Equine – assisted social pedagogic family work

Master's thesis presents literature and research projects on the equine-assisted and video-based social pedagogical work with individuals, groups and families. It describes different ways of assistance of horses in a process of establishing family issues and some ways of horse support assistance in the process of solving those issues in cooperation with social pedagogue. The thesis represents a use of video material in social pedagogical processes, advantages in using video material for research purposes, use of those material in expert's work as well as in gaining metaposition. It exposes the research projects, closest to the topic of this thesis: work in proffesional assistance with individuals and families within equine-assisted activities, work with those families on video-based material support, and work in profesional assistance with individuals as a combination of methods, mentioned above. There is no published research, which would include all the elements of the researched topic, i.e. the equine-assisted and video-based social pedagogical family work. Designing of guidelines for a model of co-creative equine-assisted and video-based social pedagogical family work is based on the following premises in functioning of social pedagogy: an importance of engaging families in a process, cooperation of family and experts in a process of assistance, as well as strengthening of constructive communication within family (process of assistance in life world of service users), an overall understanding of users, a circularity of determining both a status of the problem and an assistance process, along with main premisses in assistance of social pedagogue: an implementation of ethics of participation, personal leading with elements of hermeneutical conversation, enabling open space to join the service user, as well as the realization of ecological awareness. The empirical part presents qualitative research: a case study, an analysis of contribution of therapy horse support, the contribution of video material use, an interlacing and meaningfulness of their sharing in the social pedagogical work with the family. The process involves father, eight-year old daughter and two horses. Grounded theory compares results of research survey with the existing research projects and literature, and places them in a wider professional and scientific context. Contribution to a discipline is presented in formulating guidelines for a new way of social pedagogical equine-assisted and video-based family work, as well as in formulating complex methods in research processes