Student imagery of practice in social work and teacher education: A comparative research approach

Within the fields of adult and professional education, the last ten years have seen the development of the reflective learning paradigm. This refutes a technical-rational model of the relationship between theory and practice, and proposes that practitioner knowledge is experientially constructed and organized through the schemata of imagery and metaphor. This paper outlines some findings from a comparative research study of social work and teaching students which adopted a phenomenological approach to understanding the self-imagery of student practitioners and its relationship to prior experience. Some implications for social worker education are considered, including the concept of 'imaginization' - derived from postmodernist organizational theory - as a strategy for empowerment.