From Clients to Collaborators and Co-Designers: An Ethnography of School Social Workers Transforming Their Practice (Poster 39)

• In Event: Friday Poster Session 9:35 am
  In Poster Session: Division G: Policies Mattering and Praxis Poster Session

Abstract

This paper is the preliminary findings of an ethnography of an emergent community of school social workers who transformed their professional focus from working with children and parents in crisis to more equitable forms of family-school engagement, including co-design of services with families. This work was made possible through a district administrator who took these previously isolated social workers and forged a community through district wide PLC’s.
Early analysis of data from the study shows a transformation in professional practices and identity that coincided with learning about research based examples of what more equitable family engagement could be like.

Author

• John Lawrence Benner, University of Washington