Psychological Practice I

Code:

P305

Acronym:

PPI

Keywords
Classification	Keyword
OFICIAL	Psychology

Instance: 2011/2012 - 1S

Active?	Yes
Responsible unit:	Psychology
Course/CS Responsible:	Integrated Master Psychology

Cycles of Study/Courses

Acronym	No. of Students	Study Plan	Curricular Years	Credits UCN	Credits ECTS	Contact hours	Total Time
MIPSI	137	Official Curricular Structure 2007/2008	2	-	4	36	108

Teaching language

Portuguese

Objectives

1. To stimulate the acquisition, the development and training of a set of competencies about the way of “being in relationship with the other”, which can result in the student’s increased ability to establish a working alliance of quality [that is, one that promotes feelings of trust, security and psychological comfort of the client(s)].

2. To enable the student to reach a dynamic understanding of the clients’(s) psychological experience, supported in an attitude of self-descentration and in the acceptance, respect valorisation of the internal framework of the other.

3. To promote the capacity of the future psychologist to stimulate client’s understanding and conscience about the internal logic of his/her own way of psychological functioning, as a condition to actualise, complexify and re-significate the content(s) (cognitive, affective and emotional) of their subjective experience.

4. To make the future psychologist able to actively involve the client in the intervention process by reinforcing his/her protagonist in the process of psychological change.

5. To make available to the future psychologist the opportunity to learn how to identify and describe the skills and dimensions of behaviour that are more relevant to the enactment of the psychologist professional role, in order to become capable to articulate them, in a integrated, contextualized and fluid way in the process of communication/interaction with the client(s).

6. To create conditions that encourage students to the development of their own behavioural orientations and repertoires, which can lead to progressive evolutions in their capacity to adapt their different personal styles to different client(s).

7. To help students to refine a critic conscience regarding his/her behaviour and practice, departing from the acknowledgment of the need of a permanent monitorization, exploration and reflection about the quality of the relationship they establish as well as about their performance as psychologists.

Program

1. Attending and face to face communication/interaction skills, involved in the:
1.1. Establishment and consolidation of the work-relationship;
1.2. Clarification of the problematic situation;
1.3. Exploration of thoughts and feelings;
1.4. Facilitation of emotional expression;
1.5. Attainment and transmission of an empathetic comprehension of the client(s).

2. Skills to challenge and generate significant changes in clients’ representation about his/her situation/problem, of the world, of the others and of the him/herself in order to create conditions for:
2.1. Questioning their own usual patterns of functioning;
2.2. A profound exploration of feelings;
2.3. The re-construction of the meanings attributed to the situation/problem;
2.4. The adoption of a new perspective (more complete, differentiated, flexible, …) of reality which may predispose and motivate the client to the psychological change.

3. Skills to guide and mobilize the client (and/or their relatives) to the accomplishment of intervention’s tasks, creating conditions for the active participation of both, in the:
3.1. Definition of change goals;
3.2. Identification, selection and implementation of relevant alternatives of action for changing;
3.3. Exploration and experimentation of possible new behaviours;
3.4. Evaluation and integration of the results of changing efforts;
3.5. Generalization of the learning-outcomes obtained from those experiences of action (in vitro or in vivo) to the concrete of their everyday life.

Mandatory literature

Ivey, Allen E. & Gluckstern, Norma B. ; Basic attending Skills , Massachusetts: Microtraining Associates, Inc., 1974
Nelson-Jones, R. ; Basic Counselling Skills: A helper’s manual, London: Sage Publications, 2003
Hill, Clara E. & O’Brien, Karen M. ; Skills demonstration and practice exercises, Washington: American Psychological Association, 1999
Ivey, Allen E. ; Intentional interviewing and counselling , California: Brooks/Cole Publishing Company, 1994
Nelson-Jones, R. ; The theory and practice of counselling psychology , Great Britain: The Pitman Press, 1982
Nelson-Jones, R. ; Introduction to counselling skills: Text and activities, London: Sage Publications, 2000
Egan, Gerard ; The skilled helper: Model, skills, and methods for effective helping (2nd Ed.), California: Brooks/Cole Publishing Company, 1982
Burnard, Philip; Counselling Skills for health professionals (2nd Ed.) , United Kingdom: Stanley Thornes, Publishers Ltd , 1994
Hill, Clara E. & O’Brien, Karen M. ; Helping skills: Facilitating exploration, insight, and action, Washington: American Psychological Association, 1999
Hackney, H. L. & Cormier, S. ; The professional counselor: A process guide to helping (5.ª Ed.), Allyn & Bacon, 2005
Ivey, Allen E. & Gluckstern, Norma B. ; Basic influencing Skills , Massachusetts: Microtraining Associates, Inc., 1976
McHenry, W. & McHenry, J.; What counselors say and why they say it: Effective Therapeutic responses and techniques, Allyn & Bacon, 2007

Teaching methods and learning activities

In classes it is followed a didactic-experimental model through which students must learn to identify and know what are the intentions associated to attending and interpersonal influence skills that the psychologist can use. This implies that the students be exposed to essential information about each skill, including skill definition, specification of the respective objectives and/or intentions, and the description of their behavioural/verbal translation forms.

However, the development of this kind of skills does not only require the acquisition of some knowledge about them but also the capacity to put them in practice which suppose the opportunity to exercise those skills in order to appropriate them even if it is at a basic level. This is why it is provided to students the opportunity to (1) explore their concerns and beliefs about the psychological intervention practice; (2) experiment and practice through simulation activities, the main skills and attitudes that allow the professional of psychology to act with intentionality; and (3) recognize the strong and week points of his/her own personal profile in terms of the need to interact with the client in a competent way.

A skilled performance in psychological intervention can imply a more or less profound revision of the future psychologists’ actual listening and interaction habits. Given that, it is not strange that, in some cases, some tensions can appear between what has been learned for students in the past and what is required from them in the future. This means that the process of these skills learning also aims the development of a great self-conscience and the promotion of personal development.

Software

Não aplicável

keywords

Social sciences > Psychological sciences > Psychology

Evaluation Type

Distributed evaluation without final exam

Assessment Components

Description	Type	Time (hours)	Weight (%)	End date
Attendance (estimated)	Participação presencial	28,00
	Trabalho escrito	32,00
	Trabalho escrito	10,00
	Teste	12,00
	Total:	-	0,00

Amount of time allocated to each course unit

Description	Type	Time (hours)	End date
	Estudo autónomo	26
	Total:	26,00

Eligibility for exams

To obtain the frequency (and approval) in the discipline, the student must satisfy the minimum requirements with respect to assiduity, quality of participation/involvement in the classes and success in all the learning activities.


· LEARNING ACTIVITY I (group work)
Elaboration and in-class exploration of a theme (focused in one or more psychological intervention skills), according with the following plan:

1st Moment/phase – Introduction to the theme (oral exposition)

2nd. Moment/phase – Practical exposition of the competencies (realization of activities and exercises)

3rd. Moment/phase – Simulated experimentation (role-playing of a psychological intervention hypothetic situation)

4th. Moment/phase – Evaluation, discussion and integration of the results of the previous activities .


· LEARNING ACTIVITY II (individual work)

Elaboration of a personal synthesis of the knowledges acquired about the basic skills of psychological intervention.
Each student is totatally free to decide the content as well as the format of the work to be presented. In all cases, the work must (1) prove what the student have learned in the discipline (by the apllication of the learning skills to specific situations) and/or (2) express student's personal reflections about some aspect of those that have been learned.

Example: Elaboration of an excerpt of a client-psychologist encounter, in which the psychologist comunicate with the potential client in a way that manifest intentionality. It is expected that, in this conversation, the student operacionalize the major number possible of psychological intervention skills that have been learned. The skills used must be identified and its use must be justified in light of the needs that emerges in each moment of the ongoing interaction.

Calculation formula of final grade

The final classification will result of the sum of the weighted classifications obtained in each one of the evaluation components as follows:

· Assiduity and the quality of the participation in class activities – weight of 10% in the final classification

NOTA: Assiduity is a prerequisite for the approval in the discipline (only 3 faults are acceptable)


· Learning Activity I: weight of 50% in the final classification
· Learning Activity II: weight of 40% in the final classification

Examinations or Special Assignments

Not applicable

Special assessment (TE, DA, ...)

Students in these conditions (i.e., those who are excused from classes), are subject to the same activity plan, evaluation type and mark improvement procedures that are apllicable to the other regular students.

Classification improvement

It is only possible to require the improvement of the final classification. The improvement of the distributed classification implies a new inscription in the discipline in the next academic year in order to repeat the same academic activities.

When the student requires the improvement of the final classification, he/she must present a new written work similar to that of the Learning Activity II.

Observations

All the documents needed to the learning activities will be available in the online page of the discipline at the Sigarra website.