ABSTRACT

The social work, which expresses professional work with intervention methods at the level of the individual, family, group and society, towards the aim of improving the well-being of people, was born in the second half of the 19th century. These studies, which were previously carried out by religious institutions or volunteer philanthropists, gained a systematic and professional appearance beside of the scientific developments of the period. At the same time, this scientific structure includes ontological and epistemological contention between natural sciences and social sciences in the same period. In the content of this study, the epistemological debate between natural sciences and social sciences on the positive or normative content of scientific propositions will be discussed in terms of social work discipline as an applied social science. For this purpose, in this study, which is based on the literature with a descriptive approach, the nature of the knowledge that the social work discipline actually contains a normativity in a positive outlook will be revealed from the focus of professional structure, professional practice and social change.