Module SOCI1302: FIELDWORK PRACTICE I

Department: APPLIED SOCIAL SCIENCES (SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIAL POLICY)

SOCI1302: FIELDWORK PRACTICE I

Prerequisites

• Relevant experience in Community and Youth Work or a related field.

Corequisites

• Professional Studies I (SOCI1261), Social and Psychological Studies I (SOCI1271), Practice Theories and Skills I (SOCI1281), Management and Fieldwork Studies I (SOCI1291).

Excluded Combination of Modules

• None.

Aims

• To equip students with confidence, skills and core understandings transferable across a wide range of settings in which youth and community work is practised.
• To broaden knowledge of the range of settings in which community and youth work is practised.
• To provide opportunities where previous experience can be built on and if necessary challenged, in a supportive framework geared to promoting the professional development of the student.
• To provide opportunities to plan, implement and evaluate intervention strategies with users of the agency informed by a commitment to equal opportunities and the use of social and informal education methods geared to empowerment of users.
• To enable analysis of the framework in which the agency operates including its history, resourcing, managerial issues and the achievement of overall aims and objectives. This should include opportunities to understand the roles and functions of key agency workers.
• To develop the skills of joining an agency, getting to know and relate to its users and workers, and operating with responsibility and accountability.
• To test out the degree to which knowledge has been gained, the growth potential of human beings and the likely barriers to its achievement, the impact of social policies on provision and how the understandings explored in the PTS1 (promoting equalities) module can inform practice strategies.

Content

• Students will undertake 11 weeks of supervised fieldwork practice in a statutory or voluntary agency working with young people or communities.
• They will be required to take on particular pieces of work agreed with their fieldwork tutor (supervisor), to evaluate their learning, to attend regular supervision sessions, and two day workshops in the University during the placement.

Learning Outcomes

• By the end of the placement students should -
• Know basic information about the agency, e.g. its traditional catchment of users, its methodologies of work with users, its history, resourcing, utilisation of resources and key managerial issues.
• Be aware of the responsibilities of key workers and to be able to demonstrate accountability and reliability as part of the staffing of the agency.
• Be able demonstrate in their reflective journal, supervision sessions and written work, a commitment to and understanding of equal opportunities and empowerment principles and practice.

• Be able to demonstrate how they have developed as professional fieldworkers and which aspects of the learning outcomes required by the National Youth Agency for community and youth workers need further practice, via recordings and self assessment.
• Have analysed, planned, implemented and evaluated practice informed by anti-oppressive and empowerment objectives.
• Be able to demonstrate, via written work and in supervision sessions, their ability to reflect on their practice in both a positive and critical manner.
• Be in a position to describe how knowledge gained from the University-based learning has been relevant to their practice.

Modes of Teaching, Learning and Assessment and how these contribute to the learning outcomes of the module

• .

Teaching Methods and Learning Hours

Summative Assessment

Formative Assessment:

Completion of self-learning tasks identified in fieldwork practice documentation

■ Attendance at all activities marked with this symbol will be monitored. Students who fail to attend these activities, or to complete the summative or formative assessment specified above, will be subject to the procedures defined in the University's General Regulation V, and may be required to leave the University