Enhancing critical social work practice: Using text-based vignettes in qualitative research

Abstract

There exist ongoing calls among social work scholars and practitioners to cultivate applied knowledge of critical and emancipatory practice. In this paper, I explore the utility of text-based vignettes as instruments that can be used to elicit insight from marginalized service users on critical social work practice. To do this work, I draw on data from interviews with 20 transgender and gender diverse (TGD) social service users, along with 10 social workers, whose responses to a text-based vignette were originally used to build an understanding of the constituents of equitable social work practice with TGD people. Incorporating critical pragmatism as a conceptual framework and constructivist grounded theory as a methodological orientation, I analyze data from this study as an exemplar that substantiates the promise of using text-based vignettes in qualitative social work research to generate knowledge of critical social work practice. Specifically, I demonstrate how text-based vignettes in this study (1) contextualized the meaning, significance, and impact of oppression for service users, (2) built insight on practice that reflects solidarity and allyship, and (3) identified opportunities for social workers’ reflexive use of professional power to effect change. Accounting for the tensions between empiricism and critical praxis in social work, I consider the promise of incorporating text-based vignettes to develop empirical social work literature that is rooted in the voices of marginalized service users.

Introduction

Social work’s aspirational commitment to social justice has long been conceptualized as existing in tension—and in relationship—with its project of professionalization (Olson, 2007). As a discipline and profession, social work has tended toward the consolidation of a distinct, intelligible body of practice knowledge that it can privilege exclusively as its own, which scholars and practitioners have argued conflicts with the profession’s supposed commitment to equity and social justice (Mehrotra et al., 2019; Olson, 2007). For example, Olson (2007) has indicated that the social work profession has frequently leveraged social justice discourses to consolidate its own power and legitimacy, often at the expense of challenging institutions that privilege professional power and reinforce conditions of oppression in the first place. Yet, by pointing to how social workers concretely and often consistently draw on social justice as an organizing principle for professional practice, some have argued that the pursuit of social justice and the project of professionalism in social work may not necessarily be at odds (O’Brien, 2011).

Social work scholars have long grappled with the compatibility of empiricism in social work scholarship—often as a means of developing, consolidating, and legitimizing professional practice knowledge—with the discipline’s commitment to social justice (Garrow and Hasenfeld, 2017; McNeill and Nicholas, 2019). Some have examined the rise of evidence-based social work practice, meaning practice that is informed by a combination of empirical evidence, clinical expertise, and informed consent, as a product of political and economic objectives that favor fiscal efficiency over the pursuit of structural change, and have thus considered its function in maintaining systems of oppression (Liegghio et al., 2019). However, non-empirical social work scholarship has often been responsible for upholding Eurocentric (Choate, 2019; Schiele, 2017), racist (Joseph, 2021), and cisheteronormative (Barsky, 2022) conceptualizations of the social context and experiences of marginalized groups in social work. As such, a dynamic body of knowledge that is empirically substantiated with the voices of service users is necessary for the growth of social justice-oriented practice. One area that is in urgent need of a growth in empirical scholarship is the domain of social work practice with transgender (trans) and gender diverse (TGD) people. This area of work is influenced by a corpus of applied conceptual literature that has historically—and often with little to no empirical basis—promoted the pathologization and marginalization of this group, as contemporary trans health scholars have pointed out (Ashley, 2023; Serano, 2020). Given the profound expressions of stigma and discrimination that TGD people continue to experience across mainstream healthcare and social service systems (Kcomt, 2019), the use of empirically unsubstantiated, yet potentially harmful approaches to the care of this population points to the need for community-engaged empirical literature as a requirement for forging equitable practice in social work and across other professions. In this study, I explore the use of text vignettes in qualitative social work research to generate insight on equitable social work practice with marginalized people. In my analysis, I draw on the findings of a study on equitable social work practice with TGD people (Kia et al., 2022), which involved the use of a text vignette to elicit responses among service users and social workers taking part in individual semi-structured interviews. These responses, which included their insights on relevant systems of oppression and potential social work interventions, enabled the generation of knowledge on critical social work practice with TGD people.

Text vignettes in social work research and practice

Text-based vignettes are short stories or case scenarios that are typically incorporated in the context of semi-structured interviews or focus groups as a means of eliciting participant responses that address a study’s research questions (Murphy et al., 2021). In social work research, vignettes are incorporated to achieve varying ends. Bain (2023) has indicated that these instruments have been used in social work scholarship to develop practice insight across domains such as adult safeguarding, care planning, child protection, and multi-agency collaboration. Text vignettes have also been foregrounded as viable tools for studying the values that social workers apply in practice (Ghanem et al., 2018; Wilks, 2004). Relatedly, text vignettes have also served the function of developing and substantiating practice knowledge that can guide professional decision-making (Bain, 2023; Hughes and Huby, 2004).

Vignettes occupy a liminal space in qualitative research. On the one hand, vignettes are often recognized as instruments that facilitate access to subjective processes of introspection, reasoning, and justification used among participants to navigate specific situations or problems (Bain, 2023; Ghanem et al., 2018). Additionally, researchers often recognize that the construction of vignettes can shape and influence responses to scenarios they are meant to represent (Bain, 2023; Hughes and Huby, 2004). While these factors would indicate an alignment of vignette-based inquiry with constructivist epistemology, the notion that vignettes are designed to approximate “real life” parameters of social situations (Ghanem et al., 2018; Wilks, 2004) suggests otherwise. Indeed, by recognizing that the purpose of vignettes is to simulate material conditions that are believed to exist outside the research encounter, researchers incorporate these instruments with the presupposition of a “reality” that is more or less intelligible across members of a participant population (Rizvi, 2019). The paradigmatic ambiguity of vignette-based inquiry may, understandably, raise questions of rigor, given the importance of paradigmatic alignment in qualitative research (Rose and Johnson, 2020). However, some researchers anchored in critical traditions of scholarship have pointed out the value of this liminality in research involving marginalized people. Vignettes can harness the agency of subjugated participants to construct their own understandings of a situation, while simultaneously acknowledging systems of marginalization operating in their lives (Rizvi, 2019). This position aligns with historical social work scholarship on case study methodology, which has highlighted the utility of case studies as means of rendering visible contextual (and often constructed) features of a given situation or lived experience, particularly for the purpose of informing practice, while at the same time acknowledging material conditions that make specific cases compelling as sites of analysis and theorization (Gilgun, 1994).

In the context of social work research with marginalized groups, including TGD people, text vignettes may be valuable instruments for eliciting practice-relevant experiential and subjective knowledges, as they are likely to simulate the conditions in which they tend to experience social work interventions. However, they may only serve this function if they are developed in partnership with people whose experiences they are intended to represent, as without this engagement, vignettes risk reinforcing normative and oppressive discourses already shaping the lives of marginalized service users (Garrow and Hasenfeld, 2017; Joseph, 2021). There are limited examples in social work scholarship of using text vignettes to elicit responses from service users. Outside of social work, some have explored the use of text vignettes to foreground the voices of marginalized people to inform public policy (Cheah et al., 2023). Still, social work researchers have yet to examine the possible uses of text vignettes to more specifically build critical knowledge of service users’ experiences with social workers and social work interventions, despite the potential contributions that such an analysis could make to the ongoing growth of critical, yet applied social work scholarship. In this paper, I show how I was able to use text vignettes in a qualitative study to enrich existing insights on TGD people’s social conditions and lived experiences as they relate to social work practice. In so doing, I illustrate the utility of text vignettes as tools that can be used to generate knowledge of critical social work practice.

Critical pragmatism as a conceptual framework

Pragmatism has been commonly described as a framework for drawing on experience and action to inform inquiry that generates practical knowledge for addressing specific social problems (Borden, 2013; Hothersall, 2019; Lin, 2023; Shields, 2017). By definition, pragmatism is a pluralistic orientation to research in that it recognizes the variable “fit” of different (and sometimes conflicting) perspectives for guiding inquiry intended to address challenges of the social world (Borden, 2013; Hothersall, 2019; Lin, 2023). Relatedly, it is characterized by a commitment to instrumentalism, or a recognition of the interrelatedness of theory and practice (Berringer, 2019). Pragmatism has also been described as relational and participatory in that it necessitates involvement from those directly affected by a social issue to shape the research process and generate a suitable response to the identified problem (Berringer, 2019; Shields, 2017). Finally, pragmatist philosophy accounts for fallibility, abductive reasoning, and experience in research in that the knowledge it is used to generate is cast as subject to refinement, modification, or overhaul based on the consequences of its application (Berringer, 2019; Hothersall, 2019; Lin, 2023; Shields, 2017).

Pragmatist philosophy and social work practice in North America have evolved in tandem. While some have argued that early social work practitioners such as Jane Addams were prominently influenced by the tradition of pragmatism (Kemp and Brandwein, 2010), others have challenged this normative reading of history by highlighting the bidirectionality of influence in the relationship between pragmatism and the practice of social work (Berringer, 2019; Deegan, 2017; Seigfried, 1996). For example, citing the work of Deegan (2017) and Seigfried (1996), Berringer (2019) has pointed out the critical role that Jane Addams, along with her contemporaries, including Jessie Taft, Julia Lathrop, Lilian Wald, and Grace Abbott, played in shaping American pragmatist philosophy. She, along with Deegan (2017) and Seigfried (1996), have also emphasized the gendered distinctions that normative readings of the history of pragmatism have reified between philosophers recognized as contributing to the canon of pragmatist philosophy (almost exclusively men), and social work practitioners (primarily women) who are often denied this credit. Finally, Berringer (2019) has noted the racist omission of Black men, including W.E.B. Dubois, as pioneers of American pragmatist thought in dominant interpretations of the history of this philosophical tradition. In addition to these historical problems in the evolution of pragmatism in social work and other contexts, some have regarded the relevance of pragmatist thought for addressing systems of marginalization and injustice with skepticism (Ahmed-Mohamed, 2013). Specifically, as conventional applications of pragmatist thought, particularly within professional contexts, have often involved operating within the limits of existing systems and structures in the interest of feasibility, some have questioned the promise of pragmatist values and attitudes for effecting change (Ahmed-Mohamed, 2013).

Recognizing potential problems in the utility of normative pragmatism for grappling with systems of oppression, critical pragmatism is an extension of pragmatist thought that is grounded in critical scholarship and therefore more fully anchored in a vision of social justice (Feinberg, 2015). This conceptual framework, though closely related to pragmatism in its concern with pluralism, instrumentalism, and the fallibility of knowledge, calls on researchers to consider differences in how knowledge is applied to affect people situated in variable social contexts, and in particular those located at intersections of oppression (Jones and Hall, 2022; McBride, 2021). Perhaps most importantly, critical pragmatists attend to the ways in which power can and often does shape the normative framing of social problems, and draw on this reflexive process to inform critical inquiry that generates applied knowledge for emancipatory or transformative change (Feinberg, 2015). In this paper, I draw on critical pragmatism by attending to the role of text vignettes in supporting inquiry that challenges dominant conceptualizations of the lives of marginalized people. I also use this framework to conceptualize social work practice knowledge as a catalyst for addressing social issues at the root and in the everyday lives of those affected by intersecting systems of oppression.

Methods

The original qualitative study on which the current analysis is based was informed methodologically by constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2006), and sought to address a primary research question: What are the constituent parts of equitable social work practice with TGD populations? Participants included 20 TGD service users and 10 social workers (one of whom also identified as TGD) located in a western Canadian province, each of whom completed semi-structured interviews involving the use of a text vignette to generate insight related to the primary research question. The primary analysis of the study’s findings is presented elsewhere (Kia et al., 2022). This paper is based on a secondary analysis of the data to explore how text vignettes in qualitative social work research can contribute insight into equitable social work practice with marginalized people.

A Community Advisory Board (CAB), comprising TGD people with social service experience and one cisgender social worker, was struck and compensated at the beginning of the study. The CAB shaped the development of the case vignette, and provided feedback on aspects of the research processes such as recruitment and sampling, data collection, and data analysis. As author (and project lead), I acknowledge that although I am a trans woman, and therefore possess some shared lived experience with certain TGD people, I drew on the CAB’s expertise to account for the reality of my social location as a middle class academic with less direct experience as a service user—and more recently as a service provider—than many of the study participants.

Statement on ethics

The study underwent review by the behavioral research ethics board at The University of British Columbia and all participants provided informed consent prior to taking part in the study.

Recruitment and sampling

Together with support from the CAB, I approached community organizations supporting TGD people in a western Canadian province to circulate the recruitment poster to service users who may be interested in taking part in the study. I also posted recruitment materials on social media, including on Facebook and on Reddit, which enabled me to reach those less connected with community networks already supporting the study’s recruitment process. As noted above, I recruited a total of 20 TGD service users and 10 social workers into the study. Supplementary Table 1 contains information on the demographic composition of the sample.

Data collection

Each of the participants took part in one to one and a half hour semi-structured virtual interviews in which they reacted to a text vignette involving an exchange between a TGD-identified service user and a social worker. Specifically, they were asked to reflect on what may have been happening for the service user in the text vignette, what the social worker did well in the scenario, and how the social worker could have provided better care. In these interviews, participants were also asked to provide their perspectives on equitable social work practice with TGD participants, based either on their experiences utilizing social services (if they were involved in the study as TGD service users), or their professional practice experience (if they were participating as social workers).

Vignette development

As project lead, I first consulted the CAB on potential scenarios for a text vignette that could most authentically capture the experiences of TGD service users with social workers. The CAB suggested developing a vignette in which (1) a service user’s TGD identity would be prioritized over other dimensions of social location, and (2) key aspects of the service user’s interactions with service providers would be presented with ambiguity. Members of the CAB agreed that foregrounding the service user’s TGD identity would compel participants to engage with this aspect of lived experience, rather than enabling them to comment on aspects of social location with which they may have been more familiar. CAB members also indicated that ambiguity in the text vignette would prompt participants to share interpretations that would potentially reveal covert beliefs and biases regarding TGD populations. As ambiguity in text vignettes is recognized as a necessary condition for eliciting a rich breadth of participant responses in qualitative research (Bain, 2023), the CAB’s feedback in this area corresponded well with the scholarship on vignette-based inquiry.

Based on input from the CAB, I drafted a vignette that involved an instance of a TGD service user (a trans woman named Larisa) being described with the wrong name (deadnamed) and pronouns (misgendered) by an interdisciplinary sexual health team that she had attempted to access in order to pursue HIV testing and receive crisis support. Of note, the text vignette indicated that while the team’s social worker was critical of the clinic’s deadnaming and misgendering of the trans woman, this practitioner decided against directly challenging the team on these practices in order not to “confuse” her colleagues. The social worker was also described as introducing herself to Larisa to offer support after the service user had been deadnamed and misgendered, at which point Larisa responded by abruptly leaving the clinic. The CAB reviewed the vignette and provided feedback on two drafts of the text before it was finalized. This process enhanced the trustworthiness of the instrument as a representation of TGD people’s experiences with social work and social services. The full text of the vignette is available for review as Supplementary Document A.

Data analysis

Consistent with constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2006), the data were analyzed iteratively and inductively as they were collected. Interview transcripts were read and re-read, and descriptive (or open) codes were first developed to capture common units of meaning appearing across participant accounts. Gradually, the open codes were consolidated to develop increasingly higher-order themes (otherwise known as axial codes) that were selectively harnessed to construct a theoretical account of the constituents of equitable social work practice with TGD populations. As already noted, the findings of the study’s primary analysis are presented elsewhere (Kia et al., 2022).

In this paper, I present a secondary analysis of the qualitative data that were collected for this study. Although I was not able to incorporate aspects of constructivist grounded theory design involving recruitment, sampling, and data collection, my analytical process was informed by this methodological orientation in that I started with close readings of the raw data, and then gradually developed open and axial codes to conceptualize the role of text vignettes in generating insight about equitable social work practice with marginalized populations. I drew on critical pragmatism (Feinberg, 2015; Jones and Hall, 2022) to identify specific axial codes—particularly those reflected in the accounts of TGD participants—that appeared to disrupt normative ways the social workers in the sample tended to understand and respond to the marginalization of TGD service users, and selected these codes to conceptualize implications of the insights they each held for the use of text vignettes in qualitative social work research. Specifically, I identified connections between theory and practice held in the accounts of TGD service users, and abductively contrasted these insights against the data of social work participants to provisionally develop and then refine a conceptualization of how service user responses to the text vignette build on, challenge, and extend existing practice knowledge among social workers. This process of conceptualization gradually led to the development of the three themes I present in the findings section of this manuscript. Secondary analyses of qualitative data, including those informed by constructivist grounded theory, are common in applied social sciences, particularly where post hoc readings of data lead to the construction of novel insights that have potential to contribute to relevant bodies of scholarship (Whiteside et al., 2012).

Findings

When incorporated in qualitative social work research, text vignettes may be particularly helpful in (1) contextualizing the meaning, significance, and impact of oppression for service users; (2) building insight on practice that reflects solidarity and allyship; and (3) identifying opportunities for social workers’ reflexive use of professional power to effect change. Below, I substantiate each of these findings with participant accounts.

Contextualizing the meaning, significance, and impact of oppression

When asked about what may be happening for the service user, Larisa, TGD service users participating in the study frequently discussed oppressive forces operating in Larisa’s life and, critically, pointed to specific ways that her behavior might have been influenced by social factors such as transphobia, transmisogyny, and HIV stigma. In particular, reflecting on Larisa’s seemingly abrupt departure from the clinic, several service users explained that she had likely crossed a threshold of tolerance for transphobic mistreatment by service providers after being deadnamed and misgendered repeatedly both at the clinic and in other settings, and that she had removed herself from the clinic in this instance to protect herself from further harm. For example, one participant, a South Asian genderfluid person in their 40s, mentioned:

[This was] probably just a build-up, you know? Like, it’s one thing if one person messes up the pronoun or messes up the name or whatever it is, but it’s like the constant repeated exclusion, the constant repeated disrespect of identity just builds, you know. And I can imagine myself in a situation like that where you would just get so frustrated and so triggered that you’re almost panicked. You almost have to leave and not be there anymore or else something else is going to happen, you know?

Importantly, service users commonly discussed the systemic nature of experiences of being deadnamed and misgendered among TGD people, particularly in the context of state-funded services, to describe the significance of these phenomena. They also noted expectations of mistreatment—as well as patterns of service avoidance—that tend to develop among TGD service users as consequences of such experiences. It is important to note that several racial minority TGD participants, including the individual quoted above, emphasized the particular prominence of deadnaming and misgendering as systemic and intersecting expressions of transphobia and racism among this group.

Although some may believe that service users’ interpretations of the text vignette reflect “common sense” insights, contrasting their analyses against social work participants’ perceptions of Larisa’s situation suggests otherwise. Social work participants, though frequently expressing empathy and compassion for Larisa’s predicament after being asked what may be happening for her, consistently held back on articulating systems of oppression operating in the service user’s life. Instead, they often discussed wanting to build rapport in order to learn more about Larisa’s history and social context. The account below, taken from my interview with a white, cisgender social worker who reported more than 10 years of professional practice experience in child welfare, was representative of social workers’ perceptions of the service user’s situation:

Well, I think – I mean the social worker is not familiar with Larisa, so I think we're missing what her situation is and what's going on for her and what her history has been. I think that would be useful information in the future.

Such responses from social workers to the text vignette were understandable, particularly given the profession’s historical emphasis on relational practice and its expressed commitment to “starting where the client is at” (Gray and Coates, 2016: 13). However, these accounts also reflected gaps in the practitioners’ knowledge of the salience and potential impact of deadnaming and misgendering as manifestations of oppression in Larisa’s life, and therefore revealed limitations in their appreciation for the social justice context of the issues raised in this practice scenario.

Building insight on practice that reflects solidarity and allyship

Service users participating in the study frequently remarked on potential opportunities for the social worker in the text vignette to practice immediate, in-the-moment solidarity and allyship with Larisa, particularly when prompted to explore what the social worker did well and what she could have differently. In particular, they often discussed the importance of the social worker acknowledging to Larisa that deadnaming and misgendering are harmful practices, and holding the organization accountable. For example, one participant, an East Asian trans woman in her early 20s, said the following:

One thing the social worker could do if they couldn’t correct everyone publicly, mention it in the introduction to Larisa, like, maybe just say, “I want to apologize for the conduct of the staff out front. I noticed they weren’t using your name and things,” [even though] there’s also a risk [that] if you bring it up again, it might backfire. So it’s a very complicated issue.

While service users commonly discussed the importance of longer-term organizational change, they consistently believed the social worker in the text vignette needed to prioritize Larisa’s immediate safety and well-being before working on changes at the organizational level.

Although social work participants regularly described deadnaming and misgendering as harmful practices, their ideas for responding to these acts were mixed. Some, for example, agreed with service users in that they believed the social worker should prioritize explicit acknowledgement of the staff’s interactions with Larisa as harmful and, in turn, hold the clinic accountable in the moment. More commonly, others indicated that the social worker should focus on long-term solutions for promoting a culture shift at the clinic and educating clinic staff, rather than addressing the issue immediately, in order not to disrupt team dynamics or further aggravate the situation for Larisa. In support of the latter idea, one mixed race (minoritized as non-white) cisgender social worker, with more than 10 years of experience in mental health and healthcare, mentioned the following:

Maybe it was good [for the social worker] to not voice how they were privately critical of how the clinic staff had interacted. You know that’s kind of not the time and place … when I was reading this I was thinking ‘wow, this is a beautiful example of where to go with some, you know, education, some looking at policies … so to not bring it up then and there’. I think that would have drawn too much attention to Larisa. It would have added fuel. So that was good to not do that at that time.

Critically, one social work participant who also identified as white and TGD perceived the social worker’s lack of immediate acknowledgement and pursuit of accountability as potentially being reflective of the practitioner’s discomfort, rather than necessarily related to her concern for Larisa’s well-being:

You can see that although the social worker, you know, privately disagrees, the social worker’s discomfort is still running the show here. Discomfort, you know, [in the] sense that trans people’s pronouns or needs or humanity are troublesome, are getting in the way, are not as important as the [team’s] busy schedule and are fundamentally just something that can be pushed aside when she wants.

While TGD participants believed in the importance of the social worker using the opportunity in the text vignette to practice immediate solidarity and allyship with Larisa, social work participants (other than one with lived experience as a TGD-identified person) more consistently felt social work responses to this vignette could be limited to those that target long-term, incremental change at the clinic. In other words, the use of a text vignette enabled the development of insight, beyond the existing practice knowledge of social workers, regarding the concrete practice of solidarity and allyship in the context of social justice-oriented social work practice.

Identifying opportunities for social workers’ reflexive use of professional power to effect change

Across both TGD people and social workers in the study’s sample, participants regularly discussed the need for the social worker in the text vignette to press for organizational and systems change. Of note, however, social workers in the sample frequently qualified their calls to action with acknowledgement of the limitations in power that often restrict social work practice in healthcare and other agency settings.

Interestingly, service users regularly accounted for the limited power of social workers in healthcare settings, and in fact frequently empathized with the social worker’s potentially limited options to practice advocacy in the text vignette. However, several service users also identified sources of power available to the social worker and contrasted her power against the marginalization of Larisa’s voice in this context. Accounting for this dynamic, they frequently discussed the importance of the social worker identifying intra-organizational allies, including those in senior leadership positions, with whom they could collaborate to introduce opportunities to build capacity among sexual health clinic staff to practice with TGD service users. For example, one white trans woman in her 30s discussed the use of this approach by the social worker to enhance access to professional development opportunities for staff at the sexual health clinic:

If they don’t have that kind of power in their workplace, then they should be speaking with their management to encourage some sort of trainer to come in … Actually bring in trainers who have that lived experience themselves and have gone through, or utilized these services themselves, to give them another perspective on what it looks like on the other side.

Critically, TGD service users who were racialized as people of color discussed the need for professional development opportunities to be led and facilitated by those whose social location and lived experience reflect diverse and varying intersections of oppression and resistance.

Other service users indicated the importance of the social worker in the text vignette to not only work toward meaningful change at her agency and beyond, but to explicitly communicate her intent to pursue such change with Larisa as a means of enhancing the service user’s safety at the clinic, and thus her capacity to engage with its services. For example, one white trans woman in her early 20s indicated that the social worker could reflect on opportunities for the sexual health clinic to integrate more equitable approaches to collecting information on names and pronouns from clients, which could in turn prevent the deadnaming and misgendering of TGD service users in the future. After making this suggestion, this participant explained that the social worker could articulate, to Larisa, her intent to explore opportunities to promote such organizational change, in order to enhance the likelihood of the service user re-establishing trust in the service provider, and completing her appointment at the clinic:

At the place I go to there are fields to enter preferred names and pronouns and so on. So if that could, if the social worker could [reflect on this idea and others and] say, “I’ll make sure that this doesn’t continue to happen,” then that would allow Larissa to not only just stick it out for that session but to still use this resource. But that then is like a structural, maybe a structural change to the operation of the clinic.

As already noted, social work participants did regularly discuss the need for the social worker in the text vignette to support organizational and structural change. What differentiated social workers’ responses from those of service users was that the latter group more consistently identified sources of power available to the social worker that they could leverage to pursue such change, and commonly discussed the importance of maintaining a relational approach even while committing to organizational or systemic change. The use of a text vignette, in other words, elicited insight regarding broadened possibilities and critical parameters for social work practice at organizational and structural levels of intervention.

Discussion

The findings of this secondary analysis reveal that text vignettes can be incorporated in qualitative social work research to generate knowledge of practice with marginalized people. In particular, they may be effective instruments for eliciting the perspectives of service users on how social workers can better understand and respond to relevant systems of oppression. In this study, the use of text vignettes allowed TGD service users to share rich insights regarding the meaning, significance, and impact of oppressive forces that typify their social contexts. Critically, as social work participants were often reluctant to name systems of oppression influencing the situation described in the text vignette, TGD service users’ accounts represented a call on practitioners to more readily identify, learn about, and engage with phenomena such as deadnaming and misgendering as manifestations of gender-based and intersectional marginalization affecting TGD people. Relatedly, TGD service users commonly described the need for the social worker in the text vignette to practice direct, in-the-moment solidarity and allyship with the service user, which contrasted with social work participants’ tendency to favor more indirect, incremental approaches to organizational change in response to the situation in question. Finally, TGD and social work participants both discussed, in principle, the importance of the social worker in the text vignette working toward organizational or systems-level change. However, TGD participants more consistently identified power differentials between the practitioner and service user and, as such, frequently described specific strategies the social worker should consider in leveraging her professional power to make changes at the clinic and beyond, and emphasized the need for this work to remain relational. Some TGD participants—particularly those who identified as people of color—also recognized the importance of intersectional approaches to this work, including the incorporation of people representing variable lived experiences of oppression and resistance in leading activities aimed at transforming systems of care.

Although, in this study, the use of text vignettes yielded insights that were (to some extent) unique to the social conditions, experiences, and needs of TGD service users, this analysis may be used as an exemplar for the incorporation of vignettes in qualitative research on social work practice with other marginalized populations. TGD populations continue to experience significant social and health inequities, and encounter profound expressions of stigma and discrimination in formal systems of care (Kcomt, 2019). Professional practice with TGD people has also historically—and in the present day—been informed by a body of poorly supported conceptual scholarship that has been complicit in the ongoing pathologization and marginalization of this group, as contemporary trans health scholars have noted (Ashley, 2023; Serano, 2020). In order to construct social work practice that not only challenges the systems of oppression surrounding TGD lives but that also anchors itself empirically in the voices of TGD service users, critical qualitative research is needed urgently in this area. This study has revealed the possible utility of text vignettes in inquiry on critical social work practice with TGD people and other marginalized populations who are affected by systemic disparities and histories of oppressive practice (Barsky, 2022; Choate, 2019; Schiele, 2017). Critically, given the intersectional nature of oppression among TGD people and other marginalized populations (Wesp et al., 2019), this article has also revealed the utility of text vignettes for enhancing insight on the complexity and nuance of experiences of subjugation and resistance at variable axes of marginalization.

A critical quandary in this area is whether text vignettes can help build truly comprehensive practice knowledge regarding equitable practice, as they are, by design, suited to prompting responses to very specific, everyday scenarios, and thus not necessarily intended to build a comprehensive understanding of the material and discursive conditions of oppression (Wilks, 2004). Drawing on the tradition of critical pragmatism that has informed the current analysis (Feinberg, 2015; Jones and Hall, 2022), I argue that endorsing the use of text vignettes in empirical social work scholarship does not entail discounting alternate approaches to deepening knowledge of oppression, anti-oppression, and critical praxis. Similarly, in the context of social work education, text vignettes can be used alongside other pedagogical tools to gauge the values, knowledge, and skills of students in relation to critical, social justice-oriented practice, and to scaffold their development in this area (Asakura et al., 2020; Bain, 2023). As adopting a position of critical pragmatism involves valuing diverse knowledges anchored in disparate and sometimes seemingly conflicting epistemologies to address salient equity issues (Feinberg, 2015), the current study non-prescriptively substantiates the use of text vignettes as one instrument (among countless potential others) to inform scholarship and education for social justice-oriented social work practice. Relatedly, the study also makes a case for the utility of critical pragmatism as a paradigmatic orientation that can support the bridging of connections between research and practice—in other words, knowledge and application—to inform and enrich social justice-oriented social work praxis. Given ongoing calls in social work to build empirical scholarship and education that can inform critical approaches to practice (McNeill and Nicholas, 2019), and in particular to operationalize the profession’s commitment to social justice (Asakura et al., 2020), the study’s critical, yet applied contributions to qualitative social work research are timely and relevant.

It is important to acknowledge several limitations of this study. Most importantly, the current study is based on the data of primarily urban TGD service users and social workers located in one province of Western Canada. The first group of participants, in particular, was also disproportionately younger, and did not reflect adequate representation of Indigenous participants. Accordingly, as the analysis presented in this manuscript may have limited transferability to dissimilar geopolitical and social contexts, scholars and practitioners should treat the inferences made in this study with caution. Additionally, as the study incorporated only one text vignette to elicit responses from participants, its implications should be understood as provisional. Regardless of these important limitations, this study is still notable in substantiating the use of text vignettes to contribute to the growth of critical and applied qualitative social work research. It is my hope for the current article to stimulate scholarship that continues leveraging the strengths of text vignettes to generate knowledge of social justice-oriented social work with marginalized service users across diverse practice contexts.

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