Reclaiming the Practical: Formal and Substantive Rationality in Social Work Practice

Abstract

In this article, I argue that the starting point for inquiry about practice knowledge should be the empirical question, How does the competent practitioner go about knowing "in" practice? Using the work of Jilrgen Habermas, Michael Polyani, Donald Schon, and others, I advance a claim for the nonderivative status of substantive rationality alongside the technical in the construction of professional knowledge. I maintain that the researcher and practitioner have functionally different relationships to the practice arena and, therefore, differing cognitive interests for their involvement in that arena. These interests are assumed decisive for (1) categories in which knowledge is structured, (2) methods by which truth claims are authenticated, (3) the type of discourse in which knowledge is communicated, and (4) the mode in which knowledge is available to the knower.