This thesis develops an argument that psychogeography can provide alternative, yet familiar, approaches to social work research and pedagogy. Psychogeography refers to studies of how our psychological experiences, such as our thoughts and feelings, are connected to our being in places. The present study was designed to be a novel application of a psychogeographic exercise in a social work learning context. For this research project, I met with five undergraduate students and interviewed them as we walked through the neighbourhoods surrounding their field practicum placement settings. My interviews with these students focused on the thoughts, feelings, memories, and experiences that they associated with these places. This exercise inspired critical reflection of diverse themes; including the impacts that places of placement environments had on the participants' development of their existential identity and critical consciousness. I argue that psychogeography evokes such reflection because its conception is rooted in efforts to develop creative and participatory engagement in place-based reflection for inspiring social justice activism. As such, the philosophical work of phenomenology and the action-seeking work of critical theorists can orient psychogeographic place studies to be congruent with social work research that aims to develop holistic and critical social justice-oriented education and practice. / Thesis / Master of Social Work (MSW)

The purpose of this study is to examine adult literacy beyond its constraints as a social problem and instead consider the implications of illiteracy as a particular form of lived experience, analogous to women's oppression at large. Through a complex system of meaning making, the knowledge accrued by illiterate adults is qualitatively different, and examining these differences in terms of their correlation to coping mechanisms developed in the face of social alienation and diminished professional prospects yields a greater understanding of class privilege and how nontraditional learners fit into a larger social structure. From the perspective of academic feminism, adult illiteracy presents several problems regarding the scope of an inclusive feminist community that acknowledges privilege and difference. The primary method through which information regarding feminism is conferred is printed materials, which utilize highly specific, specialized jargon, and unwittingly create an exclusive community marred by internalized racism and class stratifications. This study explores other methods through which feminist ideation might theoretically be possible, i.e. cultural "reading" communities and vocational and continuing education programs focused on cultural competencies, as women come out of their imposed silences and become aware of their circumstances in a way that resembles feminist thought, if perhaps without sophisticated language with which to communicate those ideals. In this way, feminist ideation and semiotics tie in together, as attitudinal change may occur without the semantic realization of what this entails. This goal of this paper is also, in part, to justify why acknowledging gendered learning differences and a particular female subjectivity for adult literacy clients will yield better results for their self-valuation, as gender is a component of diversity all but ignored within the scheme of adult literacy pedagogical theory.

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