For social workers, it is essential to interpret the complex behavior of the people they work with. For the elucidating of people’s behavior, it is necessary to understand the theory that lies behind the people’s actions and society in general. Practice Pyramid is one of the models aimed to help social work students to apply the knowledge in real cases. First, the model is focused on the student’s experience rather than pure theoretical knowledge (Gordon & Mackay, 2016). Even though theory is very important for social workers, when it comes to reality, the knowledge is usually bent and adapted to the particular situation in real life. The visual nature of the approach is what makes the model attractive and easy for students to learn and analyze their practices. Also, the flexibility of the Practice Pyramid allows students to consider knowledge as something preliminary, which is going to be changed and adapted to certain cases in real practice. In addition, a collaboration of students with educators, which allows creating knowledge together, and an exploratory approach of the model is critical in the successful training of social workers.
Moreover, pragmatism in creating new knowledge is important to consider as well. Pragmatism allows us to keep in mind that the knowledge that is created based on experiences is only valid for particular conditions of the experience (Hothersall, 2016). It allows the student not to take any knowledge as an absolute and to be more flexible in each situation. In the case of working with other adults, it is essential to understand the behavior of each individual as a unique case since elderly people tend to have mental health issues. Both pragmatic approach and Practice Pyramid are useful in terms of flexibility of knowledge for practical use in every individual case.
References
Gordon, J., & Mackay, G. (2016). The Practice Pyramid: A model for integrating social work values, theory and practice. Journal of Practice Teaching & Learning, 14(3), 64-80.
Hothersall, S. J. (2016). Epistemology and social work: Integrating theory, research and practice through philosophical pragmatism. Social Work and Social Sciences Review, 18(3), 33-67.