This study aims to explore and understand the ways in which social work field instructors assess ‘readiness for practice’, particularly in situations where a BSW student has experienced a placement breakdown or failure. Through the examination of existing literature, themes of gatekeeping, assessments of readiness, field instructors’ relationships with the academic institutions and tensions between the worlds of social work values and gatekeeping emerged. Rooted in an interpretive methodology and supported by in-person interviews, the study sought the feedback and experiences of five BSW field instructors, with the intention of better understanding the ways in which field instructors assessed ‘readiness for practice’. Emphasizing the use of the term ‘readiness’, the findings suggest that assessing readiness for practice is a multi-layered process. They presented some similarities in the skills and values deemed essential for BSW students to possess to demonstrate readiness and discussed some of the problematic behaviours that contributed towards lack of readiness and placement breakdowns/failures. The findings also discussed the tension that field instructors experience in relation to their mentoring and gatekeeping roles and their desires to see an increase in the collaborative relationships with academic institutions. This study encourages field instructors and Schools of Social Work to critically analyze and explore ways in which they can advance their relationship and work collectively to address issues pertaining to lack of readiness for practice. / Thesis / Master of Social Work (MSW)

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)

(Abstract) My thesis explores the use of the Studeny dul site for learning purposes, namely biology and fundaments of civic and natural science, on the primary school level. My study aims at examining a field trip on the primary school level, and at attracting students' attention to the marginalized group of bryophytes. To meet these objectives, I have designed four field trips that focus on observation of transformations within natural world depending on the changes specific to the four seasons. While engaging with the natural environment, students perform practical tasks and exercises that aim at deepening of their knowledge acquired previously in the classroom. Students of a primary school in Plzen participated in field trips within a span of one school year. My primary objectives consisted of strengthening students' positive relationship with nature, and of understanding of the relationship between the human and nature.

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