Turning Ideas into Research. Barbara Fawcett
supervision is a relationship through which these abilities are explored and nurtured; however, they are usually developed, honed and explicitly linked to the practice/work context. The appraisal of situations in this way can also lead to the identification of potential research ideas that could be further developed.
Similarly, those professionals who draw on critical reflection in their work can use this process to identify potential areas for research. Fook et al. (2006) identify key elements of critical reflection and reflective practice that include ‘a process … of examining assumptions … embedded in actions or experience; a linking of these assumptions with many different origins … a review and re-evaluation of these according to relevant … criteria and a reworking of concepts and practice based on this re-evaluation’ (p. 12). Critical reflection approaches in the human services field, in particular, aim to develop new approaches and understandings about practice, and workers can also use these approaches to develop research ideas.
Many workers engage in continuing education activities in their workplace as part of their ongoing professional development. Journal clubs and book clubs have been a traditional way to keep up to date with current literature about practice innovation. In extending to research literature, these small groups can assist in the development of research literacy. Finding common ground in both language and evaluation can be a useful introduction to the engagement and critical appraisal of research literature in partnership with colleagues. These groups can be led by workers themselves or can be in partnership with others, for example, academics from their own and related disciplines.
The small-group partnership, as a foundational activity for future research, has been successfully reported in a number of studies. Fouché and Lunt (2009) report on an academic practitioner partnership in New Zealand using a groupwork model aimed at ‘strengthening research mindedness and research activity in social service settings’ (p. 61). Similarly, Fouché and Light (2011) reflect on a small-group activity where participants are involved in ‘a conversational process that helps groups to engage in constructive dialogue around critical questions, to build personal relationships, and to foster collaborative learning’. These examples present a model of engagement for practitioners, facilitated and supported by academic partners, that fosters relationship building as the cornerstone of future research partnerships.
The workplace and policy context of practice can often provide opportunities to undertake small-scale studies that aim to review or evaluate an aspect of the service. These are often good starting points for workplace collaborations. Let us now turn to an example to illustrate a workplace peer research collaboration.
A number of workers in a family support agency continually complain to their supervisors about the lateness of or failure to attend by some clients, blaming this on clients’ lack of responsibility, inability to organize themselves and lack of respect for the service. Managers decide to undertake a small research study into the problem. A quantitative study is undertaken, gathering statistical data about attendance, lateness and failure to attend by clients. The results indicate that there are several repeat offenders and the reported problems have been verified or proven by the data collected in the study. One of the outcomes of the study is the recommendation to discontinue with some clients.
A group of workers interested in evaluative research who are also experiencing the problems reported, suggest to agency managers that another research study be undertaken using a different research approach. They suggest a review of the appointment-making process for clients, the waiting list and the reception desk experience of clients with and without young children. The project uses a range of different methods, including document analysis (agency documents/pamphlets about how to make an appointment and their availability in other languages); public transport timetables for accessibility; the availability of child care; analysis of the booking/interview schedules; observation; and experiential activities, that is, testing the process by stepping through it as ‘a client’.
The results indicated a number of systemic difficulties for clients that resulted in their lateness or inability to attend, rather than their unwillingness to do so.
The results of this evaluative peer collaboration provided significant insights into the ‘problem’. The study outcomes included a reconceptualization of the situation in a way that led to changes and improvements in agency practice. Following implementation of suggested changes in agency practice, an ongoing review was conducted which demonstrated that the problem was significantly reduced. No clients were discontinued from the service.
If another element in this scenario was that a majority of the clients were Indigenous people, we might further reflect on the world-view that this collaborative research represented. What assumptions have been made here about clients? What is the predominant story that is perpetuating a negative cultural perspective? From an emancipatory research view, Bessarab (2013) suggests that although well-intentioned, non-Aboriginal people undertaking research in the Indigenous domain require cultural supervision to enable them to look at different strategies that will work more effectively. In discussing a similar example she goes on to state:
blaming Aboriginal people for not showing up at interviews or programs, or applying for positions, emerged as a routine behaviour of their practice. It is not until we unpack the why behind people not showing up or applying for jobs; reframing it within the context of power, history, race and control[,] that workers have been able to understand how they have been complicit in continuing to name the Aboriginal person as a problem, which is a loaded colonial construct that works to keep Aboriginal people powerless. (p. 88)
Some of these themes will be explored further in Chapter 7 on evaluative researching.
The pursuit of research relevance for practice has been one of the drivers in the emergence of the practice-based research (PBR) movement originating in the United States and now an important example of practice-driven research partnerships. The work of academic researcher, Irwin Epstein, clearly demonstrates the trajectory and immediate adoption by practitioners of this approach to research (Epstein, 2001, 2009, 2010; Dodd and Epstein, 2012). In a deliberate repositioning of ‘practice’ preceding ‘research’, Epstein and others have developed a collaborative research model in which ‘practitioners and researchers are full partners in every stage’ (Dodd and Epstein, 2012: 199). According to Dodd and Epstein (2012: 15), ‘PBR seeks to introduce research into practice in ways that accommodate to pre-existing practice considerations, values and ethics’.
One of the first significant studies published in the field was that of Zilberfein et al. (2001), a retrospective study of liver transplant patients at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York. The study also drew on the ‘data-mining’ technique of interrogating existing workplace databases as a research tool. PBR partnerships have since grown in reach and impact and have resulted in publications in refereed international professional and research journals by practitioners and academics (Joubert, 2006; Pockett, 2009; Pockett et al., 2010). Clinical data mining can be used by many disciplines: for example, Giles et al. (2011) published an innovative collection of studies undertaken by physiotherapists, occupational therapists, nurses, speech pathologists and social workers; physiotherapy researchers (Henderson et al., 2011) used clinical data-mining techniques to develop and trial codesets for diagnosis, priority-setting and assessing treatment outcomes; and in a study by Bone et al. (2011), speech pathology researchers used the method to explore voice abnormalities in patients with thyroid disease.
The development of practitioner research has followed slightly different pathways in Europe, Australasia and the USA. A comprehensive, critical review of this development has been undertaken by Shaw and Lunt (2011, 2012) and Uggerhøj (2011) who noted that practitioner research has been traditionally characterized by small-scale studies often focusing on aspects of good or desirable practice with underlying tension between it and university/academic research. Shared research and practice techniques such as reflexivity have provided a degree of common ground. They go on to comment that practitioner research in the USA has consistently drawn on scientific methods, with the prominence of intervention studies being a defining feature. We would suggest that the appeal of the PBR approach might also be understood in part as a response to these developments.
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