Failure, Communities of Practice, and the Value Base of Social Work

Abstract

The concept of failure tacitly present in the value base of social work is either contentless, is a residual category, or is wholly negative in content. By applying the concept of ‘community of practice’, however, it is suggested that practice educators and practitioners operate, in practice, a positive conception of failure. Impending failure may actually be functional because of the values with which social work is aligned. If this is so, then the predominantly negative valuation of failure must be reassessed. The problems to which this gives rise are considered, with the conclusion that by considering social work as a community of practice, it is possible to acknowledge and utilize the sharing of failure. KEYWORDS: Communities of practice; professional errors; social work values

Keywords

• communities of practice
• professional errors
• social work values