Algorithmic decision-making in social work practice and pedagogy: confronting the competency/critique dilemma

The world is experiencing an accelerating digital transformation. One aspect of this is the implementation of algorithmic decision-making, often supported by Artificial Intelligence. Algorithmic systems have the potential to change the meaning of critical elements of the engagement between social workers and people who need support. At the same time, social workers are increasingly being required by their agencies to integrate such abstracting technologies and techniques evermore comprehensively into their professional practice. This integration also creates tensions for training future social workers. It requires on the one hand directly responding to an old but intensifying tension between training students technically, and, on the other, providing the pedagogical tools for finding some critical distance from those same technologies and techniques. The article works through this tension of technique/critique, and a second associated tension between deploying technologies of mediated engagement and being present ‘in the room’ (presence/mediation). The consequences of how both tensions are handled, we suggest, are being intensified through the technologization of service-delivery. The article suggests ways of approaching a technical-critical pedagogy that responds to this complexity by being practice-embedded and theoretically engaged.