Remembering, reﬂection and action: The evolution of the Aotearoa New Zealand Social Work journal

This lead article in our vintage issue of Aotearoa New Zealand Social Work journal follows our professional journal from its launch in 1965, through several name changes, physical manifestations and numerous editorships, to the present day. Continuity and change are the themes we focus on, together with tenacity and adaptability. We brieﬂy introduce the concept of content analysis as a tool for exploring the story of our journals and thus the Association’s history, and end with reﬂective questions for the future.


Introduction
In 2004 during the 40th anniversary conference of the Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Social Workers, we presented a workshop that focused upon the archaeology of Social Work Review, as the journal was then called. The workshop was also a celebration of nearly 40 years of the publication of the Association's Journal of Social Work. Now that we have renamed the journal, it seems a fitting time to present this vintage issue to commemorate its history.
The five aims of the workshop that have guided this article were: One: To remember, reflect and celebrate what has gone before by examining the archival content of our professional association's journal. Two: To produce a topic timeline herstory/ history of Aotearoa New Zealand social work as found in Social Work Review. Three: To trial a template for content analysis. Four: To pass on skills in the technique of content analysis. Five: To enable participants to help design some decade-by-decade herstory.
While this article is informed by that workshop, our priority is to put on record the story of the journal, and encourage current members to be aware of and have some tools to draw on the research and knowledge that has helped to shape our Association and develop our professional practice. We also hope that setting out a brief overview of the journal will encourage our readers to add to that store of research, knowledge and wisdom for future generations of social workers. have generally been regarded as a prime means of documenting and disseminating the current knowledge base and scholarly output of a profession (Ryan and Martyn, 1996: 19), and enabling the development of professional knowledge (Nichols-Casebolt, et al., 1994), of providing a professional whakapapa, genealogy.
Analysis of journal content and articles allows the reader to assess the contribution of the journal to professional knowledge and development, particularly when the material covered in such journals communicates what is considered important in the field. What is included or omitted can directly or indirectly signal the level of importance placed on particular issues over time (Grise-Owens, 2002: 147).
Thus our journal is a prime site for an archaeological dig into the knowledge base of New Zealand social work, providing a critical lens with which to track the historical development of the profession and its knowledge base.
In 2005, Merv Hancock and Mary Nash wrote a joint article inspired by the workshop on an archaeology of Social Work Review. Reflecting on the first issue of our professional journal, Hancock (2005: 23) recalled that: The journal was to be published quarterly: August, November, February, May. There were instructions in that first introductory News and Opinions about when to supply script. It turned out to be extremely valuable and from its first publication in August 1965 there has been a continuous line of publications by the Association. The title has changed from the New Zealand Social Worker to other titles and various approaches have been adopted by different editorial groups but there has been a continuous line of communication within members since the beginning. The first edition proved a major success and has gone on to remain so (Hancock and Nash, 2005: 23).
Themes represented in this first issue have been of perennial interest to readers.
First we noted education and training for social workers, including national, local and in-service training opportunities, many provided by the Association for its members.
A second and significant theme was the membership question as illustrated below: This has been a perennial issue for the Association, so it is not surprising it emerges in the first issue of the journal. 'The membership question' (New Zealand Social Worker, 1, 1: 13) deals in part with the controversies surrounding associate membership but also refers to the Constitution which empowered to the National Council to set up the register of approved agencies and categories of employment. The regulations were designed to ensure that full members control the Association. The membership was kept as wide open as possible and whilst there was a clause which entitled those with approved social work qualifications to full membership, other clauses ensured that this was not an exclusive membership criterion. This device was the fundamental difference between the developments in Australia where the social workers' association was based entirely around approved academic qualifications for full membership and the New Zealand solution which was more open (Hancock and Nash, 2005: 27).
At the bottom of the cover page of the first and subsequent editions of the journal one finds the leading original Association logo and beside it is laid out the membership basis for the Association. This information on the front cover was very important to public understanding of who could and could not belong to the Association. ISSUE 2, 2008 Conferences and their coverage was another theme we picked out from that fi rst issue and we commented on how important networking and the exchange of ideas has been in the development of social work in New Zealand. Attendance at conferences, reporting back to members, and running our own conferences were all seen to be necessary ingredients of a professional association from the start.
Generic social work and diversity of practice were depicted in the journal because as social work developed a sense of identity, so it recognised the variety of work encompassed in the name of 'social work' not to mention evolving fi elds of practice.
Social work still occurs, as it did in the 1960s, in a variety of settings, statutory and voluntary, religious and secular. The final theme we picked out was 'News from the Branches' and Merv Hancock noted that: 'News from the Branches' has been a regular feature in the Association's publications and one well worth the attention of the researcher who wants to discover what activities brought social workers together in the regions. Many of the people named in this section are foundation members, and one could argue that a separate article based on the people and activities covered here would yield rich information relating to those who played significant parts in these early years of the Association (Hancock and Nash, 2005: 30).
We now look to Social Work Noticeboard for much of this information. Perhaps future readers and historians will wish the journal, being more accessible to students and researchers than Noticeboard, carried more of this category of information. Hancock and Nash's (2005) article ended reflectively, suggesting that early issues of the journal would reward our members who study them. It similarly noted the continuities and changes that make up our professional development, namely the debates about membership, issues around identity, qualifications, education and training, how to find time and money to attend conferences, fields of practice and client concerns are all recorded and 40 years on, they still matter to us.
In examining the jkournal, some key questions we can ask are: • What has been the social work response to changing times?
• What have social work authors recommended about social work practice in a professional journal that seeks to promote ideas and knowledge to its membership?
• What have our members been doing to promote evidence-based practice through their research and writing?

Using content analysis to grow the story of social work in Aotearoa New Zealand
An introduction to the ideas and principles of content analysis was used at the 40th anniversary workshop as a way into this task. Content analysis is a research method, where systematic and objective inferences about content are made to categorise, manage and order the occurrence of diverse content within a text or texts. Selection criteria are consistently applied to determine inclusion to the categories being investigated. It is an approach that is useful for determining trends or patterns, tracing developments over time and inferring cultural change, values and interests (Tripodi andEpstein, 1980, in McMahon, 2002: 173).
Such a content review can take place in two stages, first by a content analysis that measures the occurrence of selected items within the text/texts and secondly by a critical discourse analysis, a method for in-depth analysis of content, theme and influence from the content analysis findings.

Content analysis
An initial content analysis of the Association's journal would involve reviewing each issue's contents pages and systematically identifying the overall characteristics of the content. Con-tent pages can be reviewed by a physical search or if available, an online search. Content analysis can tell a researcher how many texts/items of a particular type/category appear over time and at what rate. This approach is useful for determining trends or patterns, tracing developments over time, for example on a decade-by-decade basis and inferring cultural and social influences, when the topic became of interest (when the first article covering a new topic first appears), and whether there was/is a high point in its interest, a special edition/single topic issue. One can ask what is the longevity or otherwise of a topic? How often was it written about? When was its peak time? Who is writing, about what and when? All these questions are a means of establishing overall parameters for a history of social work in Aotearoa New Zealand. Table 1, provides a simple format for recording initial content analysis findings, by recording the occurrences by author and title of one subject though a decade. 2

Critical discourse analysis
In the second part of the process, critical discourse analysis (see Table 2), a subject/theme analysis is undertaken with the unit of analysis being the content within an identified article. Detailed sub-categories and classification of the content more specifically identifies the content, for example research, policy, education, practice. This can include a range of possible foci: why is it there, why might it occur at this point of time, what influences does it reflect? According to Rojek, et al. (1988: 8 in McMahon, 2002 '…discourse theory examines the language, knowledge, myths and assumptions that underpin a particular manifest position'. (McMahon, 2002: 174) adds that 'Critical discourse analysis focuses on how the texts under scrutiny function in forming and shaping practice'.   (2002) illustrates the possibilities for this type of work.
This process of analysis provides evidence from which to interpret and explain the cultural assumptions, social relationships and social identities incorporated in the texts (articles), (Fairclough, 1992: 38, in McMahon, 2002 and thus enables research into the relationship between social work texts and social work practice. It can make explicit what Fairclough (1992: 166 in McMahon, 2002 calls 'the ideological and hegemonic effects, portrayed in patterns (themes) of knowledge and beliefs, social relations and social identities'. In other words, it provides us with a traceable means of understanding the interconnections OR intersections between the concerns of our profession and the development and foci of social work practice.

Conclusion
Using such tools, we can develop a New Zealand social work history derived from the pages of our professional association's journal. We can form a meaningful picture of what and how we have written and published during the last 40 years. The example of articles covering supervision, in the appendix, shows how clearly this information is portrayed using this tool. Research based on content and discourse analysis helps to answer questions such as what has influenced us, and what influence have we had? Do our articles reflect or challenge the social and political circumstances in which they were written and their subjects lived? Have we shaped or been shaped by our history? What can we learn from them about changes in social work education, the status of social work and how it has been practised?
With such an understanding, we can then ask how will we be writing in the next 40 years? This would be a fruitful research area for students and historians and now is a good time to embark on such research, while so many of the early contributors are still available to provide oral histories and an explanation for what is on record.