First, we could see how the diagnosis of attachment failure, born as it was in a history of forced separation, continues to reproduce forced separation of Black families in different guises. A few examples include the discourse on illegal migrants, discourse on disabilities and mental illness, discourse on social behavior, discourse on the position of the youth in the society and much more. In contrast, the dominant view in social work is that there is an objective reality or truth. Also, she was well-informed about the ways that prevention and risk education inherently set up a trajectory of sex as normatively heterosexual, age appropriate sexual experience. I understand these vantage points in the two case studies I have described in the four ways: 1) an historical consciousness, 2) access to understanding what is left out of discourses in use, 3) understanding of how actors are positioned in discourse, all leading to: 4) a new perspective which exposes the gap between the construction of practice possibilities and social justice values, thus allowing for field of limited and constrained choices which may either narrow the gap, or make clear the impossibility of options and choice in the particular case. Such critical analysis allows us to contemplate a major question at the heart of her practice: How can historical consciousness, left out of psychological discourses, contribute to forming relations of solidarity with our clients, thus enabling practice better aligned with justice? Its evident that discourse is the compilation of particular ideologies and beliefs concerning a certain bracket in the society. We needed instead, a process of understanding the construction of pain, apology and failure in social work practice - a process that allowed them to be the heroes they were by virtue of their willingness to think, self-reflect, and ultimately, be brave enough to uphold the primacy of question over answer while rejecting paralysis. Discourse is a coherently-arranged, serious and systematic treatment of a topic in spoken or written language. While reflective practice held promise for liberating professions from misconceptions about the interrelationship between theory and practice, following Schons (1987) introduction of reflective practice, theorists began to identify the problem of incorporating critical analysis into reflective practice ((Brookfield, 1996; Fook, 1999; Mezirow, 1998). We want to use our work as a contribution, as something of value to the world. For some time now, I have been interested in the role of critical reflection in social work practice (Rossiter, 1996, 2001). We worked to identify oppositions between competing discourses. Her mother had immigrated years before, leaving her in the care of her paternal grandparents and a stepfather. Dr. Nicki Lisa Cole is a sociologist. In order to provide a frame for critical reflection on their cases, I chose four elements of associated with discourse analysis: 1) Identification of ruling discourses in the case studies; 2) the oppositions and contradictions between discourses; 3) positions for actors created by discourses which in turn shape perspectives and actions; 4) and the constructed nature of experience itself. Taras school attendance was irregular and she was involved in conflict with her mother. After all, says Stephen Brookfield, Experience can teach us habits of bigotry, stereotyping and disregard for significant but inconvenient information. Social Identities A social identity is both internally constructed and externally applied, occurring simultaneously. Educators from oneTILT define social identity as having these three characteristics: Exists (or is consistently used) to bestow power, benefits, or disadvantage. As Cannella ( 1997 ) and many others have discussed, these discourses construct childhood as a universal stage of life, where the process of childhood is through the development of a predetermined and . This is noted as an area for development. O'Brien, C.-A. The case studies were stories of clients whom they remembered with a sense of failure or apology or shame. Ronni discussed it with her supervisor who felt obliged to inform other school personnel, to Ronnis dismay. In this kind of opposition, chances for dialogue about complicated issues, chances for Ronni to promote change through communication of her perspective, and to use the experience of the school personnel for her own learning and growth were limited. Discourse Markers 'Discourse markers' is the term linguists give to the little words like 'well', 'oh', 'but', and 'and' that break our speech up into parts and show the relation between parts. Discourse analysis can provide new vantage points from which to reconstruct practice theory in ways that are more consciously oriented to our social justice commitments. This is why it is critical reflection. https://www.thoughtco.com/discourse-definition-3026070 (accessed March 2, 2023). Ronni came to see that this discursive position cancelled out the possibility of calling on school personnel as resources for Tara - resources that had the potential to protect her as a young girl with particular vulnerabilities. Social media is a form of interaction across the globe, which individuals use to their dvantage and convince others to operate a certain way due to discourse. On Critical Reflection. With trepidation, I began the class by asking students to submit a case study from their practice experience that they would like to study collectively using a form of discourse analysis. Ms. M had immigrated to Canada when she was an adolescent. Foucault believed that discourse is created by those in power for specific reasons and is often used as a form of social control. When people wish to make social change, how we talk about people and their place in society cannot be left out of the process. Yet, as Linda Weinberg (Weinberg, 2004), in her work on the construction of practice judgments, notes that to locate ethics within the actions of individual practitioners, as if they were free to make decisions irrespective of the broader environment in which they work, is to neglect the significant ways that structures shape those constructions and to erect an impossible standard for those embodies practitioners mired in institutional regimes, working with finite resources and conflicting requirements and expectations (Weinberg, 2004, p.204). She engaged in low level self-mutilation and in sexual activity. Social work is a practice-based profession and an academic discipline that promotes social change and development, social cohesion, and the empowerment and liberation of people. These behaviors and patterns of speech and writing reflect the ideologies of those who have the most power in the society. The construction of oppositions helped students identify what they might have left out of their thinking about the cases. In A. Chambon & A. Irving & L. Epstein (Eds. For example: A dominant discourse of gender often positions women as gentle and men as active heroes. We administer welfare policies that cement poverty. ), Transforming social work practice: Postmodern critical perspectives. By providing social workers with a greater understanding of the history, epistemology, and key assumptions, this article aims to promote critical awareness and critical reflection on how the biomedical paradigm may be influencing health care environments. When you conduct discourse analysis, you might focus on: The purposes and effects of different types of language. Discourse refers to how we think and communicate about people, things, the social organization of society, and the relationships among and between all three. In doing so, we increase our choices or at least, our awareness regarding how we participate in the creation of culture. The failures of this fantasy cause us to suffer, to apologize, to despair. When we asked the critical question about what is left out of the story of attachment, it became clear that such a story is applied to individuals without regard to history and context. Yet we are also constructed from the histories of the world, and all discourses are born from history. Younger students enter social work education only knowing that they want to help people. Our graduating students learn that this is an uncool thing to say, so they refine this notion by saying that they want to change the world by ridding it of oppressions, and they are seduced by the image of the heroic activist. Van Dijk, 1995:353; Jahedi, Abdullah &Mukundan, 2014:29). These students either had significant work experience, or experience in a previous practicum to draw from. In taking up that alignment, she positioned herself as Taras protector her shield against school personnel with their regressive focus on prevention of acknowledgment of sexuality. as social subjects (e.g. These wordsreflect and reproduce very particular values, ideas, and beliefs about immigrants and U.S. citizensideas about rights, resources, and belonging. Taking the case of racially charged events in Ferguson, MO, and Baltimore, MD that played out from 2014 through 2015, we can also see Foucaults articulation of the discursive concept at play. As such, discourse, power, and knowledge are intimately connected, and work together to create hierarchies. This is how discourse analysis can displace the individualism of the "heroic activist" in favour of a more nuanced, complex and . When we reflect on what is left out of the discursive construction of our practice, we are stepping back from our immersion in such discourses as reality in order to examine whether our practice is being shaped in ways that contradict or constrain our commitments to social justice. For example, Ronni mobilizes a libratory discourses as a way of resisting prevention discourses. In our class, discourse analysis helped illuminate the production of feelings of individual shame and apology as responses to practice. Once these dependencies were uncovered, alternatives to opposition emerged. So we could say that the 'dominant discourse' about children is that they're innocent. How do some discourses oppose or resist power? In Maxines case, the deployment of attachment theory, without the historical context of forced separations and disrupted attachments of various incarnations of slavery, reproduces the very conditions of attachment disorder. 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