[Pattern-language] Patterns for Social Work

[Alexander Fink]

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
[image: Alex Fink on about.me]
  <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

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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