This is a PhD level course.
This course will examine how professional knowledge evolves in the context of broader intellectual currents in philosophy, humanity, and social sciences. We will focus on some contemporary debates that mark significant trends in epistemological, moral, cultural, geopolitical, and global approaches affecting social work theories and practices. In particular, we examine the critical reflexive scholarship which engages how power and knowledge are (re)produced, legitimized, and performed in social work profession, and in turn how social work profession is contested and positioned in its professionalization.
Exploring the meta-perspectives would provide a platform for students to remain attuned to and critically reflect on ordinary yet morally and politically charged everyday social work practice as well as significant issues in the social and intellectual context of social work theories.
This advanced theory course is designed for social and health science doctoral students. It aims to assist students to theorize social and health science constructs from various meta-perspectives in order to expand in-depth understanding and complexities of the constructs under study. This course will provide some foundational thinking and formulation materials before they undertake their comprehensive paper and independent research topic.