ABSTRACT
Research instruction in social work education and professional education generally has focused on increasing skills in the critical consumption of studies to inform practice and in conducting research in practice settings. While this focus assists in applying known technologies and assessing knowledge about well-studied problems, the approach does not prepare students to deal with emerging areas of practice, including the development of new intervention technologies. Thomas has proposed Intervention Research (IR) as the single most appropriate model of research for social professions, as it assists in the development of technology for addressing social problems (Thomas 1978). However, the utilization of IR in academic settings has not been studied, and critics claim that the paradigm contains barriers which inhibit widespread utilization. In this chapter I discuss several barriers and suggest a three-tiered approach for enhancing IR dissemination in academic settings such that increasingly sophisticated models and increasingly skilled model developers are produced (Rooney 1990). The methodology of intervention research has itself been formulated through a process of design and development, thus it too represents a product whose dissemination is appropriate and necessary.
