As part of the opening, the Practice Research Committee, comprising of Pei Ni, Sin Ting, Xing Jun, and Research Consultant, Emeritus Professor Satvinder Singh Dhaliwal, took the opportunity to highlight the existing practice-research pieces within AMKFSC, and some key milestones that the Committee has achieved in the last year or so.

 

Lending his expertise as an academic Professor and Research Consultant, Prof Satvinder conducted a sharing titled "Research in Social Work and the Way Forward for AMKFSC." His sharing provided a comprehensive introduction to the various research methodologies, as well as pragmatic considerations towards the research design process, specifically in the context of social work practice research.

 

The afternoon continued with the highly anticipated "Human Library" segment, where our existing research teams shared more about their respective research journeys to help participants envision what practice research is like.

 

Through first-hand sharings and engaging conversations, our participants got the opportunity to better understand the teams' key learnings as well as the strategies they adopted to manage the challenges they faced.

 

The segment, alongside a joint conversation with our CEO Dr. Vincent Ng, Directors, and Prof Satvinder, was especially meaningful as it prompted our participants’ self-reflections and encouraged a shift of perspectives towards the value and potential of practice research in a practitioners’ daily work.

 

This opened up further discussion on the possibilities of redefining practice research to include and strengthen strategic dissemination of research efforts, which reinforced the need for further agency-wide collaborative efforts to advance our research practice and culture.

 

In closing, our Dr. Vincent shared personal anecdotes of his own research journey and words of encouragement for the participants. He also expressed his hopes towards fostering a positive research culture within AMKFSC where practitioners are open to collaborating and mutually exchanging wisdom and knowledge with one another - a sentiment we look forward to growing in the year ahead!

 

On this note, we would like to thank the Practice Research Committee and fellow colleagues for making AMKFSC's Inaugural Research Day a success! Together, we look forward co-creating more opportunities for collective learning as well as collaborative research, and hope that this event has helped to catalyse interests and conversations about practice research.

 

Interested to kickstart your practice research journey? Here's a tip from Prof Satvinder: find an interesting research paper and bring a friend along!