Critical Practice

Most areas of work aim to help other people in a particular area of expertise and practice skills applied to a defined range of problems and situations. Thus practice tends be based on a restricted view of people and their problems, with a limited range of values applied in that practice.

Critical practice aims to develop the ability and skill to see beyond the usual concerns of any given profession, into its unintended side effects, causes and consequences, and to do so from a critical and evaluative perspective.

Thus, for example, the profession of social work might be practiced critically through practitioners being conscious that their role may be seen, and could operate, as an agent of social control, rather than of promoting some degree of liberation or of empowerment.