Open Access

What constitutes social work is a central question in theory building. If social work wants to be more than a model idea, we cannot answer this question without looking at social work practice. The article presents ‘doing social work’ as an approach to theorising social work through ethnographic research. In addition to the basic theoretical and methodological characteristics of the approach, we present four modes of doing social work, which have been developed based on a comparison of different ethnographic studies in different fields: deciding in uncertainty; playing with ambiguity; using categories of difference; and disciplining the everyday. In the following, the mode of playing with ambiguity will be singled out and presented in detail, as it has an important impact on doing relationship while doing social work. In the article, we will use ethnographic data and examples to show how actors actively deal with different roles without making this explicit.

Children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are faced with multiple challenges both in the classroom and in the homework situation. While there are many studies on pedagogical interventions by teachers in the classroom, this is hardly the case when it comes to support staff in after-school homework supervision. In this study, 196 support staff with different qualifications were asked not only about their knowledge of ADHD, their subjective level of stress, and whether they felt trained enough to work with children with ADHD, but also to assess the effectiveness and feasibility of 25 interventions in homework supervision. Overall, the respondents rated effectiveness higher than feasibility. Higher qualifications, greater knowledge, and better preparation went hand in hand with higher ratings of effectiveness. The more stressed the support staff feel themselves to be, the less feasible they rate the measures. The results underline the necessity of employing well-trained pedagogical staff to supervise children with ADHD. A number of interventions can be identified that the support staff deem to be both effective and feasible, and that promise a high level of implementation in practice. At the same time, more attention should be given to potential obstacles to using recommended measures in training and further education.