Paradigmatic Foundations of Social Work Intervention
Paradigm in Everyday Use: Constructing and Interpreting Reality
A paradigm defines how knowledge constructs and interprets the world, influencing the mental map that builds and modifies the course of life. This map is primarily influenced by experience, education, and information that shape our understanding of reality.
The Scientific Paradigm (Kuhn’s Approach)
A paradigm is defined as a set of rules that permit operating with knowledge, allowing us to explain what is real. These rules determine how problems are resolved and define the limits of those solutions.
“Philosophical, epistemological, and ontological beliefs shared by the scientific community regarding the way science is done.”
The scientific perspective identifies two key moments:
- Normal Science: The period where the paradigm is stable.
- The Period of Revolutions: The period of change.
Scientific development is neither purely continuous nor purely discontinuous. There are linear periods, but the periods of revolution bring substantial changes, implying a paradigm shift. A scientific revolution implies a complete change to a new paradigm, often incompatible with the previous one.
The scientific community organizes and structures itself around a paradigm—a shared set of convictions about how to approach a problem.
Paradigms in Social Sciences
In the social sciences, a paradigm is a general conceptual framework for the study of social objects. It defines the principal methods, problems, and topics that social sciences must investigate.
Regarding the social sciences, some affirm that they are still in a pre-paradigmatic period, or that their entire development falls within the conformation of a single paradigm.
Key Questions for Social Work (TS)
The importance of paradigms lies in the fact that they allow us to focus on the same reality from different perspectives, defining our ways of understanding and intervention. Social Work must address:
- What epistemological questions does Social Work address?
- Which paradigms does Social Work use?
- What is the object of Social Work?
- What are the levels of intervention in Social Work?
- What are the models of intervention in Social Work?
Major Paradigms in Social Work
The Scientific, Positivist, or Quantitative Paradigm (PCT)
This paradigm is also known as the technological or sociological tradition. It utilizes what it calls the universal and general method of science, profession, and technology.
This paradigm predominates because Social Work is a product of “institutionalist professions exercised within formal organizations, governmental and private.” This institutionalism operates under two main aspects:
- Social Policy: This is the framework that guides actions (e.g., social welfare, Ministry of Health).
- Legislation: Criminal, civil, and social legislation that provides the regulatory framework of social relations. This legislation is imperative and coactive.
The Phenomenological Paradigm
The Phenomenological Paradigm does not question the institutional issue but attaches great importance to practice, not only academics. The vision that the social worker has of reality and its uptake should depend on the paradigm utilized in practice.
This paradigm is located closer to reality, seeking to establish linkages with people in need from their own views. However, in practice, the solution to the problems that affect people does not depend solely on them, but also on the resources available in the social structure and institutional environment.
Studying and Intervening in Social Reality (The PCT Perspective)
The Positivist Paradigm (PCT) argues that social reality can be studied and addressed in spite of its complexity, for which it must take into account two aspects:
Aspect 1: Partitioning Reality
Social reality should be studied by partitioning it into parts called variables, empirical evidence, and demonstrable social reality. The social worker acts on these variables and the social structure.
Aspect 2: Ideational Construct
Social reality is conceived and understood by each paradigm as an ideational construct. The PCT, modeled on physics and technology, argues that social reality is entirely inconsistent with biological physics, but it does possess ideational consistency (consistency of ideas).
Social reality is a conceptual development at the individual psychological level and the psychosocial level (collective unconscious).