<div dir="ltr"><div><div><div><div>Hi all,<br><br></div>My first time posting to the listserv, so I hope I'm following proper protocol here...<br><br></div><div>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!<br></div><div><br></div>Full version:<br>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. <br><br></div>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.<br><br></div><div>My professional context has several databases of so-called best practices like the <a href="http://www.cochrane.org/">Cochrane Collaborative</a> and the <a href="http://www.campbellcollaboration.org/lib/">Campbell Collaboration</a>. 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. <br><br></div><div>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. <br><br></div><div>Thank you!<br></div><div>Alex<br></div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><div dir="ltr"><div><a href="http://alexfink.com" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;font-size:14px;font-family:proxima-nova-1,proxima-nova-2,Tahoma,Helvetica,Verdana,sans-serif;vertical-align:baseline;color:rgb(43,130,173);text-decoration:none;line-height:18.200000762939453px" target="_blank"><table style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;font-weight:inherit;font-style:inherit;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;border-spacing:0px" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;font-weight:inherit;font-style:inherit;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"><tr style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;font-weight:inherit;font-style:inherit;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"><td style="padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;font-style:inherit;font-size:0px;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;height:30px"> </td></tr><tr style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;font-weight:inherit;font-style:inherit;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"><td style="padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;font-style:inherit;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:top;line-height:1" align="left" valign="top"><div style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;font-weight:bold;font-style:inherit;font-size:18px;font-family:proxima-nova-1,Proxima-Nova,Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;vertical-align:baseline;line-height:1;color:rgb(51,51,51)">Alex Fink</div><div style="margin:3px 0px 0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;font-weight:inherit;font-style:inherit;font-size:12px;font-family:proxima-nova-1,Proxima-Nova,Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;vertical-align:baseline">alexfink.com</div></td></tr><tr style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;font-weight:inherit;font-style:inherit;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"><td style="padding:8px 0px 0px;border:0px;outline:0px;font-style:inherit;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:top;line-height:1" align="left" valign="top"><div style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;font-weight:inherit;font-style:inherit;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;text-align:right;height:4px;background-color:rgb(197,208,224)"><img src="http://d13pix9kaak6wt.cloudfront.net/signature/colorbar.png" alt="Alex Fink on about.me" style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;font-weight:inherit;font-style:inherit;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;float:right;display:block" height="4" width="88"></div></td></tr><tr style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;font-weight:inherit;font-style:inherit;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"><td style="padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;font-style:inherit;font-size:0px;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;height:20px"> </td></tr></tbody></table></a></div><div>Research Fellow<br>Youth Studies, School of Social Work</div>
<div>University of Minnesota</div>
<div>85 Peters Hall</div><div>1404 Gortner Avenue</div><div>Saint Paul, MN 55108</div>
<div><br></div>
<div>Cell: 612-720-5549</div>
<div><a href="mailto:finkx082@umn.edu" target="_blank">finkx082@umn.edu</a></div><div><br></div><blockquote style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">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<br></blockquote></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>
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