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Jean Gordon and Gillian Mackay

64 J. of Practice Teaching & Learning 14(3), pp.64-80. © w&b 2017

The Practice Pyramid: A model for integrating social work values, theory and practice

Jean Gordon1 and Gillian Mackay2

Abstract: The Practice Pyramid is a learning tool that supports social work students’ ability to integrate their understanding of personal and professional values, theory and practice during field placements. Although it has been used by practice educators in Scotland for over 20 years, it is not well known elsewhere and has yet to be evaluated. This paper, written by a practice educator and a student social worker, describes the Practice Pyramid and provides a case example to illustrate how it contributed to one student’s learning during a practice placement. Four factors that appear to contribute to its success are proposed: its model of pedagogy, the visual and accessible nature of the tool, flexibility and the support it gives to collaborative learning processes. It is suggested that the Practice Pyramid may usefully support learning in a range of social work and non social work contexts, and would benefit from more extensive evaluation of its role in supporting practice - theory integration.

Keywords: Practice Pyamid; social work students; field placements; Scotland; collaborative learning

1. Social Worker, Practice Educator, Independent Research and Training Consultant, Open University Tutor 2. Social Work Student

Address for correspondence: jean@jeangordon.co.uk

Date of first (online) publication:

The Practice Pyramid: A model for integrating social work values, theory and practice

65 J. of Practice Teaching & Learning 14(3), pp.64-80. © w&b 2017

Introduction

If social workers are to practice competently and effectively they have to be able to understand and make sense of people’s behaviour and the complex world we all live in. In order to do so they need an understanding of theories that help to explain behaviour and how society operates, and, crucially, be able to use this knowledge in their everyday work. There is, Howe suggests, ‘nothing as practical as a good theory’ (2013:399). However, bringing together theory and practical action is an aspect of social work education that many students, and, indeed, sometimes educators, find extremely challenging (Collingwood et al., 2008).

A number of different models, tools and approaches have been introduced in social work and other disciplines to support students’ ability to reflect and draw on relevant knowledge in their practice. This paper introduces one such model, the Practice Pyramid. It was devised by Maureen Ross when she was a social worker and practice educator at Aberdeen City Council. Described as ‘a model for integrating social work values, theory and practice’, the Practice Pyramid provides a focus for productive dialogue between practice educator and student (Ross, 2008:116-119). Since this was a collaborative project this article is jointly authored by a practice educator, Jean, and a social work student, Gillian who used the Practice Pyramid regularly during her 100 day student placement (see note on terminology below). We saw co-writing as one way of redressing, in a small way, the paucity of opportunities for practitioners to share their experiences of social work practice through publication (Boddy, Daly and Munch, 2012; Gordon et al., 2016). We will first set the context for the integration of practice and theory in social work education before introducing the model and explaining how we used it to analyse an example of social work practice. We will then explore the possible benefits of the model to students and practice educators, and suggest how the model might be evaluated and further developed.

A note on terminology

Many different terms are used to describe student practice learning and the title of the social work student’s supervisor whilst in a placement (or field) setting. In this paper, we use terms commonly used in the UK such as ‘social

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66 J. of Practice Teaching & Learning 14(3), pp.64-80. © w&b 2017

work placement’ and ‘practice learning opportunity’ to denote a period of time during which a student undertaking a social work qualification spends in a practice setting. We describe their supervisor, who takes a lead (but not exclusive) role in enabling the student to integrate their academic knowledge base with their experiences of day to day social work practice, and assesses the student’s capability to practice, as the ‘practice teacher’ or ‘practice educator’.

Learning about theory and practice

Social workers in Scotland have been required to achieve an honours degree in social work since 2004. Like the rest of the UK, Scotland’s honours degree consists of a combination of academic study and practice learning in the workplace. Students typically undertake two or three placements in contrasting social work settings. The central role of the placement in social work education is well established, and is a consistent feature of professional training in many countries (Brodie and Williams, 2013; Croisdale-Appleby, 2014). The practice learning literature identifies a key function of the placement as enabling students to integrate their theoretical with practice learning as ‘what is learnt at university comes to life’ (Domakin, 2015:400). In the UK the ability to integrate theoretical and practice knowledge is a requirement of the degree level qualification that students must achieve before they can register with one of the four bodies that regulate social work education. In Scotland, where the authors are located, the Standards in Social Work Education (SiSWE) (Scottish Executive, 2003) set out, alongside skills and values, the knowledge requirements of the qualification.

Social work students in Scotland are required to undertake 200 days of practice learning, during which time they must demonstrate their ability to ‘evaluate and use up to date knowledge of, and research into, social work practice’ (Ibid: 36). For a student embarking on a first practice placement this requirement may at first appear to be a straightforward question of applying the knowledge learnt in university to people’s lives in a logical way. However, not only are people’s lives complex and unpredictable, but the very broad and contested nature of the social work profession’s knowledge base makes identifying relevant knowledge a challenging task. Howe (2013:401) highlights the shifting sands and ‘fierce debates’ of sociology and psychology, the two disciplines on which social work draws most

The Practice Pyramid: A model for integrating social work values, theory and practice

67 J. of Practice Teaching & Learning 14(3), pp.64-80. © w&b 2017

frequently. This unsteady relationship between, on the one hand, theories of social science, the body of knowledge ring-fenced as ‘social work theory’ and, on the other, what is sometimes referred to as ‘practice wisdom’ can confuse, frustrate and even overwhelm, social work students (Collingwood et al., 2008, Frost, 2008).

However, students are not left alone to make sense of social work practice environments. A key site for reflective discussion and integration of practice and theory is the student supervision session. Typically in the UK, the student will have an either on-site or off-site practice teacher and regular one to one and/or group supervision opportunities. Students benefit from support to engage in a range of learning activities that enable them to link practice and theoretical knowledge through case analysis and reflective critique (Bogo, 2006). Davys and Beddoe (2009:932), writing from a New Zealand perspective, identify the effectiveness of clear, structured approaches that provide ‘a middle ground between didactic teaching and instruction in supervision on the one hand, and boundary-less reflection on the other’. A variety of models, tools and frameworks are used by practice educators and students with the aim of enabling students (and practising social workers) to find this middle ground. Most ask students to engage in reflective, open-minded and curious approaches to everyday practice and encourage the testing out and combining of their understanding of social work values, skills and theoretical knowledge. Without this breadth of understanding, students may, it is argued, fall back on defensive and procedural responses, and fail to make adequately informed decisions about intervening in people’s lives (Ruch, 2000, in Domakin, 2015).

Examples of models that provide opportunities for this kind of focused reflection on day to day practice include Kolb’s learning cycle (Kolb, 1984), the Reflective Learning Model (Davys and Beddoe, 2009), Critical Incident Analysis (Fook et al., 2000, Lister and Crisp, 2009) and written reflective accounts (Taylor, 2006). The well evaluated Three Stage Theory Model (Collingwood, 2005) is a pictorial model that helps learners bring academic and practice knowledge together through development of a Service User Profile and a Theory Circle. Evaluations of the model found that practice educators and students experience the tool as valuable and accessible, reporting increased confidence in their ability to integrate practice and theory after using it (Collingwood et al., 2008). The Practice Pyramid has some similar aims to the Three Stage Theory Model but, in contrast, is less well known outwith Scotland, and its efficacy in enhancing student learning has yet to be evaluated.

Jean Gordon and Gillian Mackay

68 J. of Practice Teaching & Learning 14(3), pp.64-80. © w&b 2017

Methodology: Learning from everyday practice:

The Practice Pyramid is designed as a collaborative tool, to support the reflection and learning of both student and practice educator (Ross, 1998). We have therefore chosen to illustrate its use, and explore its benefits through a detailed example of its use in a supervision session. There is a ‘curious absence’ of reference to day to day social work practice in social work writing, theory and research (Ferguson, 2011, p.4). So although there is an extensive literature about supervision and practice learning, the voices of students and educators are much more rarely heard (O’Connor and Leonard, 2014, Jasper and Field, 2015). There is increasing interest in research that gets up close to practice, using in depth narrative interviewing and ethnographic methods to gain a better understanding of what social workers do and how they do it. This paper makes a contribution to a growing literature that aims to privilege, explore and learn directly from practitioner narratives about social work practice (Cree and Davis, 2007, Jones et al., 2008, Cree, 2013, Cooper et al., 2015).

Our qualitative inquiry draws on two sources, part of a supervision session in which we used the practice pyramid to analyse Gillian’s work with a service user, ‘Anne’, followed by a more general discussion about the utility and benefits of using the practice pyramid. Both interactions were recorded with Gillian’s permission. All identifying information, including names and locations, has been changed or removed. We sought, and obtained, ethical permission to undertake the interview, and to publish anonymised findings, from the employing organisation. The method used is based on a critical best practice approach to social work which offers ‘detailed description and analysis of actual social work practice drawn from real events and cases’ ( Jones et al.2008, p. 3). This inquiry’s findings are necessarily contingent on the unique, and often complex, situations that social workers find themselves in. They are not readily generalisable to other practice contexts that students and practice educators may find themselves in. Rather this inductive approach sets out examples of practice that have the potential to promote reflection, learning and practice development. The approach is strengths based, seeking to identify and build on what is done well in the context of the realities of day to day practice (Ferguson, 2003).

The Practice Pyramid: A model for integrating social work values, theory and practice

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Figure 1: The Practice Pyramid (Ross, 1998). Reproduced with permission of the Scottish Organisation for Practice Teaching (ScOPT).

The Practice Pyramid

The Practice Pyramid (see Fig 1) is a visual tool that aims to show ‘how professional practice is built up’ (Ross, 2008:117). Ross uses the analogy of an iceberg to explain that the iceberg’s tip represents all that is normally seen of social work practice: the observed behaviour and actions of the practitioner, represented in Figure 1 as ‘Reflective Practice’. However, underlying what the service user, carers and the public see and hear is a bedrock of values and knowledge that inform that practice, forming layers one to four in Figure 1. At the base of this pyramid of knowledge are social work values, personal and professional. Ross emphasises that ‘values drive everything a professional worker does’, as well as the crucial role of the practice educator in ensuring that students learn to operate from a professional value base (Ibid.). Above this foundation of values, is a series of layers of knowledge that inform the student’s practice. These start with ‘Base Theories’ that help to describe and predict human behaviour and assess the need for intervention. These may include, for example, theories about human behaviour, or about loss and change. Knowledge used to

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inform assessment in turn enables the student to identify ‘Specific Theories’ relevant to particular contexts for practice, for example, the lives of people on the autistic spectrum, or young people at risk of harm. These theories of understanding in turn support the identification of models and approaches that inform intervention into people’s lives, and ultimately feed into the actions of the reflective practitioner, above the ‘water line’ of the iceberg or pyramid. Each layer’s decisions are dependent on those at the base of the pyramid, and thread through it, so ‘the student should be able to show, at each level of this pyramid that his or her practice is still congruent with professional social work values’ (Ibid).

The Practice Pyramid in action

Jean introduced Gillian to the Practice Pyramid at the start of her placement in a Criminal Justice Team in Scotland. (Unlike the rest of the UK, work with offenders is undertaken by social workers employed by the local authority, rather than a separate probation service). For much of her placement Gillian was working with ‘Anne’, a woman in her late 40s. ‘Anne’, who had mental health problems and misused alcohol, was subject to Offender Supervision Requirement, as part of the reparative Community Payback Order she had received from the sheriff court. We used the Practice Pyramid to explore Gillian’s practice in our final supervision session, as a way of acknowledging and consolidating her learning about practice and theory. Below we describe how we approached this, and provide some examples of our discussion.

We started with a blank Practice Pyramid in front of us and began to identify relevant values and theory, Gillian reflecting on her work with ‘Anne’, and Jean writing down Gillian’s ideas. At this stage Jean was encouraging Gillian to think as widely as possible and not to feel inhibited about coming up with ideas and suggestions that she was unsure about. This encouragement to students to get over anxieties about ‘being wrong’ or ‘not knowing enough’ may be especially important when students are at the start of first placements.

Gillian started by considering the values, personal and professional, that she had drawn on during her work with ‘Anne’. Starting with a discussion of values reinforces Ross’s emphasis on values as the starting point for effective and ethical practice:

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Gillian: Yes, so here, under ‘personal values’, I would want to put ‘non-judgemental’

Jean: Non-judgemental in what kind of way? Why do you think that was important?

Gillian: Not judging the fact she was an offender, basically; not judging the fact that

she had an alcohol problem, the possible reasons why she offended, the possible

reasons why she was drinking so heavily....also ‘empathy’ in relation to her situation

- she had become quite isolated, she had kind of cut off ties with a lot of her family.

Of course trying to put myself in that situation is hard...but I was thinking ‘How

would this make me feel?’

Gillian gradually added other personal values, and then linked these with professional values. For example, she connected her personal commitment to a non-judgemental approach to a professional responsibility to protect service users’ rights and practice anti-oppressively (Scottish Social Services Council, 2014), as well as to the principles of mental health legislation in Scotland. Gillian also highlighted the impact of stigma and labelling on ‘Anne’s’ life in the community in which she lives. We then moved on to consider what knowledge Gillian had drawn upon to understand ‘Anne’s’ living situation. Theories about loss and change, long identified as core knowledge to social workers (Goldsworthy, 2005), seemed to be particularly relevant, and we spent some time exploring how they had influenced Gillian’s assessment. She also floated the possible relevance of attachment theory, on the basis of her discussions with ‘Anne’ about her early childhood:

Jean: So what theories helped you what was going on in ‘Anne’s’ life?

Gillian: Loss and change in terms of having lost her mum, a responsible job, her

marriage breaking down, the loss of the home they had built together. So there’s a lot

of change, and the loss of relationships with siblings too. And maybe too, the impact

of what seems to have been a very difficult relationship with her mum, that could

potentially have affected her care giving and ended up with an insecure attachment

to her mum..

Jean: And what made you think that, working with her...?

Gillian: Finding it hard to form relationships in adulthood, to get too close to people,

possibly being scared of rejection...

As we moved up towards the top of the iceberg, ‘Anne’s’ practice pyramid steadily filled with the range of knowledge that Gillian had drawn on to inform her practice. We often found ourselves moving backwards and forwards in an iterative way. For example, after discussing her knowledge of

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theory underpinning risk assessment, Gillian returned to the Professional Values level to add ‘reduction of re-offending’ and ‘promoting social inclusion’, two of the guiding values of Scotland’s National Outcomes and Standards for criminal justice social work services (Scottish Government, 2010).

An important feature of the Practice Pyramid is the way in which it encourages students to reflect on and articulate the rationale for their practice in a systematic way. What at first may look like a confused jigsaw of disparate ideas, can, when structured in this pictorial way, begin to develop into a more coherent and logical narrative that encourages the making of explicit links between knowledge, values and skills. Gillian’s work on the Practice Pyramid, for example, made it very clear how her empathic recognition of the impact of life events on ‘Anne’ had helped to steer her towards an appreciation of the importance of loss and change in ‘Anne’s’ life. This understanding in turn helped to illuminate the contribution of ‘Anne’s’ mental health and social exclusion to creating the conditions for her offending behaviour. This understanding supported one strand of Gillian’s work with ‘Anne’ in which she took a psychosocial approach to enabling her to explore her feelings about the past, and to take some steps toward reconnecting with family and community members. This was well exemplified with by the support Gillian gave ‘Anne’ to write a letter to her sister:

Gillian: ...We sat down together and we spoke about ways we could reach the goals

she wanted to address....We spoke about writing a letter, she mentioned that her

sister didn’t believe in mental health so we spoke about ways that she could maybe

alleviate that to understand her more...I think even the fact that ‘Anne’ had written

the letter was empowering in the way...even the fact of achieving the task in terms

of her ability to do other things...

This example of practice - a small, but significant, element in the work that ‘Anne’ and Gillian undertook together - sits at the top of the Pyramid. It is the visible outcome of Gillian’s personal and professional values, and theoretical understandings that supported this example of practice.

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Analysing our use of the Practice Pyramid

Jean first came across the Practice Pyramid in 1998 when she was training to become a practice teacher. She has used the pyramid as a learning tool with over 25 students on practice placements in many different contexts for practice, and students have consistently given positive feedback about its impact on their ability to integrate theory and practice. In particular it appears to help students name the knowledge they are using to inform their practice, and so to move from implicit to explicit use of theory.

The dreaded question from the educator, ‘What theory did you think you were using there?’ tends to send students into a panic as they rack their brains to remember what they learned at university. As one of the social workers Stevenson and Parsloe (1978:134) interviewed during their research into the views of local authority social workers said,

If you asked me to state a theory here and now, I wouldn’t have a clue, but my

thinking and approach have been informed by them.

The Practice Pyramid offers a gentler approach, which encourages students to bring to the surface some of the half-formed and fragmented ideas and concepts they will already be bringing to bear on a given practice situation without necessarily being able to explain exactly why or how they are practising in the way they do. Practice educator and student then work together, using the visual tool to refine and focus the student’s understanding, gaining a clearer understanding of the theoretical basis of the student’s practice and of its relationship with current practice and future decision making. Gillian described her use of the tool in this way:

I’ve used it to help me understand the cases I’ve been working on, the values that I’ve

drawn on. It’s a helpful kind of visual aid to be able to see how values and theories

relate to each other and to what you do as a social worker. It allows you to think

about how the theory is influencing what you’re doing in practice. Before I started this

placement this kind of connection between theory and practice was quite blurred. I

find I can now think more easily about theory, it’s broken down. So, rather than being

scared to think about it, I can now see how values and theory form a foundation to

your decision making, you know why you’ve made certain decisions. It makes you

realise just how much theory influences what you do.

The value of bringing together values and other forms of knowledge has

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also been highlighted by Collingwood et al.’s evaluation of the Three Stage Theory Framework (2008). The two models also share other attributes, including their visual nature. However, unlike Collingwood et al.’s model, the Practice Pyramid does not lend itself to shared use with service users and carers. It is instead designed for use in supervision sessions with an educator, or by students, alone or in small groups at any stage of their student, or indeed post-qualifying learning. A particular merit of the Practice Pyramid is in its simplicity and portability. Once introduced to the student during a supervision session, students can ‘run with’ the model themselves. It takes no time - or artistic talent - to quickly sketch the shape on a piece of paper, and start using the tool to aid reflection and decision-making.

Gillian reflected on the way she has continued to use and build on the tool during her placement, both within and outwith supervision:

The process of using it helps you to analyse your decision making, I think, and why

you did certain things, and why you thought certain theories were important. And

then you can go back and think, maybe I wasn’t right about this value or this decision

to intervene in a certain way. And then you can go back and amend it.

This flexibility of use encourages students to develop a creative understanding of theory as tentative and provisional, requiring continual thought and revision as people and circumstances change.

Gillian identified a number of ways in which the Practice Pyramid could be improved. She thought there needed to be some clearer instructions for its use, so that students and educators were less reliant on having the model demonstrated to them. Gillian also identified small, but significant, changes to the language used to describe different levels. Some reflect shifts in social work language that have taken place since the Practice Pyramid was developed. For example, Gillian suggested that a single level of ‘theories to understand and assess’ might replace the two layers of ‘Base’ and ‘Specific’ theories. She would also have found ‘approaches and interventions’ easier to comprehend than ‘Approaches and Models’. Her feedback highlights the importance of interrogating people’s understandings of terminology, and of ensuring that practice educator and student are using the same words to mean the same things. Finally Gillian also thought that tools, like the Practice Pyramid, which are used routinely in practice settings, could usefully be drawn on to support university teaching. This would, she thought enhance help students to make more productive links

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between university-based and practice-based learning. Practice educators have similarly highlighted the importance of developing and sustaining meaningful connections with their role and that of other parts of the social work education system in recent research (Brodie and Coyle, 2014; Domakin, 2015).

Discussion

The main purpose of this article is to introduce the Practice Pyramid to students, practitioners and educators who may not have come across it before. We hope that the description and discussion of a live encounter between a student and practice educator will help to demonstrate how the tool can be used. This approach also provides an opportunity to ‘listen in’ on the usually private supervision process. Social work has been described as an ‘invisible trade’ (Pithouse, 1998), partly because so many interactions between social workers and service users occur in people’s homes, or behind closed office doors. Similarly, we know surprisingly little about what happens in the privacy of social work supervision (Brodie and Williams, 2013). Setting out and examining ‘examples of ways of working that work’ using a critical best practice approach not only has the potential to promote learning, but also offers opportunities for reflection and debate about the nature of good practice (Ferguson, 2003:1021).

The Practice Pyramid offers just one way to integrate practice and theory; it may not suit all students, or educators, and is offered as an addition to the practice educator’s toolkit of approaches, rather than an ‘answer’ to one of the most challenging aspects of the role. The exploration described here is a very limited one, based on the positive experiences of a single student and one practice educator. No conclusion is made, or can be made, about the impact of using the tool on the quality of students’ practice, or outcomes for service users. Nevertheless, its tentative findings do chime with the literature about enabling students to integrate practice and theory. This evidence is summarised below in relation to four perceived benefits of the Practice Pyramid: its model of pedagogy, visual appeal, flexibility and collaborative approach.

First, the Practice Pyramid starts with the student’s experience of practice, rather than their theoretical knowledge base. It is essential, of course, for students to learn directly about theory, and practice educators,

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as well as university tutors, help to provide this ‘top-down’ function (Brodie and Williams, 2013). However, as Howe (2015:vii) points out, although theories of, and for, practice may appear neat and well-defined, when they come up against reality, they have to ‘bend and adapt, twist and turn if they are going to work’. Taking a ‘bottom-up’, iterative approach to theory, offers the opportunity to draw on a wide range of knowledge, including that which service users, carers and the practitioners themselves bring to a given situation (Trevithick, 2012). Research into social work student learning indicates the value of these kinds of inductive, analytical approaches to exploring practice through the lens of theoretical knowledge (Bogo et al., 2006; Brodie and Williams, 2013). Structured approaches to teasing out the knowledge that informs practice can be confidence-building, as this respondent in a research study about experienced social workers’ use of knowledge describes:

I think it has been beneficial for me just to see all that because I would kind of think I probably don’t use a huge amount of particular theories or anything, but actually looking at what I’m doing...it is quite helpful for me to know that actually I do have access to a wide range of knowledge. (Gordon and Cooper, 2010, p.249)

The Practice Pyramid’s aim is to then build on this growing confidence to enable learners to reflect on and develop their ability to theorise in unfamiliar and complex situations.

Secondly, the visual nature of the tool, which allows students to ‘see’ just how much they know, and the extent to which they are themselves active theorists, seems to appeal to students. Visual tools - maps, circles, spider diagrams - have a long history, and have been described as supportive to learning in a range of social work contexts (Osmond and O’Connor, 2006; Collingwood et al., 2008; Gordon and Cooper, 2010). Thirdly the flexible nature of the tool appeared to help Gillian to conceive of knowledge as tentative, subject to change with shifting circumstances and insights. Her continuous review of her Practice Pyramids, amending and adding to them over time demonstrates the development of a crucial ability to combine and restructure knowledge to achieve ‘best fit’ for that particular person at that particular time (Payne, 2007). It is not uncommon for students to find, on completing a Practice Pyramid analysis, that there are discontinuities and contradictions between, for example, the knowledge that informed their assessment and their decision making about how best to intervene.

The Practice Pyramid: A model for integrating social work values, theory and practice

Practitioners can see this in a very immediate way with the one page Pyramid in front of them, prompting a rethink about the sufficiency of their evidence base for practice.

Finally, the Pyramid’s collaborative approach sits well with research that emphasises the importance to students of knowledge-creating, exploratory interactions with educators (Askeland and Payne, 2006; Brodie and Williams, 2013). Practice teachers find the shared use of a range of models and tools in supervision creates a focus for productive discussion, and promotes in depth learning for students. These interactions also assist the Practice Educator to gather evidence of student capabilities in ways that support a holistic assessment process ( Jasper and Field, 2015).

In conclusion, there are many reasons to see why the design of and rationale for the Practice Pyramid might ‘work’ for student and practice educator. However, a fuller evaluation is required with students with different learning needs in different settings to establish whether the experiences reported in this paper can be generalised to other practice educators and students. Since there are a number of different models and frameworks to assist practitioners with theory/ practice integration it would also be interesting to compare different models, and establish the kinds of contexts in which they may be most beneficial. Although we have focused on social work students, other professions, such as nursing and occupational therapy, also grapple with the most effective ways to support practitioners to link practice and theory, and so it may be that this tool has wider applicability than solely within practice learning, or the social work profession.

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The Practice Pyramid: A model for integrating social work values, theory and practice

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