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Record W2341208174 · doi:10.1300/j009v29n04_03

Path Dependence and the Place of Social Action in Social Work Practice

2006· article· en· W2341208174 on OpenAlexaff
Margot Breton

Bibliographic record

VenueSocial Work With Groups · 2006
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldSocial Sciences
TopicSocial Work Education and Practice
Canadian institutionsUniversity of Toronto
Fundersnot available
KeywordsAction (physics)Perspective (graphical)EpistemologySociologySocial workWork (physics)State (computer science)Social practiceSocial changeSocial psychologyPsychologyComputer sciencePolitical scienceArtificial intelligenceLawEngineering

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

This paper interprets the state of social work practice through the use of path dependence theory, which models the notion that history matters, and has been developed by economists to explain, among other things, why less desirable technologies are often adopted even when better ones are known to exist. The theory sheds light on the fact that a professional paradigm can become a dominant one, and that a profession can be “locked into” that paradigm even though others more suitable to its values and goals are known. One of the major mechanisms which brings this about, that of increasing returns, is explored. A brief historical perspective of social work, including social work with groups, is presented in light of the theory. This paper then establishes theoretical foundations for a practice that incorporates social action. Practice illustrations are presented. The paper argues that integrating social action in everyday practice does not require a revolutionary shift, but strategies that build on existing knowledge and skills.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.009
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.011
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Theoretical or conceptual · Consensus signal: Theoretical or conceptual
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.009
Threshold uncertainty score0.047

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0090.011
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0030.002
Science and technology studies0.0040.051
Scholarly communication0.0070.008
Open science0.0010.007
Research integrity0.0020.002
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0050.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.022
GPT teacher head0.330
Teacher spread0.308 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designTheoretical or conceptual
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations7
Published2006
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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