This research study describes an evaluation of social work field instruction offered by universities in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. Qualitative data was collected from agency field instructors, university fieldwork coordinators and social work students. This study’s findings indicated that field instruction needs a good foundation of experiential learning that is facilitated by report writing, journal writing and agency and university supervision. Findings also indicated a need for the screening, selection and training of agency field instructors. There was also an indication that universities should develop selection procedures to ensure that the best possible students are accepted into the Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) programme. All findings indicated that field instruction programmes are most effective when there is a strong university agency partnership. The study concludes by making recommendations for future development of standards relating to field instruction programmes in the Eastern Cape and South Africa. Key words: Social work, evaluative research, field instruction, experiential learning, reflection, agency field instructor, university supervisor, university fieldwork coordinator, social work student, social work education, social work training.

Organizes information and opportunities for high school level science field work and categorizes it to inform the educator of the field study possibilities. Assists educators in overcoming the obstacles of implementing field science into existing science courses. Several field study lesson plans are provided.

Thesis (Ph.D. (Social Work)) -- University of Limpopo, 2021 / The present study is a comparative analysis of social work fieldwork supervision at the University of Venda (UNIVEN) and the University of Limpopo (UL) and has produced a list of implications for policy and practice guidelines. The study adopted a qualitative approach to scientific enquiry. It was exploratory and descriptive in nature. The population of the study consisted of final year student social workers and fieldwork coordinators from UNIVEN and UL. Data was collected by means of semi-structured and focus group interviews. Data was analysed using thematic analysis. The study’s results demonstrated that most students from both universities had outstanding relationships with their supervisors. The study also found that most students were supervised on an individual basis. Informal and ad hoc methods of supervision sessions were also preferred by supervisors, entailing that, as soon as a supervisor felt like saying something, they would just say it. If was found further that supervision methods lacked supervision structure, whereby it would have been planned and communicated in advance, so that students could contribute to the agenda, have a designated venue, and arrive prepared. Group supervision was found to be a rarely used method. The study also found that most students reported that the frequency of supervisions was once a week, while others felt that supervision occurred every day. Fieldwork supervisors continue to deliver the three major functions of supervision, which are administrative, educational, and supportive. The study found that students had little support from university fieldwork coordinators. The researcher established that field support visits by both universities were unsystematic. The researcher has also established that UL students need financial support in the form of a stipend to cater for costs related to their fieldwork placement, such as transport and food. Furthermore, the researcher found that students from both universities need regular contacts with the university-based supervisors/ coordinators. The study revealed the need to reinforce many critical aspects of fieldwork supervision. These include regular contact, field visits, ensuring formal supervision, ensuring formal orientation of students, and making sure that students are adequately exposed to social work practice. Despite the challenges they face, coordinators continued to play a critical role in ensuring that students were properly placed. Measures must be developed to ensure compliance with policy mandates. The study also found that UL did not have fieldwork practice policies, operating instead by using a manual for practical work dated 2012. Given the fact that the university was operating on a newly accredited BSW programme, this manual is outdated. There is a need to align it for fieldwork with the current BSW curriculum. In response to these findings and loopholes in fieldwork coordination and practice in general, the study recommends that UL develop policies related to fieldwork practice that will guide the department when planning fieldwork-related activities. Although UNIVEN has fieldwork practice and supervision policies in place, their practice lacks compliance with the policies, as reflected in the presentation of study findings in Chapter 10. In response to these inadequacies, the study recommends measures the university could use to ensure compliance. Finally, the study developed a social work fieldwork practice model. It is a six-phase model that includes analysis of historical and cultural dynamics for planning purposes, drafting a concept paper placement plan, broad consultation with the stakeholders, implementation, monitoring and evaluation, and post-implementation consultation and termination. Key Words: Fieldwork supervision, fieldwork supervisor, fieldwork coordinator, social work, student social workers / University of Venda (UNIVEN)

This dissertation investigates the online travel writing of Swedish cruising sailors. The aim is to analyze how crews in online travelogues describe ongoing experiences, and to show how the journeys, the stories and the storytelling are mutually related to one another. As journeys are both the plots of the stories and the contexts for the storytelling, the travelogues in question challenge established narrative definitions. The analysis combines Amy Shuman’s folkloristic research on immediate storytelling with historian Reinhart Kosellecks’ perspectives on time as situated and subjective. Storytelling is thereby understood as a contextual and variable practice: conditioned, enabled and limited by the writers’ current position and point of view, and by a series of practical, technological, narrative and social factors. The study is based on ethnographic fieldwork online and offline. The material primarily consists of four crews’ blogs and web pages, written texts, photographs, and readers’ comments. Interviews were conducted with the main informants and an additional fifteen crews in Sweden and in the harbours of Horta and Las Palmas. As the analysis show, the sailors’ write and publish updates from ever-changing positions in time and space, thereby depicting their journeys as a practical and cognitive process. These stories are to a great extent motivated by and directed towards the future, as sailors long for warmer destinations and worry about upcoming passages. The sailors write for a real-time audience partly consisting of families and friends, who anxiously wait for new updates. Writing is therefore sometimes perceived as a work-like task, and the sailors must develop strategies in order to write entertaining and exciting stories without further troubling their readers. The study’s result indicate that online storytelling can be understood as a process, which cannot be separated from the described events, nor from its everyday contexts. Stories, storytelling and experiences are understood as integrated with each other, since the storytelling as a practice become an established part of the everyday life during journeys.

M.Ed. (Adult Education) / This study focused on tutors’ roles in the formation of learning communities during an educational excursion (EE) and explored how tutors enable the transfer of the social and academic cohesion formed during the EE to the formal university environment. This research inquiry is a subsection of a larger NRF, Thuthuka research project. The general focus of the larger study is the investigation of the EE as a precursor to the development of learning communities at the University of Johannesburg (UJ). Higher education in South Africa and worldwide is being tasked with improving student retention, especially in the first year of study, as this is when the highest attrition takes place. One of the initiatives that had good success rates in other countries is the introduction of First Year Experience (FYE) programmes that address first year students’ academic and social transition into the formal learning environment. This study focuses on the Education Faculty at the UJ and the EE that forms part of their FYE programme. Tutors as more senior peers accompany staff on a directed intervention namely, a three day field trip, aimed at accelerating first year students’ enculturation into university life. The tutors’ roles in the formation of learning communities fall within the fields of teacher education and development and higher and adult education. Within the field of tutoring, the roles the tutors play in the formation of learning communities during an EE is relatively unexplored, especially from the viewpoint of the tutors and staff who accompany the students on the excursion in a higher education context. This study used a generic qualitative research design and employed qualitative methods of data collection (interviews) with academic staff, support staff, a facilitator and students as peer tutors. Qualitative content analysis and specifically the constant comparative method were utilised. The study found that tutors facilitated the development of social cohesion during the EE between students, students and staff and tutors and staff. The tutors played an important role in promoting learning by scaffolding student interaction during activities, and by aiding interaction through facilitating activities in small groups since they are closer to the student experience. The social and academic cohesion was transferred to the formal learning environment by scaffolding students’ learning, linking theory and practise and supporting students socially. Tutors’ experiences with students’ struggles during the EE allow them to support students more effectively at university

The central interest of this thesis is the nature of the transmission of musical knowledge, and its meaning and purpose to different societies and within different contemplations of life and beliefs. In my case, I will specifically refer to what I learnt from the fieldwork I carried out in Southern Italy (2004), in some South African contexts (2005), and in the village of Batuan (Bali, Indonesia; 2006, 2007). All such experiences will be put, so to say, in a 'dialogue' with each other in order to suggest a few considerations. The methodological tools employed to sustain my argument are Clifford Geertz's concept of thick description, and the audio-visual material collected throughout my fieldwork, which will further support my commentary. Using Clifford Geertz's approach, I suggest that in exploring the relationship between human beings and the various practices of 'music' existing, as well as their contents and aims, we need to look at music not as an isolated element on its own, as mostly conceived of in the West, but rather as an integral aspect of life itself. The facts and observations reported from my fieldwork show that what in the West is called music and music education can elsewhere be experienced and thought of in very dissimilar ways. In the village of Batuan, for example, music is not a special event, but an ingredient of the local community's life and its spirituality. The final ruminations will speculate on the fact that in the West the fragmentation through which life is understood, and that has destroyed the bond between life and the arts, is also reflected in the educational system. In modern Western societies, the detachment of arts from life has created a craving and a need for artistic exclusivity, which celebrates the individualistic rather than the communal, and aesthetics rather than spirituality, unlike Bali, for example. As a starting point, we are asked to ponder whether, and how, in the West we can still entertain the hope to reconcile such a fragmentation with a more holistic approach, where music becomes equal to the other daily activities taking place within our community.

Thesis (M. Soc. Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 2005.

This is the 15th issue of the working paper series Interdisciplinary Studies on Information Structure (ISIS) of the Sonderforschungsbereich (SFB) 632. This online version contains the Questionnaire on Focus Semantics contributed by Agata Renans, Malte Zimmermann and Markus Greif, members of Project D2 investigating information structural phenomena from a typological perspective. The present issue provides a tool for collecting and analyzing natural data with respect to relevant linguistic questions concerning focus types, focus sensitive particles, and the effects of quantificational adverbs and presupposition on focus semantics. This volume is a supplementation to the Reference manual of the Questionnaire on Information Structure, issued by Project D2 in ISIS 4 (2006).

This is the 15th issue of the working paper series Interdisciplinary Studies on Information Structure (ISIS) of the Sonderforschungsbereich (SFB) 632. This online version contains the Questionnaire on Focus Semantics contributed by Agata Renans, Malte Zimmermann and Markus Greif, members of Project D2 investigating information structural phenomena from a typological perspective. The present issue provides a tool for collecting and analyzing natural data with respect to relevant linguistic questions concerning focus types, focus sensitive particles, and the effects of quantificational adverbs and presupposition on focus semantics. This volume is a supplementation to the Reference manual of the Questionnaire on Information Structure, issued by Project D2 in ISIS 4 (2006).

Based on 160 hours of recording collected in the villages of Săbăoani, and Pildeşti, Romania, the present research attempts to describe the middle voice system of Northern Moldavian Hungarian (NMH), an endangered language spoken by no more than 3000 speakers. Defining the middle voice category semantically rather than formally, it is argued that the various middle situation types in NMH can be placed relative to one another on a “semantic map” based on shared semantic properties such as 1) the confinement of the development of the action within the agent’s sphere to the extent that the action’s effect accrues back on the agent itself, 2) the degree of volitionality of the Initiator/Agent, and 3) the degree of affectedness of the Initiator/Agent. Polysemy structures are examined against the background of a common semantic map derived on the basis of cross linguistic investigation of a given grammatical domain. In working toward this end a detailed description of major patterns of meaning inherent in the NMH middle system, examining three types of morphological middles, syntactic middles, and lexical middles is presented. Cases in which the same verb can occur with or without a middle marker apparently having the same meaning are discussed. Moreover, seemingly minimal pairs in which two different morphological constructions occur with the same verb are analyzed. A detailed analysis of the differences in form and function of the two reciprocal syntactic middle constructions in NMH is provided. Regarding reflexive syntactic middles it will be shown that depending on the case marking taken by the reflexive anaphoric operator the function conveyed is different such as reflexives, intensifiers, causers, and experiencer. Finally, cases in which the same verb can convey a middle meaning by using a morphological middle marker or by using a syntactic middle construction are analyzed showing that there are main differences in the meaning those two strategies convey. Thus, the present paper identifies specific semantic properties relevant to the middle voice system in NMH, sets up some hypotheses regarding the relations among middle and related situation types and proposes some diachronic predictions regarding the middle voice system of NMH.