The purpose of this book is to provide social work students at different levels and in different countries with a detailed sketch of how research finds a place in the wider social work picture. While authors (too) often claim a distinctiveness for their writing, I am here aiming to deal with questions that in their detail and also their relation to one another are rarely covered in the social work literature.

I have endeavoured to provide an accessible entry point for thinking hard about social work in general and research in particular. In other parts of my writing I have tried to work through these issues to more scholarly audiences, but here I write for students and practitioners. As much of the book draws on presentations to just such audiences, the level and tone of the book will, I hope, be ensured. My aim is to engage social work students in questions and issues in a form that will make for a professional community that is thoughtful, critical and committed, yet also – I dare to say – modest.

I have tried to make clear what this book does not set out to provide. It is not a research methods book at any level. Nor is it solely about research, but rather about research as part of a larger picture. I anticipate that one feature of the book that will quickly be noticed is the number of quotations from interviews with scientists in what we generally regard as the mainstream sciences. This is quite intentional, and reflects the conviction that social work has too easily fenced itself off from other disciplines.

I do not claim to be innovative in these pages. Almost all of the issues tackled are those that I have endeavoured to think and write about over the past decade. But rather than attempt to re-lay scholarly foundations, my concern in these pages is to try something equally demanding and communicate in an accessible and stimulating way the superstructures of practice supported by such foundations.

The approach and layout of the book are rather different from most texts. It may help to say that throughout I move between accessible ways of thinking hard and opportunities and exercises that progressively support the reader in making sense of the material in their day-to-day course programmes, practice placements and research.