Specialty Practice or Interstitial Practice? A Reconsideration of School Social Work's Past and Present

Abstract

This article analyzes school social work's history to provide perspective on current dilemmas in social work practice and research. The authors use interstitial emergence theory, which holds that practices from overlapping fields (like social work and K–12 education) can develop into new fields, as an analytic framework. This perspective extends Harriet Bartlett's earlier analysis of social work practice in different fields. Through a documentary analysis of school social work's history and a content analysis of school social work journal articles from 1959 to 2009, the article illustrates school social work's status as both a specialty of social work and an area of interstitial practice. These findings inform a discussion of implications for school social work's future direction.