This part of the book unfolds four points of view regarding the transformational character of the PAP. Similarly to other critical traditions, such as feminisms, the PAP offers a way of seeing the world. Its perspective reveals to us aspects of reality that were previously concealed. Once we adopt this perspective, we cannot avoid seeing power relations, structural injustice and Othering.

The first two chapters of Part I, ‘Transformation’, exemplify how this new way of seeing the world changes the ways in which social workers speak and write about service users. Chapter 2, ‘How to speak critically about poverty’, provides an overview of six basic principles of the paradigm and their translation into spoken professional language. Since it is based on a lecture given in 2013 to an audience of practitioners, it sounds something like a manifesto. It urges social workers to be aware of the language they use and to change it.

Chapter 3, ‘How to write a critical case study’, is written in a much more pedagogical-academic manner. It is based on an analysis of a case study written by a social worker for a group supervision in one of the PAP courses organised by the Ministry of Welfare and Social Services in 2016. This weighty chapter covers ideas regarding the politics of representation and exemplifies how writing according to these ideas changes the case study. Following what took place in the class, the chapter presents three versions of the same case study and offers some guidelines for the critical writing of such a text. This chapter can serve social workers who wish to gain insight into this aspect of their work and can also be used for teaching purposes; I find it very useful in my own teaching. After discussing the theoretical principles presented at the beginning of the chapter, I give my students the first version of the case study and ask them to write their own comments on it in order to help the social worker who wrote it to turn it into a critical text. Only then do we read the second and third versions together.

Chapter 4, ‘How to teach poverty critically’, deals explicitly with teaching.