ABSTRACT
Universities are mostly organised around disciplines, such as sociology and psychology. Some disciplines are closely connected to a professional field, such as health, pedagogy or law. Valorisation obligates science to be productive for society. Valorisation, a current buzzword in academic and political circles, is the creation of practical value through the scientific application of knowledge, through its economic and social use in products, services, methods and processes. Largely parallel to the dichotomies between the disciplinary and applied science approaches and between seeking to explain and seeking to understand is the dichotomy between positivism and constructivism. Dichotomies sharpen the discourse and explain tensions in science; however, there is mostly no fundamental preference for one position over another. In social work, generic professionals acting with wisdom acquired from practice are expected to display a research attitude. Social work research is frequently divided into the disciplines it uses, like sociology, psychology and law.
