Abstract
Evidence-based practice (EBP) is one of social work’s most prominent attempts to close the research-practice gap. However, EBP’s reception in social work has remained tepid. For over 20 years, supporters have defended EBP against skeptics’ recurring concerns—a seemingly endless cycle of identical arguments against and counterarguments for EBP. This article argues that a core barrier to the adoption of EBP is the ontological, epistemological, and methodological tensions used to justify EBP’s lack of ethical fit with the profession. Existing counterarguments for EBP have failed to address these tensions, instead responding by correcting surface-level misconceptions about the philosophy of science itself. However, such corrections do not satisfactorily demonstrate EBP’s reliance upon not just empirical evidence, but also experiential and situated ways of knowing that skeptics believe EBP excludes. This article will meaningfully engage with skeptics’ concerns and offer a philosophical dissection of EBP, exploring its multiple sources of evidence and elaborating on how they link to post-positivist, social constructivist, and critical paradigms. Following the tenets of philosophical pragmatism, this argument constitutes a paradigmatic re-conceptualization of EBP toward epistemological plurality. This article is a call to move beyond either-or ideological debates, and re-focus on EBP’s still-untapped potential to address research and practice needs.
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Lin, N. Moving Beyond Either-or Debates: An Invitation to Reconcile Ideological Divides in Evidence-Based Practice. Clin Soc Work J 51, 188–197 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10615-023-00863-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10615-023-00863-5