ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the relationship between theory and practice in the development of knowledge. The relationship between the academic world and the professional social and welfare work practice is influenced by the growing interest in the need to provide research that scrutinises professional practice. Practical knowledge and everyday concepts have a special place within the critical realist perspective. The content of everyday knowledge makes up the immediate mechanisms behind the actions that build social phenomena. The development of knowledge in social, welfare, and health work, the shortcomings of dichotomic thinking are apparent. Dialectic critical realism may be one method for overcoming formal dualism and reductionism and makes it possible to transcend the opposites entailing a leap of the imagination to a higher level. Immanent critique is another essential part of the method of critical realist philosophy. The strength of critical realism is that it is applicable.
