Breaking Out of the Box

Breaking Out of the Box: Adventure-Based Field Instruction offers new social workers experiential, adventure-based learning to help them develop skills that are often overlooked in traditional reading and journal writing based field courses. In this second edition, Kelly Ward and Robin S. Mama have revised and expanded their popular interactive exercises to engage students in all components of social work, from theory to assessment, allowing students to comfortably adjust to field practice and make the most of their experience.

Intended for social work students in concurrent field placement, Breaking Out of the Box, 2nd edition is a fun, informal text that considers a wide range of concerns experienced by beginning social workers. Here, Ward and Mama emphasize the importance and potential of methods of alternative learning and challenge students to defy their own expectations, while using multiple senses and building trust.

The authors designed these activities to emphasize individual decision making within a group setting, so students develop their individualized skills as well as group communication, group problem solving, leadership roles, and relationship building. Often, students later use the activities with clients in their own practices and the adventure-based exercises facilitate the students' empowerment in dealing both with their clients and with agencies. In this edition, the authors also address safety and agency politics, topics rarely discussed in other texts, and an entirely new section covers the complexities of language, non-verbal communication, and culturally-sensitive practice.

For the benefit of instructors, the authors have prepared an instructor's manual for a detailed guide for each exercise, including preparation, presentation, variations, objectives, and questions for the review process. The instructor's manual also includes lesson plans in which the exercise is integrated with lecture and discussion, and the objectives of each section are listed. Professors Ward and Mama provide detailed descriptions and instructions for each step, as well as tips for connecting the experience of the activity to the social work content from the chapter of the text and students' field internships.

Kelly Ward (PhD, Fordham University; MSW, Rutgers University; BSW, Eastern Michigan University) is associate professor in social work and BSW program director at Monmouth University. She was named Teacher of the Year at Monmouth University in 2008.




Robin S. Mama (PhD, MLSP, MSS, Bryn Mawr College; BSW, College Misericordia) is professor and dean of social work at Monmouth University. She received the Jane Addams Award in 2005 for her contributions to social work and was named Teacher of the Year in 2000 at Monmouth University.