ABSTRACT
When it comes to matters of research and evaluation social workers are vulnerable to sentimentality, marked by a nurturing of myths and a tendency to superstitious practices.
We are guilty of sentimentality, says Howard Becker,
The sentimentalities and superstitious practices that specially concern me are those most closely associated with commitments that I myself share. The criticisms that make up the bulk of this chapter are drawn from a context in which I am committed to developing evaluation as a dimension of direct social work practice (Shaw, 1996, 1997). My conviction is that qualitative evaluation offers a promising way forward to achieve evaluating-in-practice. Participatory and collaborative methods, the cultivation of a reflexive practice, egalitarian engagements between researchers and academics in higher education and social workers, and the potential of workbased assessment methods in postqualifying social work programmes, are pointers to ways qualitative evaluating in practice can be developed.
