A Contribution of Social Work to the Discourse on the Theory-Practice Relationship

Abstract

The question of the theory-practice relationship is one of the core questions of philosophy and the social sciences. How should the proportions between theory and practice best be determined? Social work joins this discourse from a logic of applied sciences. It can develop an appropriate answer that can be generalized if it first participates on that discourse. For that, the theory-practice relationship is first distinguished from the theory-practice proportion. Because while a proportionality points to communication, which could be determined vertically in one way, in the case of the relationship is horizontality at the centre of the debate, which refers to the consent of the other actor. Therefore, the following paper will first distinguish the philosophical question of how the relationship between knowledge and action should be determined from the sociological question of how the proportion between knowledge and action is in a given profession. After an introduction, the genesis of the theory-practice communication the question is put what can be deduced from this distinction for social work. Depending on the viewpoint, the relationship can either be transformed into communication through mediation between theory and practice, or theory can be separated, decoupled from practice. In a third proposal developed here, this theory-driven relationship and/or proportion can be viewed from the logic of theory-practice complementarity.