© The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of
The British Association of Social Workers. All rights reserved.
British Journal of Social Work (2005) 35, 689–708
doi:10.1093/bjsw/bch200
Advance Access publication May 16, 2005
Assessment and Social Construction:
Conflict or Co-Creation?
Roberta Rehner Iversen, Kenneth J. Gergen and
Robert P. Fairbanks II
Roberta Rehner Iversen is affiliated to the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy
and Practice, Kenneth J. Gergen to the Swarthmore College and Robert P. Fairbanks II to the
University of Chicago School of Social Administration.
Correspondence to Dr Roberta R. Iversen, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Associate
Professor, University of Pennsylvania, School of Social Policy and Practice, 3701 Locust Walk,
Philadelphia, PA 19104–6214, USA. E-mail: riversen@ssw.upenn.edu
Summary
Assessment procedures in social work emerged within the historical context of modernist
empiricism. They are lodged in assumptions of objectivity, measurement accuracy,
value neutrality and scientific expertise. Within the context of postmodern constructionism,
the grounds for traditional assessment are thrown into question. While such
critique may seem to threaten the assessment tradition, such a conclusion is unwarranted.
Rather, one may locate within the assessment tradition and constructionist
writings converging lines of thought. Through the collaborative extension of two
assessment exemplars—the genogram and the ecomap—we suggest new and more
promising potentials for assessment practices in social work.
Keywords: Assessment, postmodern, social construction, genogram, ecomap
Scholarly storms within the social sciences take many forms: foundationalism
versus postfoundationalism, empiricism versus post-empiricism, realism versus
constructionism and modernism versus postmodernism. Social work practitioners
are caught in the same maelstrom, particularly in relation to their assessment
practices. Some practitioners remain steeped in traditional beliefs of objective
assessments of the world, while others participate in postmodern dialogues on
the social construction of reality. Must the schism between ‘isms’ in the social
sciences also divide the field of social work? We think not, and in this article,
we offer a means of working together toward more fruitful practices of social
work assessment.
690 Roberta Rehner Iversen et al.
We look first at the assessment tradition in social work, using two contemporary
devices—the genogram and the ecomap—as exemplars of the evolution
from diagnostic categorization to systemic contextualization. We then present
a brief history of social constructionism1
and its critique of the assessment
tradition. Subsequent discussion builds upon earlier work in social work and
allied professions to explore how constructionist ideas may transform assessment
processes toward more generative ends. We conclude with specific examples of
how collaboration between social construction and assessment can open new
possibilities for the profession and those it serves.
The assessment tradition
Beginning with the settlement movements in the United States and England,
the social work profession was a child of cultural modernism (Addams, 1910/
1960). As Jane Addams declared, based on her study of English settlements,
‘The early American Settlement . . . insisted that each new undertaking should
be preceded by carefully ascertained facts’ (1910/1960, p. 101). Subsequently,
social work assumptions and practices became increasingly allied with rationalist
principles and practices of science (Addams, 1910/1960; Parton and O’Byrne,
2000; Walker, 2001). From the scientific standpoint, objects of study were
‘there in the world’, and the task of science was to describe and explain these
objects as accurately as possible, without personal, ideological or other bias.
These suppositions were most clearly represented in the social work diagnostic
perspective (Woods and Hollis, 1990). This perspective, informed initially by
medical science, posited the clinician as an expert investigator who ferrets out
essential, individualized patterns of dysfunction in order to generate a blueprint
for ‘corrective’ treatment. Accordingly, practitioners developed hypotheses
about the nature of a problem and tested these hypotheses in terms of treatment
processes and outcomes.
Although the terms ‘diagnosis’ and ‘assessment’ were originally used interchangeably
in social work (Woods and Hollis, 1990), more recent literature
differentiates their conceptual frameworks and units of attention. ‘Diagnosis’
implies an existence of relatively fixed ‘conditions’ or ‘traits’ of persons (Gambrill,
1997) that lead to clinical procedures and instruments focused on identifying
and treating individual problems and deficits. This individual unit of attention
became increasingly criticized for its inattention to environmental factors that
may contribute to or exacerbate people’s problems, such as economic injustice
1
Constructionism is often confused with constructivism, yet these terms also denote quite
different orientations. For constructionists, the site of construction is the relationship (language),
whereas constructivists typically locate the process of construction in the mind of the
individual (Bruner, 1986). Although other orientations, such as symbolic interactionism,
social phenomenology, critical theory and ethnomethodology, also share certain constructionist
premises, our concern here is with premises that are relational rather than those with that
still reflect a mind/world dualism.
Assessment and Social Construction 691
and societal discrimination. In contrast, ‘assessment’ became increasingly
associated with measurement of systemic features or processes, such as family
relationships and social interaction. This shift was particularly embraced by
social work practitioners for whom the ‘person-in-environment’ paradigm
reflected the profession’s core concerns with resources needed to deal with
life’s problems and with relationships as a vehicle for increasing options and
choices for problem-solving and living (Hepworth et al., 1997; Houston, 2001;
National Association of Social Workers, 1995).
Within this more systemic orientation to assessment, two devices gained
particular prominence: the genogram (Carter and Orfandis, 1976; McGoldrick
et al., 1999) and the ecomap (Hartman, 1978). We selected these particular
devices as exemplars because they or similar ones are used in organizational
settings in many countries (Walker, 2001), administered by a broad range of
practitioners, and were designed to move beyond individual diagnostics into
more relational assessment formats. Although classification systems such as the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) and Person-In-Environment (PIE)
(Karls and Wandrei, 1994) are also used widely in social work assessment, they
were designed primarily or secondarily as research tools and their focal unit of
attention remains the individual. They are thus less fruitful devices than the
genogram and ecomap for this initial exploration of the generative relationship
between assessment and constructionism.
Briefly, the genogram organizes and graphs a family’s life chronology, similar
to a family tree (Figure 1). The genogram’s multi-generational format assumes
that family patterns are systemic, adaptational and repetitive. Demographics,
genealogical relationships, structure, communication patterns, cultural origins,
nodal events and roles are examples of characteristics and components of
families that the genogram traces over generations. Symbols denoting the
strength and salience of the connections are also graphed. In recent years, the
genogram has been computerized. The genogram has been used internationally
for many populations and practice settings, as McGoldrick and colleagues
(1999) identify, e.g. foster children, gay and lesbian families, immigrants, the
elderly, career centers, child welfare, family medicine and family counselling.
Of particular importance in this article, White and Tyson-Rawson (1995)
developed a variation of the genogram, called a gendergram, to examine the
dynamics of gender within couples and families, in conjunction with developmental
life stage.
Based on ecological theory about balance among elements in human and
social systems, the ecomap depicts the family constellation and its auxiliary
connections in environmental space (Figure 2). This assessment tool was
developed originally to help practitioners examine the needs of families in the
child welfare system (Hartman, 1978). Whether oriented to past or present, the
ecomap configures the family spatially at a particular point in time in relation
to significant others and to community organizations and institutions.
As with the genogram, the strength and salience of the connections are
graphed, illustrating whether the connections are nurturing, conflictual or
692 Roberta Rehner Iversen et al.
absent. Connections between external systems and individuals within a family,
as well as with families as a whole, can be graphed. Among the variants
of the ecomap format, Congress (1994) developed what she called a culturagram
to graph the cultural history of immigrant families, their origins and
reasons for emigration, and spatially denote the family’s relationships with
cultural, legal and service institutions and personal networks in the host
environment.
Although much welcomed and widely used, systemic assessment devices
such as the genogram and ecomap have been critiqued within the profession.
Practitioners pointed to ways in which such devices can be sexist, paternalistic,
patronizing and insensitive to issues of cultural diversity and societal differences
in power (Nichols and Schwartz, 1998; McGoldrick, 1998; Green, 1998).
In response, more recent orientations to assessment included analysis of power
relations, and racial and ethnic inequalities (Akamatsu, 1998), and a broadened
systemic perspective that is inclusive of multiple family forms (McGoldrick
et al., 1999). Concurrent with these critiques, an emergent wave of constructionist
thinking raised significant questions regarding epistemology, more generally,
and the idea of assessment, more specifically.
Grand-
father
Grand-
mother
Grand-
father
Grand-
mother
Mother
Father
Female
Child
Male
Child
Figure 1 Genogram (adapted from Carter and Orfandis, 1976)
Assessment and Social Construction 693
Social construction and the deconstruction of assessment
Social constructionist views of knowledge have a long history, but were ushered
into recent prominence with the publication of Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions (1962).2
As Kuhn proposed, knowledge within any discipline
depends on a shared commitment to a paradigm. Roughly speaking, a paradigm
consists of an array of assumptions about what exists, how it functions, how it
may be assessed and how scientific work ought to proceed. The importance of
Kuhn’s proposal to our exploration here is twofold. First, a commitment to a
2
Although Kuhn is a pivotal figure in social constructionist thought, other thinkers such as
Foucault (1966/1994) and Berger and Luckman (1967) are also quite significant in this regard.
We use Kuhn’s work here because its impact on constructionist thought was substantial,
despite his more modest intentions.
School
Social
Welfare
Agency
Court
Family or
Household
Work
Extended
Family
Figure 2 Ecomap (adapted from Hartman, 1978)
694 Roberta Rehner Iversen et al.
paradigm must precede the generation of knowledge. The commitment to an
a priori set of assumptions and practices makes knowledge possible. In effect, different
paradigms will create different scientific realities, and there is no transcendent
position from which to adjudicate among paradigms. Secondly, Kuhn’s arguments
trace the production of knowledge to communities—people in relationships—as
opposed to ‘individual minds’. Individual knowledge, according to this account, is
not an individual achievement, but originates in community participation.
These views were further extended and enriched by major movements in
literary theory and critical scholarship. Literary theorists, such as Barthes (1967)
and Derrida (1976), pointed to the ways in which rules of language provide the
grounds for what can be intelligibly put forward as knowledge. Our capacities to
reason with others, or make sense of our world, are circumscribed by a linguistic
forestructure. In Kuhnian terms, constitutive of any paradigm is a range of linguistic
conventions or communally negotiated rules for how the world (or self) can be
described or explained. Kuhn’s work undermines the authority of any particular
community, scientific or otherwise, to proclaim Truth, as Truth is a local achievement
within a community and there is no means of justifying the local as ‘true in
all worlds’. Such premises were further addressed by scholars and practitioners
concerned with social justice, oppression and the marginalization of minority
groups in society. Foucault (1977), in particular, asserted that knowledge claims
function as tools of power. As disciplines of knowledge disseminate their truths
and become embraced by the populace, so is the populace ‘disciplined’. As the
reality and values of the truth-making group subtly erode the existing traditions,
voices are silenced and we creep toward conditions of domination. In this sense,
assessment of psychopathology or functioning, often aided and abetted by devices
such as the genogram or ecomap, creates cultural conditions for deeming certain
people as normal and others as diseased or dysfunctional. Re-theorizing assessment
in this light introduces new consciousness about the practice by dislodging
long-held assumptions about its benevolence.
These critical movements joined others to create a broad and active dialogue
on social construction (Gergen, 1994, 1999; Potter, 1996; Billig, 1996). In the
field of social work, Witkin (1990, p. 38) described constructionism as a metatheory
that attempts to ‘elucidate the sociohistorical context and ongoing social
dynamic of descriptions, explanations, and accountings of reality’. As he saw it,
constructionism devotes particular attention to the ways in which knowledge is
historically situated and embedded in cultural values and practices. As a way of
explaining past and present knowledge, emphasis is placed on the linguistic traditions
that support, sustain and determine what can be known within cultural
parameters (Parton, 2000, 2003) and, concomitantly, professional practices
such as assessment (Levine, 1997). Further, social work scholars have been
quick to see the moral (Weick and Saleebey, 1998) and ethical (Dean and
Rhodes, 1998) implications of constructionist dialogues; of particular concern
are the ways in which society’s dominant knowledge establishments sustain
particular ideologies (Chambon et al., 1999). Rather than taking theory and the
dominant forms of understanding as foregone conclusions, these scholars
Assessment and Social Construction 695
emphasized that what we take to be knowledge is bound by cultural assumptions,
historical precedents and socio-cultural rules (Patterson, 1997). Arguing
that ‘the language forms available to us will constrain and influence the ways
we make sense of the world’ (Witkin, 1990, p. 40), such scholars emphasized
the constructionist capacity to transform our thinking by exposing the mythical
and potentially oppressive character of ordinary ways of describing and
explaining phenomena.
From a constructionist standpoint, then, the process of all individual and
systemic assessment practices is thrown into question (Guba and Lincoln, 1989;
Sampson, 1993). Devices such as the genogram and ecomap are based on a
historically and culturally situated paradigm, shared primarily by those within
the discipline, and with no justification beyond that provided by the discipline
itself. Assessment devices are believed to transform and reduce a complex and
ever-fluctuating world into a narrow, simplified structure. This structure is
described in a vocabulary that reflects the professional’s specialized way of
understanding and valuing (Holland, 2000), which is seldom the client’s world
(Milner and O’Byrne, 2002). The values carried by the instruments are not
necessarily congenial with the client’s and may actually be counter to the client’s
interests (Witkin, 2001). As typically used, the genogram and ecomap create a
world of causal mechanisms in which the client’s activity is characterized as an
‘effect’ of various forces and factors, both environmental and psychological.
Agency is suppressed and other people are defined instrumentally as having
good or bad effects. Relationships thus end up being evaluated in simplistic
terms that often cut off further discussion and exploration.
Closely related, a constructionist critique alerts us to the ways in which
assessment tools carry an overarching and inherent emphasis on client ‘problems’,
thus prioritizing a deficit-based discourse as opposed to a language of
‘potentials’. The problem-centred discourse also tends to favor professional
expertise as the basis for resolution as opposed to the experiential knowledge
of the client. In effect, the typical administration of assessment tools positions
the therapist as the technical ‘expert’ who can diagram and diagnose the person
and his or her life situation. The modernist practitioner uncovers essentialized
patterns and determines whether they contribute to or hinder functioning. The
information gathered by the tools thus provides a framework for the ‘corrective’
therapeutic work. Critics warn, however, that the interpersonal and institutional
embeddedness of knowledge construction is thus suppressed. Within the
current context of critical ferment, it is scarcely surprising that some scholars
have suggested eliminating the entire language of ‘assessment’ from the clinical
vocabulary (Laird, 1995; White and Epston, 1990), viewing it as a social
construction that privileges the professional and disempowers the client.
We suggest that social work practitioners and scholars should strongly resist
being drawn into an alienating clash between traditional realists and social constructionists,
particularly as the competing positions pertain to the core role of
assessment in social work practice. Parenthetically, similar discussions are
currently taking place among social work researchers (Bolland and Atherton,
696 Roberta Rehner Iversen et al.
2002). Although we confront paradigms in which the basic premises differ and
conflicts appear irresolvable, rather than losing ourselves in conflict, we propose
transformative dialogue (Gergen et al., 2001), i.e. dialogue from which all
parties may emerge with more finely nuanced, viable and productive opportunities.
Of special significance in such dialogue is the location of positive potentials
in the otherwise opposing sides, and the exploration of the ways in which these
potentials may be merged.
Toward transformative dialogue
We suggest that what are presumed to be ‘evaluative devices’ within the field
could actually be seen as ‘constructing devices’. That they do construct the
world is not, in itself, a shortcoming. To be engaged in the coordinated activities
of making sense will virtually require such activity. When assessment tools
are repositioned as constructing devices, we are freed from the myth of objective
measurement. As a result, we may ask more pragmatic questions about the
utility of assessment, such as: Who benefits from assessment? Who is silenced
or denigrated? What doors to meaning are opened and which are closed?
Furthermore, we can advance creative ways in which the devices can be drawn
out from their modernist underpinnings and re-appropriated toward more
generative ends. Two lines of argument prepare us for a collaborative exploration
of possibilities.
Critique without foundations
What is often suppressed, forgotten or misunderstood is the foundationless
character of constructionist critique itself. Critique within the modernist tradition
served as an agent of correction in the search for true knowledge of world and
self. As such, it was wedded to a belief in foundations of objective knowledge.
In this sense, if criticism proved to be valid, its object was obliterated. For
example, if research findings were found to be flawed, they were discredited
and removed from the field. However, given the constructionist premise that
all worlds, including those of the scientific researcher, are constructed within
communities, there is no means of ultimate correction. It is impossible to compare
the knowledge claims of competing communities save through standards
that are themselves a by-product of some community of understanding. What is
too often forgotten in constructionist critique, however, is that constructionism
itself issues from just such a community.
With respect to social work assessment, constructionist critique cannot function
as an ultimate corrective. Constructionism is delimited by the same claims
as the assessment tradition: the views are intelligible, justified and legitimate
within a particular tradition. To take a definitive or conclusive stance toward a
traditional mode of practice, whether it be intervention, assessment or even the
Assessment and Social Construction 697
deployment of diagnostic codes, is antithetical to constructionism’s appreciation
for multiplicity as well as its refusal to essentialize discourse. In addition,
using a constructionist critique to dismantle assessment leaves us blind to
constructionism’s generative possibilities. Moreover, while many of the organizing
principles for constructionist thought have been formulated as suggestions for
practice (Parton and O’Byrne, 2000; Witkin, 1999; Laird, 1995; White and
Epston, 1990), there is no definitive ‘social constructionist method’.
This is not to conclude that because constructionist critique lacks ‘ultimate
authority’, it can be dismissed or sloughed off as ‘merely opinion’. Rather, such
critique calls upon us to recognize that we live in conflicting communities of the
real and the good, and if we are to go on together, reflexive dialogue is essential.
In effect, constructionist critique of assessment practices is significant
primarily because it brings the heterogeneous cultural and global context in
which we live to the fore of these practices. In this way, critique serves as incitement
to mutually transforming dialogue.
The mining of shared assumptions
A second line of argument preparing us for the collaborative potential of
constructionism and assessment revolves around examining assumptive similarities.
We suggest that the contextual versus individualist assumptions underlying
the genogram and ecomap, as well as their variants, the gendergram and culturagram,
would generate broad agreement among constructionists in three
domains. First, the traditional individualism favoured by much assessment and
psychotherapy is deeply problematic. Secondly, understanding and intervention
should take into account the broad network of persons, institutions and
materials in which the person is embedded. Thirdly, communication processes
are of vital importance to processes of positive change. While the assessment
specialist might typically speak of these assumptions in terms of their truth, and
the constructionist might see them as constructed, the favoured accounts would
nevertheless bear a high degree of similarity. These congenialities in orientation
invite a creative combining of forces.
Assessment as construction
If there are important grounds for collaborative inquiry between the assessment
tradition and social constructionism, what specific outcomes can we
envision? In our view, significant enrichment is possible, and the way has
already been prepared in part by voices within the social work assessment
tradition itself. We first consider two major ways in which assessment
practices can be reoriented and then turn to the specific outcomes of such
reorientation.
698 Roberta Rehner Iversen et al.
Toward pragmatic potentials
Constructionist critique has done much to challenge the realities created by
assessment devices. For example, the previously unassailable realities that
comprised much of Bowen’s theory and strongly influenced the genogram
design, such as ‘symptoms’, ‘pathology’ and ‘rationality’, have all been subject
to extensive critique. As Witkin noted, once stable concepts such as ‘systems’
and ‘dysfunction’ have been ‘unpacked and reassembled as historical and
cultural expressions’, they give way to a sensibility whereby we understand
‘language as constitutive of reality’ (Witkin, 2000, p. 390). Abstract notions
such as the ‘dysfunctional family’ become akin to what Marcus (1998) called a
‘fiction of the whole’. As Laird pointed out, ‘Some family theorists suggest that
the idea of family itself is a widely varying social construction with shifting
forms and boundaries and that it may not always be the most salient system in
defining problems or in selecting the unit of attention for practice’ (Laird, 1995,
p. 153). Yet, within Laird’s critique, we also locate grounds for the route
toward reconstruction. Simply because concepts such as system, family, gender,
dysfunction and the like are cultural constructions, we need not abandon them.
If we jettisoned all constructions from our deliberation on persons, deliberation
would be terminated. As Laird intimated, then, different realities may
become salient under different conditions. More broadly, we have available
multiple discourses for deliberating on our lives—discourses that may vary in
their utility across time and circumstance.
This more pragmatic view of language—as contrasted with the realism or
essentialism favoured by modernist readings—is not alien to the assessment
tradition. Introducing the ecomap in 1978, Hartman noted that ‘as one begins
to think systems, one tends to move to the use of metaphor and to the use of
visual models’ (p. 466). While the systems metaphor may have been restrictive
in terms of the essentialism it carried into the therapeutic milieu, Hartman elucidated
ways in which the language forms available to us create, sustain and
bind what can be known—a phenomenon perhaps best summarized by her
later aphorism, ‘words create worlds’ (Hartman, 1991). In fact, Hartman’s
original conception of the ecomap provided a springboard for contemporary
constructionist thought by moving assessment into both verbal and visual
realms, thus providing a compelling rationale for use of the tools under a
postmodern theoretical lens.
From assessment to collaborative assistance
Constructionist texts also invite us to see the assessment device not as an
instrument for finding, but for making; i.e. not as a means of determining
what is the case, but of creating visions of our world. Such a proposal does
not eradicate the role of the professional; rather, it invites us to reconfigure
this role in potentially promising ways. In particular, constructionist theory
Assessment and Social Construction 699
invites the practitioner to question, displace and/or eschew the traditional
position of authoritative voice in favour of a dialogic and collaborative orientation.
Such an orientation suggests the primacy of engaging in dialogues with
those persons typically called clients, with a particular emphasis on the active
negotiation of possible realities (Miehls and Moffatt, 2000). The client is thus
not assessed in an essentialist fashion, but is assisted collaboratively and
dynamically.
This transformation in the role of the practitioner is now flourishing in allied
practice domains, as seen in the models set out by Anderson and Goulishian’s
(1992) ‘collaborative language systems’, White and Epston’s (1990) and
McLeod’s (1997) ‘narrative therapy’ and Lynn Hoffman’s (1992) ‘reflexive
family therapy’. Likewise, in Parton and O’Byrne’s (2000) ‘constructive social
work’, practitioners abandon the stance of knowing (e.g. ‘Now I know what
your problem is’) and privilege the creation of collaborative dialogues (e.g.
‘Shall we explore what meaning this problem has for you?’). In other words,
practitioners engage with clients in an ‘interpersonal construction process’
(Fruggeri, 1992) that may generate new options and possibilities for thoughts,
meanings, feelings and actions.
In our view, the two assessment, or ‘assisting’, tools discussed here—the
genogram and the ecomap—are highly congruent with the goals of a dialogic
practice stance. Because constructionism would shift the emphasis from
information gathering to creating possibilities, the dynamic use of the genogram
and ecomap throughout the practitioner–client contact period would
counter essentialist tendencies and would model how families can continue
dialogic processes in their future deliberations. Collaborating with clients to
construct ways in which their lives can engage with the larger social and material
context is also promising. Although traditionally used to graph the past or
the present, the genogram and the ecomap readily lend themselves to graphing
the future. Such collaborative practice, then, would not lead to conclusions
about what is the case, but to new dialogic beginnings about how the case was
constructed initially and how it could be written anew.
Transformative potentials of assessment dialogue
The question that must finally and most importantly be addressed is ‘To
what end?’ Under a constructionist lens, we suggest that assessment tools
become capable of transcending their own origins. We have outlined a way
of understanding assessment as a collaborative deliberation on possibilities
for one’s life, one’s relationships and the future. But, most importantly, what
fruits may be yielded by such interchange? Three transformative outcomes
involving collaborative inquiry deserve particular attention: challenging
existing realities; realizing new realities; and the potential of continuous
dialogue.
700 Roberta Rehner Iversen et al.
Challenging existing realities
Constructionist theory foregrounds the ways in which people co-create the
realities in which they live (Parton, 2003): the sense of individual persons,
families, institutions, various goods and evils and the like. While this process is
essential to viable relationships, the outcome is often a freezing of reason,
desire and imagination. One finds oneself living in a world of obdurate facts
and unassailable truths, such as ‘I am old’, ‘poor’, ‘unloved’ and ‘without skills’,
and the impression is that they cannot easily be changed, if at all. For constructionists,
these particular discourses of the real, rational and good are socially
situated; if the relational/discursive configuration can be altered, so can the
pattern of discourse. In this context, conversations of collaborative assistance
can be extremely important in challenging existing patterns of freeing clients
from the potentially strangulating effects of the taken-for-granted, and softening
the boundary between the given and the possible (O’Hanlon, 1993; De
Shazer, 1994). Two forms of challenge are especially significant: first, exploring
whether an accepted reality may be meaningfully understood in another way
(e.g. ‘Is it possible that your child’s Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
can be seen as a situation that emerges from her relationships within the
culture at her school?’) and, secondly, exploring the ways in which various
persons, histories or relationships may limit, constrain or create one’s realities
(e.g. ‘Who is to say that being old is a problem?’ and ‘Are there others who
might paint a better picture of old age?’). The first form of conversation brings
dominating discourses into question. It differs from its predecessor—
‘reframing’—by its grounding in discursive ‘possibility’ rather than practitioner
‘knowledge’. The second focuses on the participants who may shape or
challenge these discourses.
We suggest that the genogram and the ecomap, as well as the variants
focused on gender and culture, lend themselves well to the process of challenging
otherwise delimiting or oppressive realities. In a general sense, collaborative
inquiry into new ways of understanding one’s world often disrupts the
more traditional realities of the self-contained individual. Relationships
replace single individuals as the centre of attention. Moreover, within a constructionist
frame, such tools also invite innovative uses; standardization gives
way to conversational creativity. In the case of the genogram, the deconstructive
potentials have long been apparent. As Hartman averred, ‘Each individual
is also part of a family saga, in an infinitely complicated human system which
has developed over many generations and has transmitted powerful commands,
role assignments, events, and patterns of living and relating down through the
years’ (Hartman, 1978, p. 473). What better place for a constructionist to begin
challenging existing realities than at the sites of saga, stories and powerful
commands?
The genogram is frequently used to map and track histories of mental disorder.
However, deploying the instrument as a means of unsettling dominant realities,
we might ask less about experiences or facts and more about constructions of
Assessment and Social Construction 701
those experiences and facts. For example, in discussing relatives labelled as
‘depressive’, we might shift the emphasis from ‘the problem’ to dialogue about
the label itself. We might ask: ‘Are there other possible descriptions or explanations?’
‘What people have an investment in labeling the action as depression,
as opposed to other, non-disease designations?’ ‘Who in your family might disagree
with the diagnosis, or have another story to tell?’
In the case of the ecomap, visual illustration of how individuals and families
perceive existing relationships with social institutions, often described in static
terms, can be re-visualized as a dynamic construction of preferred future
connections, especially when map construction is ‘shoulder-to-shoulder’, as
Hartman (1978) originally proposed. One can even imagine being ‘shoulderto-shoulder’
at a computer, making maps that are multidimensional and
mobile. The process of identifying ‘the nature of the connections’ yields stories
about the quality of family–society intersections (Parton, 2000) that can be
converted into new stories about relationships with institutions or into new
visions of environmental connections. For example, a content discourse about
stressful relationships with a public assistance or child welfare organization
could be re-storied as a process discourse, in which the client decides not to
exert energies in these directions (Lax, 1992). More specifically, in response to
the relentless demands in statutory arenas for regulatory decisions, client and
worker can co-construct the ecomap to chart action possibilities and futureoriented
institutional connections. Conversing reflexively in this way, individuals
and families become empowered creators of relationships with their environments
instead of passive recipients of institutions perceived to be omnipotent.
Likewise, practitioners in statutory agencies, where ‘risk assessment’ has essentially
replaced ‘needs assessment’ (Milner and O’Byrne, 2002), and where
‘generative assessment’ is non-existent, may be better able to balance the regulatory
aspects of their work with more empowering possibilities. Parton and
O’Byrne’s (2000) risk assessment and decision-making tool, the Signs of Safety
Scale, is an effort in this direction.
The genogram’s gender-focused variant, the gendergram, already carries a
logic of resistance. It is especially suited to deconstructing essentialized
categories of gender en route to generating new options and sense-making
capacities. As White and Tyson-Rawson noted, ‘Once clarified, gender influences
move from being invisible forces in systemic interaction to structures
that can be influenced by individual and family decision making’ (White and
Tyson-Rawson, 1995, p. 253). Constructionist dialogue using a gendergram
can facilitate gender-relevant narratives about responses, behaviours and
related feelings at an earlier life period that can be rewritten or re-storied
from a contemporary or future perspective—un-structuring, as it were. Gendered
narratives can also be examined collaboratively in conversations about
interactions between gender and social systems, institutions and policies.
Meanings and interpretations can be negotiated and charted on gendergrams
representing future life points, to be revised, expanded or discarded as
further interpretations emerge.
702 Roberta Rehner Iversen et al.
Similarly, the ecomap’s culture-focused variant, the culturagram, might be
deployed to challenge disempowering group narratives by tracing their sources
in the dominant order and by highlighting areas of resistance, resilience and
strength in the narratives. Constructionist use of both the ecomap and the
culturagram allows for mutual storying about the quality of family–society
connections and encourages a collaborative orientation toward politics. Practitioner
and family members may examine how cultural dialogue might be
influenced by social narratives, such as misogyny, racism, class bias and heterosexism.
Of particular import to immigrant families, constructionist use of the
ecomap and culturagram can open discussion about the meanings the family
attributes to the expectable and the exceptional, whether clients’ stories reflect
cultural elements from both original and adopted countries, whether the stories
have currency in the dominant culture or are silenced, and how new cultural
story elements can emerge. For example, is there a language in the adopted
culture for a family’s health beliefs, role functioning, values, holidays and special
events? If not, these tools could be used dialogically to imagine new spaces
for their inclusion.
Realizing new realities
In bringing new realities into being, dialogue may be focused on new resources,
images, metaphors or narratives, each serving as a lattice for alternative
courses of action. One overarching reality that combines the interests of both
social constructionism and these assessment devices is that of relationship
itself. For constructionists, all realities, rationalities and senses of the good
derive from relationship. In effect, processes of relationship are prior to the
concept of individual mind. The process of rendering visible new relations
outside the person is, in fact, among the stated goals of the assessment exemplars.
Citing Hartman again, ‘The ecomap . . . pictures the important nurturant
or conflict laden connections between the family and the world. It demonstrates
the flow of resources, or the lack and deprivations. This mapping procedure
highlights the nature of the interfaces and points to conflicts to be mediated,
bridges to be built, and resources to be sought and mobilized’ (Hartman, 1978,
p. 467). In light of Hartman’s description, the tools can be used to challenge,
reflect upon and regenerate or co-create the reality and significance of relationship,
among persons as well as between persons and social institutions.
Yet, the realities of relationship are not the only possibilities to be opened by
collaborative assistance. Many would agree, for example, that conversations
around the gender-focused genogram might enable women to find a new voice.
As Weick (2000) pointed out, women clients are often limited by the dominant,
androcentric realities in which they are immersed. Collaborative assistance
may thus enable women to find what Weick calls a ‘first voice’. The first voice
is used when women are free from the constraints and formalities that patriarchy
imposes. The first voice contains ‘the richness of emotion, the intimacy of
Assessment and Social Construction 703
shared feelings, and the ease of unedited thoughts that form the first boundaries
of an individual’s view of the world. For women, this language remains
their first language, with a syntax and rhythm that remains their most natural
form of expression’ (Weick, 2000, p. 398). By charting the forces that inhibit
this first voice, as well as the relationships that may support its growth, the
gendergram can play a generative role in what Laird (1989) called ‘restorying
women’s self constructions’.
From a constructionist perspective, the genogram’s emphasis on intergenerational
transmission can be viewed as the re-telling of family stories, some of
which may reflect dominant understandings of society and/or problemsaturated
understandings of one’s history. With the emphasis placed on opening
new possibilities, exceptions to the dominant stories or successes rather than
problems can be used to establish counterplots. Similarly, family members can
map the elements they wish to continue building while elucidating those areas
of a narrative that may no longer empower the family. Gathering associations
about family members of a similar name, gender or geographic location can
bring forth reminiscences or stories that have become part of the family
mythology. Salient or repeated narratives about family members through the
generations may also help current members connect with family stories, new or
old, that can highlight strengths or generate new relations for reinforcing bonds
and enhancing their sense of ‘we’. Kuehl (1995) also outlined a number of ways
in which the genogram can be used to enhance potentials. He suggested using
presuppositional questions (open-ended questions, designed to enhance awareness
of strengths and the inevitability of change), scaling questions (which help
clients break problems into smaller, more manageable parts), future generation
questions (describing what the client would like to see different) and collapsing
generational time (asking how the client is already dealing with this
problem differently from past generations).
More generally, it is important that the new reality be ‘actionable’. As the
client explores the details of the alternative reality, citing examples, telling
relevant stories, detailing the particulars and elaborating on the implications,
he or she is also testing out a new vocabulary of relating—whether with practitioner,
family member, court official or policymaker. Innovations are invited as
well, e.g. can a new design or format of one of the assessment graphs be
created? In effect, such conversations enable the practitioner to use assessment
tools in ways that transcend the traditional diagrammatic function of ‘portraying
one’s life world’ en route to generating new stories that can be performed
through dialogue and beyond.
The potential of continuous dialogue
A third outcome of assessment as collaborative inquiry can best be understood
in terms of certain limits inherent in the search for new voices, metaphors or
narratives just discussed. As new constructions are grasped, and their implications
704 Roberta Rehner Iversen et al.
played out in practice, they now become candidates for ‘the real’. Although
effective in the short term, as life conditions change and relationships unfold,
their utility may erode. The new understanding may begin to function as a
constraint, limiting deliberation and action. There is utility, then, in ‘going
beyond the narrative’, or the fixing of any one or essential construction of the
real and the good (Gergen and Kaye, 1992). The kind of collaborative dialogue
we have been advocating can serve as a model for continuous transformation,
facilitating not just a renegotiation of experience, but an understanding of the
premises underlying meaning making itself. In this sense, assessment dialogues
should focus less on ‘the new answer’ than on being perpetual ‘works in
progress’. The graphs should be revisited throughout consultation, not completed
and filed at the initial session. Although assessment practices were
originally intended to be used in this way, they seldom are (Milner and
O’Byrne, 2002). In contrast, the dialogic encounter may evoke a continuous
appreciation of the not-yet-seen, the yet-to-be-storied—in short, the possible.
Herein lies a major transformative potential of assessment in a constructionist
key—a potential that can be realized through the discriminating
and innovative use of the two assessment exemplars we have discussed
here, their variants and even, perhaps, the formats of the DSM and PersonIn-Environment
(PIE) (Karls and Wandrei, 1994) systems. Saleebey’s
(1992, 2001) work points in this direction through application of a ‘strengths
perspective’ to the DSM system and his emphasis on the client telling his or
her own story.
Continuing the conversation
We suggest that constructionism offers an exciting and comprehensive metaanalytical
lens for revisioning the practice of assessment. Rather than branding
assessment as an inherently reactionary/modernist process, a constructionist
alliance enables assessment to become a collaborative inquiry into transformative
possibilities. Because of their shared concern with the relational surrounds,
we propose that the genogram and ecomap are particularly well suited for a
constructionist revisioning. In both cases, the assessment tools help to create a
reality of relationship and invite thinking in multiple and shifting fields of relationship.
By employing these tools dialogically, the client and practitioner can
challenge the delimiting realities of the present and open up new possibilities
for understanding and action. Moreover, the dialogical inquiry itself serves as a
model for a continuous relational unfolding. Such possibilities may be particularly
fruitful in statutory settings wherein the collaborative use of the genogram
and ecomap can mediate power differentials and hierarchies, transforming conflictual
stand-offs into co-constructed interpretations, decisions and future
action. At the same time, constructionist use of the genogram and ecomap, as
well as scales such as those suggested by Parton and O’Byrne (2000), can satisfy
the needs of courts and other statutory agencies for tangible information for
Assessment and Social Construction 705
decision-making. Conducting conversations about gains rather than losses, and
safety rather than dangers, as Parton and O’Byrne (2000) and other constructionist
and solution-focused theorists (De Shazer, 1994) have suggested, could
satisfy the Department of Health’s new emphasis on needs, partnerships and
social networks in child and family services in the United Kingdom (Houston,
2001) and provide new directions for the beleaguered child welfare field in the
United States. In all domains, then, solutions and future actions can be made
operational and measurable for officials so inclined. As such, the assessment
processes would remain continuous, collaborative, generative and clientempowering,
thus fostering the goals of restorative justice (Burford and
Adams, 2004) in all social work practice venues. The construction of assessment
processes that are fully collaborative, relational and directed toward ‘the
possible’ provides a means of vitalizing practice principles and extends social
work’s historic investment in human agency and equity.
Accepted: April 2004
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Acknowledgements
The authors appreciate comments on the ideas presented in this paper provided
by workshop participants at the Family Resource and Training Centre in
Singapore in 1998, at the NASW International Fall Symposium in Heidelberg,
Germany in 1999, and at the Houston-Galveston Institute/Taos Institute Conference
on Social Construction and Human Transformation in Galveston,
Texas in 2000. We also appreciate the helpful comments of Stanley Witkin,
Joan Laird, Nigel Parton and BJSW reviewers on earlier drafts.