How can field placement develop disruptive social workers?

You are listening to the Social 8 Cafe podcast with Dr. B, a light-hearted educational series fueled by coffee and conversation where we talk all things social work. Welcome everybody to the latest episode of the Social 8 Cafe. You are in for a very disruptive conversation today with the fabulous Doctor Shirley Ledger. Okay, can I just suggest that we do a slight name change and it be Dr. Shirley Legend? Oh, you can do that. You might be talking to a candle which is Dr. Shell or Dr. Shell. I'll see that's all zing it up. And I really put emphasis on Doctor because Shirley has received her PhD. Well, when was it, Shirley? 2023. I've finished and I finally graduated in December. So not long ago. I know and it's just brother and congratulations to you. I can never say that enough having been through the experience myself. You can just really, I can appreciate the weight of it and the importance of the title. So Dr. Legend, you shall be very kind. And I think your Legendary status for me is going to come about through our conversation, which is going to center a bit on your PhD topic, which is all about disruptive social work practice, essentially still placement context, which I think is going to be very interesting. Having said that, there's going to be implications for any social worker about disruptive practice. So let's get into it, Shell or Dr. Shell. Why don't we start with the usual question though. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your social work background. Oh yes, the origin story. It's, it's pretty interesting. So, so I believe I actually started social work like a lot of I'm imagining students and practitioners listening in human services or welfare kind of roles. So I had started initially trained as a nurse and I loved dancing for the patients and entertaining them and having a great time as an 18 year old out in rural Queensland. However, I wasn't a big fan of the other parts of nursing. So I really looked into what could I do that was about a helping profession and and found my way in social work. So I actually started working while studying, having a young family with them to young children and I worked in domestic and family violence. I studied community development work and then kind of leveled up in out towards to youth work and worked mostly in rural and regional Queensland and I worked in suicide prevention work in Queensland Health and then eventually in child protection as a manager out west covering childable kind of my life really large area. The year I graduated was that when I got that job so I was kind of landing in the hot seat and but what I did remember was a significant kind of trajectory and all of that was I was constantly trying to find a field of practice where I could make the most difference. So I tried things on over here and I thought that was awesome but no actually what I need to do is make a difference over here so then I try this area and eventually I was like okay none of this works I'm going to policy so I ended up down in George Street in Brisbane and working in as a senior youth affairs officer and working with the state with the advisory council and bringing all young people together and now this is how we can make the change and then I went well it's great but I'm not sure this is how I vote the change. So one thing leads to another and I end up doing consultancy work for myself I went well it's up to me I like the work for myself and so I was doing a lot of work for training and then doing working for children's lawyers with independent children's lawyers with family court and children's court providing assessments and reports I loved it and eventually somehow ended up in social work education. So I travelled all the way back to central Queensland and contacted my former head of course who also supervised my honours and said if you got any work and he was like yes I think we might have something and then that was 12 years ago. Now I'm on the head of course so it's funny how it's sort of but I have found education I now comfortably sit in the knowledge that it is a method of change and being part of influencing the practitioners that go out and do all of those various methods of change is what absolutely excites me and gets me really interested. So yeah that's kind of a little bit about how I got here and what I do. A little but a lot and I love how he sort of came to the same conclusion that I did. Really? About social work education being this sort of mezo macroform of practice in a way because yeah like I'm not out there doing the actual work but I get to inspire or be part of the journeys of you know influencing the development of the next generation or the current generation of social workers. Many of him are like you already working in the field you know when you were getting your qualification as well so what an amazing career you've had so far and where you've I can always see though that kind of focus on mezo and macro working there wanting to always have that bigger impact but you've traversed sort of all levels of practice. To try trial of those years probably always a community developer at heart and I think that's probably been the focus of my work in academia is working with the student community as an ecosystem and then preparing and being part of supporting that community to make big changes and I certainly believe that the timing is well there's always a need for social workers which I don't say sadly I say great because we tend to get slaughtered into the problem saturated narrative around what social work is and yes we have a role in that space but actually all of that is very much about the change activism and change agent work and I think that's what brings most people to the profession anyway is they feel that they want to make a difference even if it nearly destroys them along the way and I think that that is that macro approach is what often sits underneath I think most social workers practice framework is that foundational optimism to make big change so it's definitely driven my career and I definitely hear it from students that I work with regularly sort of saying and it's very much the hard stuff soft and talk about head hard hands as you would too and you're teaching and so on that often tends to be the hard stuff that I want to make a difference I want to do all these amazing things or at least I want to see change happen even if it's other people doing it I want to see that happen yeah and this is where I can achieve that change myself like and speaking of like yeah being driven into this you've become driven into this world of disruptive social work that you have been you know researching and writing and publishing about so why don't we talk a little bit more about that because I myself hadn't heard of it before this conversation so you're going to be teaching me along the way so tell us what is disruptive social work really yes well I hadn't heard of it either and I came about through my PhD that you mentioned earlier and I was looking at how are social work educators preparing and socializing students for the profession so that was the study and I spoke to lots of social work academics and field educators particularly because when I first came into higher ed I was working in field education so very passionate about that area of work that bridge between the class and the field and I loved traversing it and often looking for holes in the bridge as well and making sure I didn't fall through them with the students but I think doing that research one of the findings the outcome was a theory because it was a constructivist grounded theory method study which you know look it seemed very very very difficult for the billion years that it took me to do that process now I'm like gosh they over complicate this stuff don't they? I'm totally sure it wasn't as complicated as I thought and I think that's probably mirrors when you're learning anything new you sort of over I think I'm sure it is very hard but yes I did get to the end essentially and develop this theory based on that circumstance at that time. However, I'll be bold and say I, it resonated with lots of people that I spiked with and practitioners afterwards. And so that theory was the interlopers as disruptors. So essentially we had this process where students and academics were kind of having a parallel process and experience where they were in a kind of a neo-liberalised, marketised, yes, all the things that managerialised practice context. And they often, their voice, their knowledge, as knowledge holders, was often silenced or it was not detailed. Literally today in writing up some findings from my own research on professional identity in neo-liberal context. Right. Yeah, professional autonomy being yeah, curtailed, all that stuff. Absolutely. And so students were through the academics and through the literature. It was very apparent that there was this labour not learner approach to many students on placement as well. So that which kind of goes to recognising and valuing the contribution and knowledge that social work students bring to the field. And so there was this interlopers status and I'll tell you it was probably the most fascinating part I felt for my research. I was looking at old historical documents from over a hundred years ago of social work field educators writing reports in America to their Chicago School of Social Work you know field education report, you know, 1904 or something. And this woman, I cannot think of her name is that terrible. But anyway, she's very famous in social work education land in in America. And she was presenting the annual report to the board and it basically said that there was and they were akin to interlopers. The students in their placement sort of just fought in placement as a thing. And that these students were experiencing being treated like labour not learner, different phrasing than that, but that experience. So they're being asked to do all sorts of things that weren't necessarily learning focus and the list went on. And I remember sitting back and going, "Are you serious? We are sitting in this same." Like this is what everyone's telling me now. And we've had over a hundred years to get this stuff right. So one of the things that came out of that was this visual, a bit of a visual learner. And when I was doing all the interviews, I had this image of field education based on whatever one was telling me in the study, was like a bit of a Trojan horse. So while you had all of this kind of complexity going on and you know disconnect with all sorts of values and principles with the context of practice, there was field education was the kind of sort of way of disrupting the status quo. So we'd send and students would enter the field and by their very training of being these critical thinkers and you know, if you know yourself, if you start something new and you ask questions when you're not familiar with the culture, just by asking. You go, "What are we doing here? What are we doing there?" And then also because in the class, prior to and post field, they were getting, had this really strong critical framework, critical practice. They were often challenging the status quo by implementing or suggesting or creating new processes in a field placement, especially when they had a, you know, really supportive supervisor. And so at the end of the day, they were kind of this Trojan horse that was sort of let loose on the field and were able to, you know, shake things up. That became kind of the theory and part of that disruptive work was, I researched a lot about business and entrepreneurial stuff. So I was looking at like Uber, what else happened? They could be disruptive technologies, for example. Yeah, so I was just looking at the fact that in the context of paid placement now happening a lot for students and thinking, "Well, what is it we're supposed to do to really challenge the whole way of doing if we want to be radical?" And so disruptive social work practice, I guess, is then extended from there. And it is really about transformational learning. So it's a way of being doing and knowing that is challenging the status quo, which is really big, I guess, our origins, our professional origins, which that emancipatory love my Australian tune there, approach is what I think from the research, and certainly from talking to lots of people is that neoliberalised context has kind of squashed it a lot. Yeah. You have amazing people, kind of championing that, it does get squashed a little bit. Yeah, it is a challenging environment to navigate. When these students were explaining what they were doing on placement and you start developing this theory, like, "What's going in with the intention of being disruptive?" Or was something actually just purely by the process of the expectations of learning and being inquisitive and being a critical thinker, it just started happening. But at the other side of things, it could have been quite intentional. I'm just wondering if some of these students were realising that they were actually challenging the status quo, or not purely by what they would do? Well, some did because there were consequences for it. Oh, that's a good point. I wanted to come to that as well. I so remember my research was looking at the academic, so it wasn't interviewing students. So I guess that's the next phase is actually speaking to students, but the academic's experience was that in field education, particularly, was around where they were having to, wanting to be on that bridge between the class and the field, and were often having to support and advocate and try and say, "Look, this actually is part of social work practice." So one of the ever-dancing things that I found in the study was that the field and the class have quite different baselines about getting it. So this notion of "Does that student get it?" Yes, me, gosh, it was in the field getting it look different than in the classroom. I've come across that literature myself and my PhD about the gaps between, you know, the classroom and the workplace. They can be quite real. Very, yeah. And so things like getting it in the field from a field education perspective was questioning, was wondering, was critically thinking, was saying explicitly, "I'm not sure I get it yet." And field educators would go, "They're getting it." They found that sitting with uncertainty and complexity and going, "There's all really need to unpack this." So when a student in the field says, "I don't get it." I'm really struggling. Field educators would go, "They're getting it in the class when they write an essay to demonstrate it that they could really get it." Oh, yeah, yeah. They're getting it. So we have these kind of, which sets something about critical reflection and sitting with uncertainty. So often say those students that are pretty intensive before they go into the field, you know, and everyone's pretty stressed about it. That's good. The fact you are not sitting there, or simply confident, getting it, getting it, then we don't need to be here. Unfersion team is actually one of the criteria for a profession's signature pedagogy, which is field education. So being able to work and be okay with going, "You know what? I don't really know. We're going to get that to go." Part of that is actually disruptive because we work in an environment, especially social working human services, that asks for this risk of worse, very neat and tidy packaged neoliberal. Technorationalism. Technorational approach. And that is, that's what we've got. And there's lots of good reasons for it, but it's also actually defense, it results in defensive social work practice. Yeah. Obviously comes originally from that medical sphere around, we don't want to get sued. And kind of social work is very much in that sort of vein. And some of our students come in and they're taught and instructed in a technorational focus and efficiency. So they're preparing with time management, diary management, crossing the teas, and so on. And when students are disruptive in the field, which there's lots of different things they can be doing to extend on this, they tend to sometimes slow process, get processes down. And so the consequence of that is that the field may go you're not getting it. And then we're assessing them so this is a really challenging place for students to be enacting but it actually requires the educators and the students to be working together. So to me it's more of a learning and a teaching approach that actually drives a shared vision of what what a social work need to do. Do we want a field to look like it does now? What would we like to do something to make it look different? And I think most people say they'd like it to look different. Based on the literature I'm reading very much needs to be different. When we look at the working conditions of social workers as a global study show and we have the poorest working conditions, the literature review I've been doing with a team on professional identity. Like these neoliberal managerial environments are not working. For us all the clients. Well that's true. Yeah the clients. Exactly. They're sort of on a list and priority need and and this is where macro practice which I think disruptive social work practice is very much about is to me it's the answer. And this is a thing I read all this literature and go okay so yeah what are we gonna do about this context? How do we fundamentally transform them? And so you're saying one of those possible answers is is disruptive social work and as particularly as part of say a radical approach or yeah the radical tradition that's very much in our origins of social work and it's always existed in many forms over the centuries that we've been here. So tell us more than about then the skills that students develop on field placement to become disruptive social workers. You've mentioned even just by being a critical thinker who's inquisitive and asking questions and honestly I also hear often from field educators who love that. You say yeah it keeps me on my toes and keeps me fresh. Of course there's a downside to it as well which I'm sure will cover but tell us more about yeah what are the skills that they are using or could be using to make? We're asking questions. Yes critical thinking and analysis but I've called it in this taxonomy that I've been developing a critical spirit because I think it's an embodied version of critical thinking. I think a lot of us do critical thinking just at that hand kind of level and and asking questions is obviously the natural approach to that but if you're embodying a critical spirit or a critical way of doing being knowing you're inadvertently going to be macro anyway because you will be asking questions or critiquing more so the structural elements of your direct practice as well as your team processes as well as your organizational context you'll be critiquing and asking questions of the policies that inform all of those structures and you won't just be stopping me you will be actually trying to adapt to within those systems and structures to get little wins to change them to ask one specific part of a particular process or policy you might go you know what that one dot point if I was able to get some agreement that there needs to be a different word instead of must it needs to be made and that would make a big difference to the clients I'm working with you can often get huge structural impact and challenge at the client level as well as at the organizational level but that level of critical embodiment is kind of quite tactical or tactic is that a word I don't know tactical we've invented one well you can absolutely you've heard it here first people I think analysis goes with that as well so it's the ability to in a in a placement when you're graduating in any context really to be able to first of all analyze and for social work that means as a collective so one of the big things about our profession that I believe is that my daughter calls it big brain energy like we get together we are like ridiculously powerful when we are all working together even when we don't agree we still generate some sort of change vibe but that sort of is contagious and so I guess analysis in this context is about doing that as a as a group and so that analysis could be through peer I mean we can use the traditional language of peer supervision or mentoring groups I like to call them like disruptive gatherings I also think of our mutual friend Jack McNamara and her research like going back to good old feminist techniques and process around consciousness raising like you know when you get to get it's all about collectivising though isn't it and there's many words and and forms that it can take but just getting together and I'm loving you said you don't necessarily have to completely agree but you can still be working towards the same kind of goals and in various ways as a collective too which I love and I feel like what you're also doing there shell is really bridging micro meso macro fractures like sometimes and I know when I studied and maybe you had this experience they often get seen as quite distinct micro meso macro and to be completely macro you've got to be in that macro role but how do you actually bridge all that especially working in a micro position but what you're saying showing us is that it is very possible by being a disruptive social worker to be doing meso macro practice in so many ways it doesn't have to be that you have to be employed say as a policy worker or community development we got to really just put you that thinking has all that embodiment that embodied professionalism to find those opportunities yeah because as I said at the beginning when I went into social work I kept on trying all these methods of change within micro meso macro well try this and I think where I've kind of arrived is that yeah exactly that but it is actually intertwined and we do separate it and I think that's been at our peril and I think that it's happened because there is a structural advantage to having us not embodied there's such an advantage to have practitioners who are purely micro direct practice case workers or community developers or and we silo ourselves and and that kind of that's on us because we yeah I mean some of that has happened because of us within us I know particularly in the US context like some of the literature read you know there are schools you often develop there aren't schools of social work that develop their own identities around like clinical social work in macro and but at the same time I think some of it happens because of the neoliberal environments we're in because that is about it like it largely funds the the micro level practice but also funds it in very particular and strict ways so and that causes the tensions that you know micro workers often have as well I want to do macro stuff and my job says I have to do this and that's where you've got to be that skillful worker don't need to navigate it and have people around you that and again that comes down to that group kind of process is that and I think this is inherent with disruptive social work is that you often don't know what the answer is anyway like it doesn't matter how many brilliant people you go oh can you tell me what the actual process of really analyzing and unpacking deconstructing a problem will arrive at an answer that's doable and so I think that's the other thing that the structures have kind of supported is this idea that we need to have an answer quick answer for everything because of efficiency and I think the other skill that I think is important for disruptive practice probably one of the most important are our interpersonal and communication skills and I think that is it's the how then how do you go about making change in your part of the world with your one client modeling you know you might want to have a client that you want to support them to be able to advocate for themselves at their next cheap heat meeting to go no this is what I need stop putting me off down supporting me or something yeah so it might be in various situations but the way that we communicate all of these processes is quite I think that to skill that you develop over a long time and I think it's about almost being a translation service so you're kind of having to have your social work brain that has all of these fabulous 20 letter words and when we wrap a lot near liberty as a manager it is a marketization everyone collectively you know or so it's also about knowing all this way of being as a social worker that hard stuff that we know which is the combination of all that theory and knowledge and and skills, but also being able to translate it into a way that others, usually the system and the structure, is able to one stomach it. So they don't turn around and go, "I'm sorry, I didn't even hear you, I switched off." Yeah, totally. And they're often the people with the money. And the power. A lot of power. So we have to be able to translate that world into this world. And we can't, I believe, we can't pretend that the human services world that we work in is a warm, friendly, fuzzy place anymore. It is not, when I first started practicing, you had, nearly every agency would have a management committee. I don't even think people use that word anymore. Yeah, no, we don't. Do you remember the manager committee? It's usually a board of directors or executives or very business. We remember the community in the sector, nearly every job I had, you would report to this management committee and it was a very collectivist demon run in the NGO space. Yeah. And then everything kind of went to the big dinosaurs who knew me to bureaucracy for the funding. So we ended up with just basically same, same, same, same. And then the odd little tiny service kind of struggling out of a pantry to make ends meet and their few and far between. And so I think that the translation service is an actual skill to be able to simplify and find out almost like sales and marketing. So that disruptive stuff, it's not accidental that it comes from the business world and the entrepreneurial world because I believe that you kind of have to fight fire with fire, which means we need to adopt a bit of a business mindset, a bit of an entrepreneurial mindset about this being called changing the world and actually work out how do you do that in a context that is all about there's some hard stuff there, I agree. But at the end of the day, it's about business, doing the business of welfare, doing the business of. Yeah, if you do that in a context in a smart way, though, and if you even explain it to those policy makers, funders or those with power, you're trying to convince that it is about being business oriented in that way. I think we might listen, like because that's speaking what you're saying, like when we're translating to, it's you got to know your audience, know how to speak to them and to convince them and persuade them. And so when you can use that language, like there's many facets of managerialism and business principles that we're critical of in social week, but that doesn't mean not all of it is useful. And I totally see where you're coming from. I think it comes from the innovative mindset. Yeah, it's a good mindset. Oh, I like that. Yes. And it's actually, it's actually to me, social work is inherently about leadership skills. So whether you really follow up or leader and at the followership skills of your people that you work with and your goals and our profession, because really the followership skills required for social work practice are value based. And then for the leadership skills, so to me, it's kind of like does also sit as an active leadership to be almost positioning yourself with your communication skills to be ready to pitch whenever you need to event that thing that needs to be deep. Yes. I love it. I love it. I think it's nice then to go on to some, you know, any particular advice you would give to students, but also other social workers who want to use these skills in the face of those challenging practice contexts. Well, let me rephrase like, yeah, advice that you'd give them to become disruptive social workers. Yeah, I would definitely advise to refine the communication skills and look to this practical things you can do, like just watching your dragons den sort of episodes to go like, how do they succinctly. Social work is we have a worse rap for not being able to say anything specifically. Oh, yeah, for waffling on. Even in an email. And it really upsets me. I go, I'm sorry, I took a lot of time to write this in a respectful collegial supportive way. You want to dock points. They're like, yes, give me the dock points, which is fine. But yeah, I think practicing and observing and looking around at influences, and I don't mean social media influences, but influential crew in our practice, in our environments, and kind of ethnographically studying them a little bit, but yeah, working way or a stalker. I avoid a risk together. What started them? Like, pick out who you think does a great job of it and really analyse their communication strategies to go. And then the second thing you can do is ask people for feedback on your own representation, negotiation and advocacy skills, and say, you know, and I think also engaging with policy. So I think that's really important to be that person that just so the universities accord can't came out. That has a direct impact on social work students and the future of paid and unpaid placements, which is something, you know, most of us are pretty passionate about. Read it. Engaging the policy changes around disability service provision or even around family violence prevention because if you are tracking what is coming in terms of policy changes, you can start strategising within your own systems and services to prepare for that change and go, well, you know what? Things like engaging in the community cabinet process or any type of community politicking, my daughter works in the housing sector. She's a baby social worker. I shouldn't call her that. She's studying social work. She was working in homeless and housing and doing some research stuff. And anyway, she was like, how do I get these changes happening? Like, I just, we need to get people to make the difference. That's it. Do they still do a community cabinet? So I remember going along to the town halls and Googleed it. And it was on in our town the following week. Oh, you're joking. So she got a delegation and she did a presentation to the relevant minister and commissioner in her area and so on. Anyway, she rang me afterwards and she was a video and she was so happy and so excited and her buzzing. And I showed some of my colleagues obviously. And we all went, oh, I know that feeling. When you go, we just, we've got to win. We've got to win. You've got to be george of it practice. I've finally got to change something. So the other thing is I would suggest is that you find people who are having wins, my friends with them, because they can show you how to do change at a macro and a macro and a policy level. They can give you feedback, but also, I carelessly, you share in those wins. And one of the things that probably is relevant to this is self-care. So I think our work is so giving of ourselves, even with all the beautiful ethics and boundaries and supervision. Our tanks run low, you know, that we run low. And so I also think that filling up your tank, by being around and near people that are having wins and making changes and doing positive things instantly, you're like my tangest cop field and I don't know what happens. Yeah, totally. And can I also add, based on that story, to share too, probably a bit of advice is make sure you're connecting with experience, social workers, or human service workers, like, you know, your daughter connected with you, you've got many years of experience, like you're a knowledge bearer of, you know, it can be institutional knowledge, community knowledge, it can be so many things, policy knowledge. And you were able to share that with her and she was able to like, then find something, like I have those experiences a lot of the time in my, in my own discipline, we have such an array of social workers who have been around the block for many years, you just know so much. And so that, you know, just surrounding yourself with amazing people who have been wins, but who knows stuff, but when you need to get that in real life. I mean, if they're genuinely like cool people, I will love going, having you say, how can you give me any time to touch me about this thing that I'm thinking about? I know you're into that. I'd love to hear those. Most people be, yes, I would love to hear my voice, no. I would love to share and influence. But I think that to me, that is a critical part of self-care is making sure that you are constantly looking for ways to activate your energy because disruptive practice is challenging because it's not always about wins. It's about the small wins. I think the other thing is that we tend to, we tend to need to stay informed and regularly PD-ing ourselves, like we need to be reading, reading. And you don't have to read boring stuff, like you can read the conversation, you can read media, various media articles. It doesn't necessarily have to be in quotes research, but exposing yourself to diverse viewpoints, you just never know when you'll pick up an idea from a sector completely unrelated to social work, like libraries. The stuff they're doing with libraries turning them into, you know, human standing hubs, and you just see these beautiful kind of synergies happening, I hate that word, that connection's happening between completely different disciplines where they create something new. So that would be the next scene is also made friends with people who aren't social workers. Exactly. Yes, expand those networks. So I love that. I love that. All right, well, let's go to our final question. I mean, out of all of that conversation, maybe your take isn't it? I don't know, any direction. What is your favorite social work technique and why? My favorite technique is facilitation. I had to think about this a bit in preparing for today because I was like, "Oh, but I like it almost." I know, right? It's hard to choose. Just one. And I'm not good at all of them to be fair. I might like them, but the people already know that they're good, but just what's your favorite? I'm good. Well, that gives you the out. Yeah, I do really love facilitation and I think you probably know why because that's probably the key skill and ingredient I think that you need to do that if we were to turn the beautiful ecosystem's model into rubbing out all of the little circles in between and making it actually like this is social work people. This is how we do it. Then I think facilitation is your skill. And I think that's because it's not about, I know that you need the skill to facilitate, but I think because it's an outward focus skill to me, like it's about the other. Yes, totally. It's like you need to just be able to, will you do it with your podcast as well, like facilitating a conversation requires you to listen and to not be thinking ahead of somebody else and to think of the other person. And I think in the large group settings, facilitation to me is also about having a conversation with someone and knowing, oh my gosh, they need to be friends with this other person that I know. Plus this amazing thing. And you facilitate without anybody realizing you did it, you should be friends because I know great things are going to happen here. And so I think it also facilitates to me it's a bit persuasive. So if you're thinking of that changing that person in, you know, this management, their belief about whether or not they can give you $2,000 or $1,000 to do this thing in this new way, you have to be able to kind of facilitate them to come to your thinking, to facilitate the removal of money into your opinions. Oh my gosh, he said it way better. Yeah, it's such a multi-dimensional skill when you put it on that, isn't it? Yeah, it should be like social work on everyone. Oh no, that's your favorite skill. What do you always say to this? I plan on answering it in the final episode. I'm happy to reveal several of them, like, I mean, and a lot of it goes to interpersonal communication skills, like, things that are just really brilliantly paraphrased. I think that's a brilliant skill to always be able to do, not just in conversations with people, but also in research. Maybe, I mean, because you did interviews, right? And you have to do all that inductive based coding. For me, coding is a fancy word for paraphrasing. That was not about love that. It was such a light bulb moment that I had during my PhD, you know, because you read all these research textbooks, a lot of which are written by sociologists and social science researchers. And I was like, what's this coding thing? And then when I translate it into social language, I'm like, oh, I get this. Like, we're all data and analysts. You know, when we're interviewing someone, we're using, you know, all our social work interview skills, but when we're also analyzing those interviews. You teach research methods? No. If you can change all of the research terminologies and language, into social language, say translation service plays requested. That's going to be my disruptive social work practice. Also, social work at self-iracan. So that's, yeah, that's one definite skill. And I think it's worth sharing that because you're talking about facilitation and interpersonal work. Okay. Thank you for sharing that because I actually can, have you trademarked that? No. I'm going to start using it, but I will attribute. And I look, I, I mean, I've learned so much from you today, Shirley, about Disrupted Social Work. And it's so exciting to speak to someone who's actually developing this theory, you know, and taking from, you know, or developing it in context, like social workers often do in relation to other knowledge bases, but to develop something innovative yourself. So you're the disruptor of the disruptive social work, in a way, by developing this. So I just can't wait to read more of your work and know that you have many plans to publish. Okay. I've got a couple. I just submitted one on a disrupted taxonomy, which is more from the learning and teaching side of things because I'm thinking, right, now we need to design rubrics and then we need to design assessment tasks that actually assess for this. Yeah. For traditional expressions of knowing, we need to look at different ways of that. So yeah, I appreciate that you will see what happens and encouraging me. I appreciate all the encouragement. Oh, there's so much we can do with your ideas in our, yeah, you feel that. You've given me so much and I will be walking away from this conversation, looking at field education in a different way, you know, as one of those academic, I love being involved in field ed. So I think framing it as a, you know, as a key area for disruptive practice. Yeah. And I think it'll just resonate with students like that's, they'll go, yeah, this is like even a social work. That's right. I want to change things. And they'll be really good at it. And hopefully we'll need to follow up and hopefully we'll have some links to some results as I can make a better. We'll put it in the show. It's been tricked so that if you're looking for some practical examples. Yeah. If I've got too lofty, then hopefully that'll be helpful as well. Oh, thanks. Thank you so much. Dr. Shirley, thank you. Shall we leave it there? Yes. Thank you, Bernie. Thank you for joining me today. And I hope you enjoyed the episode. You are most welcome to get in touch and tell me what you gained from the show. You'll find my website details and email in the episode notes. Be sure to check out the notes for other links that you can follow up for further learning and development. While you were there, tap the subscribe button on your podcast app so you don't miss out on the next episode. And feel free to rate and review the podcast so we can reach a wider audience. See you next time in the social work cafe.