The emergence of community psychology practice competencies (Dalton & Wolfe, 2012) has provided educators with criteria (although not necessarily agreed upon) to critically reflect on curriculum and to develop existing or new opportunities for students to gain a wide variety of skill sets in community psychology practice. The authors of the current paper have utilized curriculum mapping (Sarkisian & Taylor, 2013) with students (Sarkisian, et al., 2013) as a tool to assess practice competencies in the curriculum and to develop opportunities for students to gain exposure and experience with community psychology practice competencies. Yet, many of the practice competencies are complex and dynamic in nature, presenting challenges to the process of teaching. Academic institutions have fixed academic terms either in classrooms, or more recently, cyberspace-based, that are often incompatible with the types of field-based, community-driven projects that offer the best opportunities for students to gain exposure, experience, and expertise in community psychology practice competencies. In addition, college and university faculty may be limited in the range of practice competencies they can teach or supervise in the field, and students may have limited formal exposure to the community psychology practice competencies. The purpose of the current article is (1) to develop a training context through a brief program profile, (2) to present challenges faced in the process of teaching practice competencies from a values-driven community psychology pedagogy, and (3) to present practical strategies used to overcome these challenges faced in the process of teaching.
Strategy 1d: Student interest as a catalyst for meaningful engagement in coursework and fieldwork. In the introductory community psychology course, we use an exercise to choose student groups where everyone is allowed to put a topic (i.e., social issue) of great interest on the board. Then, students vote on the topic most interesting to them, and tally marks are made next to topics. The process of voting is repeated until there are at least two people associated with each topic. Topics with no tally marks are erased from the board, and the student groups are formed. In the ACP core courses, students choose the organizations with which to collaborate, reinforcing the idea of working on community issues of importance to oneself. Students present a summary of their organizational contact and potential issues of focus to the class. Thus, students are able to form groups based on their interest in working with a particular organization or population.
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In the introductory community psychology course, value conflicts often emerge and may grow from frustration to personal attacks or attacks on specific groups. Ground rules for mutually respectful academic debate, class discussion, and conduct are articulated in the syllabus and reviewed the first day of class (see Sarkisian & Taylor, 2010 for link to course syllabus), yet conflictual situations often emerge due to the course content and varied perspectives of students. These situations require faculty intervention to stop a bad situation from getting worse, restore safety, model expectations for academic discourse, and have students practice. This is typically accomplished through (1) stopping the conversation or argument, (2) letting everyone take a moment of silence to reflect on the transaction(s) that occurred, (3) explaining how and when the conversation went from academic to non-academic, (4) explaining how the conversation could have been continued, often through restoring the focus on observable actions that can be critically examined, and (5) by providing students with an opportunity to continue the discussion.
Strategy 2c: Fieldwork supervision to support the development of confidence in developing practice skills. In the ACP core courses, students are often fearful or have a low level of confidence whenever they are in a situation where they have to provide critical feedback to a collaborating community partner. This is common and natural as most of our students are new to community psychology, new to gaining experience with practice competencies, and new to acting in the role of a consultant. Thus, we utilize supervision to provide support, modeling, and the opportunity to try out strategies.
Strategy 4b: Reading and class discussion. Through assigned readings and class discussion in the introductory community psychology course, we try to encourage students to shift from introspection to focusing on understanding community conditions and populations affected by utilizing outside resources. Students who are not in the ACP specialization often begin their approach by conceptualizing solutions with little or no information from outside sources. Our challenge is to help students shift their way of thinking so they develop a deeper understanding of the problem from multiple sources before conceptualizing how things could change. Understanding the paradoxical nature and iatrogenic effect of service systems and treatment-only approaches helps raise student awareness of the complexity of the way things are in the world. Some of our favorite resources for stimulating these discussions include:
Because students are socialized and complete coursework and clinical training within the larger clinical psychology program, they often conceptualize problems and focus on solutions that are exclusively individualistic or psychological in nature. Teaching the levels of analysis and principles of ecology (Nelson & Prilleltensky, 2010) in the introductory community psychology course is consistently a challenge.
Strategy 5a: Conceptual tools. Conceptual tools are useful in bridging the theory-practice divide. The levels of analysis and principles of ecology provide a useful structure, both in understanding the problem and in developing social change strategies. In the introductory community psychology course, students discuss, develop charts of social issues using the levels of analysis and principles of ecology on the dry-erase board, and define the levels, illustrate principles of ecology, and propose multilevel change efforts to address a community issue in their term papers. In core coursework, such as the consultation and community collaboration course, students develop an eco-organizational genogram (similar to a family genogram used in psychotherapy) to visualize how their community partner organization fits into a larger community context. Understanding the larger context often leads to the tapping of previously overlooked community resources and conceptualizing solutions from an ecological lens.
Strategy 6a: Small group processes. The Group Goals Exercise (Marrero & Sarkisian, 2010) is used in the introductory community psychology course and several of the ACP core courses. This exercise prompts students working in groups to collectively develop principles to guide their group process in successfully achieving various course outcomes (e.g., final paper, technical reports, class presentations, presentations to community partners). Students rate themselves and their group partners at specific intervals throughout the quarter and have time to discuss their ratings, reformulate principles to guide group process, and raise their awareness of their work with other partners.
The current article presents a program profile (i.e., student demographics, curriculum and community psychology practice competencies, fieldwork, and program entry/non-entry) to develop a training context within which faculty face challenges in promoting empowering academic settings. Next, the authors presented six challenges and accompanying strategies they use to promote a training level of Exposure and Experience with community psychology practice competencies.
Sarkisian, G. V., Saleem, M. A., Simpkin, J., Weidenbacher, A., Bartko, N., & Taylor, S. (2013). A learning journey II: Learned course maps as a basis to explore how students learned community psychology practice competencies in a community coalition building course. Global Journal of community psychology practice, 4(4), 1-12. Retrieved 12/5/2016, from ( ).
Sarkisian, G. V. & Taylor, S. (2013). A learning journey I: Curriculum mapping as a tool to assess and integrate community psychology practice competencies in graduate education programs. Global Journal of Community Psychology Practice, 4(4), xx-xx. Retrieved 12/5/2016, from ( ).
Wolff, T., & Sarkisian, G. V. (2013). Community coalition simulation: Experiential learning of community psychology practice competencies. Global Journal of Community Psychology Practice, 4(4), xx-xx. Retrieved 12/5/2016, from ( ).
[1] Two features of some recent literature in philosophy of science is especially relevant. First, the possibility of reliable testing of scientific theories (of whatever level of generality) depends on the availability of a suitable vocabulary of natural kinds: a vocabulary for describing the kinds, relations, magnitudes, etc. that are causally important factors in the relevant phenomena. This means that theoretical and empirical work in sorting out orienting frameworks is in fact absolutely central to scientific methods in general, not just in community psychology. Moreover, the relevant causal factors may often turn out to interact with one another in complicated ways, thereby causing difficulty for researchers, theorists, and scientists in general (see Boyd 2010; Oyama 2000; Wilson et al 2009). The issues community psychologists face may be typical in the sciences in general, in other words they are not peculiar to community psychology. Second, the pluralism of competing approaches that seems to describe the scientific status of community psychology is also commonplace in science. In fact, it is almost certainly essential in most cases in which scientists sort out conceptual and methodological issues (see Chang, 2004, 2012).
Kelly, J. G. (1968). Toward an ecological conception of preventive interventions. In J. W. Carter Jr. (Ed.). Research contributions from psychology to community mental health (pp. 76-100). New York, NY: Behavioral Publications. 2ff7e9595c
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