[Pattern-language] Patterns for Social Work

[Doug Schuler]

1. I neglected (I think) to say that the pattern language needs a title (provisional at first). Yours sounds like Critical Social Work. (imo)

2. Please let us know if there are domains out there where people want to focus. We have some new people — and others who haven't let us know what they're up to in the pattern language world in quite awhile. 

Thanks!




> On Oct 21, 2015, at 9:18 AM, Alexander Fink <finkx082 at umn.edu> wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> My first time posting to the listserv, so I hope I'm following proper protocol here...
> 
> TLDR; met Doug, excited about pattern languages, want to use them to open up thinking about possible practices in social work / youth work, could use your thinking, ideas, and experiences. thank you!
> 
> Full version:
> I met Doug in Limerick this summer and was really excited to be introduced to the pattern languages work he's done. I was especially enthusiastic about the pattern language cards. 
> 
> I'm a youth worker and social worker and most of the work I do involves community organizing with young people. I often find it challenging to communicate about this work in a professional context that speaks in terms of evidence-based practice, randomized clinical trials, and "gold standard" research. My work adopts a critical angle, challenging structural injustice. Not only do the models talked about in my professional context not work to accomplish the purposes I orient toward, the methodologies used to research their "evidence" often play into colonialist and racist anti-patterns that I believe typically do much more harm than good.
> 
> My professional context has several databases of so-called best practices like the Cochrane Collaborative <http://www.cochrane.org/> and the Campbell Collaboration <http://www.campbellcollaboration.org/lib/>. These are touted to represent the best of my profession's knowledge about practice. Unfortunately, though the profession claims to include the kind of work I do, this work doesn't show up anywhere in their register of "best practice". Several years ago a colleague challenged me to create a similar database for the kind of work that I do. I responded that, though an interesting challenge, it would have to look very different than a "database" - that's not how knowledge works for our kind of practice. Hence my excitement about the pattern languages cards - to me, they represent the beginning of the kind of database for critical social work / youth work practice that I'd like to see. Rather than prescriptive, they are descriptive. Rather than close down other possibilities, they open up conversation and possibility for further thinking, collaboration, and study. Rather than elevate a particular kind of knowledge over all others, they offer up multiple ways of knowing and engaging. 
> 
> I proposed to Doug that I'd like to explore the patterns with some of my colleagues that practice social work / youth work similarly to myself. I'm curious if anyone has any reflections on this, or experiences they could share. 
> 
> Thank you!
> Alex
>  
> Alex Fink
> alexfink.com
> 
>  
>  <http://alexfink.com/>
> Research Fellow
> Youth Studies, School of Social Work
> University of Minnesota
> 85 Peters Hall
> 1404 Gortner Avenue
> Saint Paul, MN 55108
> 
> Cell: 612-720-5549
> finkx082 at umn.edu <mailto:finkx082 at umn.edu>
> 
> Part of the legacy of people like Ella Baker and Septima Clark is a faith that ordinary people who learn to believe in themselves are capable of extraordinary acts, or better, of acts that seem extraordinary to us precisely because we have such an impoverished sense of the capabilities of ordinary people. - Charles Paine, 1995
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Douglas Schuler
douglas at publicsphereproject.org <mailto:douglas at publicsphereproject.org>
Twitter: @doug_schuler

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