social work expertise. As far as the question of social work expertise is concerned, my research is theory inspired. On the basis of the theoretical literature, I identified three major discourses: the modernist, the managerialist and the postmodernist. Modernist and managerialist understandings of expertise are seen as being in opposition to social work values, whereas postmodernist perspectives are considered representing such essential social work values, as the respect for individual experience and difference, the acknowledgement of uncertainty and ambiguity as well as the commitment to indeterminacy, dialogue and reflexivity. The literature on school social work describes it as an essentially postmodern occupation, as reflexivity and multivocality are considered central to it. Nonetheless, in the documents analysed, postmodernist perspectives are quite neglected. Instead, school social work is described mainly in either managerialist or modernist terms. Managerialist constructions can be connected to service providers’ interests and they lead to the downgrading of the profession as far as educational requirements are concerned. Modernist construction of school social work can be connected to the professional aspirations of school social workers. Although professionalism as such is not in opposition to postmodernist understandings of social work, here it is discussed in terms of classical professionalism stressing the importance of a common social science knowledge base and the academic requirements of the work. It is argued that because of these features university education is indispensable to school social work. In the dispute between these two positions, postmodernist features of school social work are overlooked. Keywords: school social work, social work expertise, rhetorical discourse analysis, official documents