DANASWAC is an international group of researchers who share an interest to study the practices of social work and counselling by using discourse, narrative and ethnographic approaches
The DANASWAC group has academic members from 12 countries (Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Great Britain, Netherland, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Slovenia, Switzerland, United States).
Our themes include
- Seeing the entities as social constructed rather than ready formed
- Importance of a focus on everyday practices, drawing on traditions of ethnomethodology, discourse and narrative theories and research
- Promoting discourse, narrative and ethnographic approaches in social work research, practice and education
- Promoting a dialogue between ideas and evidence, when research data is being analysing
- Research to address the dilemmas of practitioners and clients, concerned to identify, examine and debate what is seen as ‘good practice’ and ‘success’ as well as ‘mistakes’ and ‘traps’
- Widen what counts as ‘evidence’ in assessing practice
Influenced by constructionist and interactional theories, promoting dialogues between clients and professionals in agencies in which there is dialogue between workers and managers, and educators and students - Assisting practitioners to describe and publicly present their work in their own words, thus resisting formats which restrict workers from discovering their own practice
- Assisting clients to give a voice to points of view
- Encourage practitioners and clients to become researchers to overcome the distinctions between researchers and subjects of research, as well as supporting research at a distant where appropriate
- Promote multi-disciplinary and multi-professional discussions to generate new ideas
- Promoting international collaboration