|
Work activity as part of therapeutic - formative activities in children's home
LOMOVÁ, Michaela
This bachelor thesis focuses on the issue of preparing children in children's homes for real-life once they leave institutional care. One of the ways of improving the current state of affairs is to use therapeutic-formative methods in everyday pedagogical activities of educators, particularly suitable seem to be therapies based on work or activities. Consequently, the aim of this bachelor thesis is to prepare, implement and evaluate an educational project that uses these working activities to boost competences (skills, proficiency, knowledge and attitudes that children from institutional orphan care need to lead an independent life). The body of this work consists of four parts. The first chapter studies institutional orphan care as educational institutions for institutional education, primarily the way they are rooted in law, their function, target group characteristics and current trends in this field of studies. The second part specifies and introduces therapeutic-formative approaches that constitute a part of pedagogical praxis in Czech Republic and other countries, including therapies based on games, activities or work, animal-assisted therapies, expressive arts therapies or psychomotorical therapies. The third part analyses the importance of work and working activities in the life of man. In this thesis, work is considered to be one of the most basic human activities; its aim is to achieve not only material provision, but also to satisfy physical needs and to initiate a positive change in the social role of individual. The fourth chapter contains well-proven educational project that is based on the results of before-mentioned informational resources analysis and, in concordance with these results, focuses on a development of real-life competencies (which are, in this particular case, represented by food preparation skills). The methodical part of this project defines goals and approaches, formulates primary principles of implementation and specifies evaluation criteria. Subsequently, it describes the structure of the project itself and contains implementation records and final evaluation. This project was based on an analysis of professional resources and takes into account the needs and characteristics of its target audience ? 8 children from orphan care institutions aged 12 to 18 years. Its name (?Gourmet tour of Italy?) clearly reveals that it is all about preparing dishes from Italian cuisine, which today enjoys a lot of popularity. The broader primary goals of this project are to bolster children?s training for independent life after they leave institutional care and to initiate a more positive approach towards everyday work-related activities. Specific goals of this project are to train basic cooking skills, prepare several simple dishes, acquire information about ingredients needed to prepare given meals, connect data about geography and real life in Italy gained during education with particular information connected to local gastronomy and a motivation to further develop personal cooking skills. Evaluation of the project has three tiers: self-evaluation of project leader, evaluation of the project from participants and evaluation of competencies gained by participants from project leader using games and interview techniques. The project was implemented in cooperation with Dětský domov in Boršov nad Vltavou from February to May 2013. On the basis of given evaluation we can safely state that the planned goals were achieved and the project turned out to be a success. This educational project can be, without further modifications, implemented for another group of children (in another orphan care institution). Another possibility is to modify the project topic and implement it with the same group of children, which could have a positive influence on boosting the acquired knowledge and skills and achieving a further improvement of their attitude towards food preparation in real life.
|