One Step in a Thousand-Mile Journey. Can Civic Practice Be Nurtured in Practitioner Research? Reporting on an Innovative Project

Newly graduating social workers enter a world in which they rarely encounter an expectation that they will engage in scholarly activities. When scholarly skills fall into disuse, there remains little room for reflexive considerations. This article draws on experience of academics and practitioners who participated in an innovative mentoring programme, Growing Research in Practice (GRIP), which explored the challenge of raising the research capability and confidence of groups of social workers in Auckland, New Zealand. The authors link the insights gained in this project to a developing conceptualisation of civic social work, where scholarly inquiry is a practice imperative. Qualitative data were collected via individual and group interviews, from recorded discussions, evaluations and debriefing activities, and from our own field notes. The findings indicate considerable enthusiasm for practitioner research, despite the many challenges faced, but suggest that building professional confidence requires several strategies. The collaborative process trialled in this project appears to have potential.