Credit Points 10

Legacy Code 102806

Coordinator Ireni Farag Opens in new window

Description This unit introduces postgraduate students from allied professions to the major theoretical frameworks and foundational practices of counselling. An in-depth exploration of the embodied and situated experience of the trainee practitioner will be central to learning how to attend to and support others. Students will engage in an ongoing critical consideration of how discourses and practices of selfhood, social justice, power, colonisation, intersectionality, diversity and place shape the subjects of therapy and influence the therapeutic relationship. These intersubjective and scholarly enquiries will inform a scaffolded, intensive practice of microskills. (Legacy code 102806)

School Social Sciences

Discipline Counselling

Student Contribution Band HECS Band 4 10cp

Level Postgraduate Coursework Level 7 subject

Incompatible Subjects WELF 7009 - Foundations of Psychotherapy and Counselling 1 WELF 7004 - Counselling 1

Restrictions

Students must be enrolled in program 4595 - Master of Art Therapy or students must be enrolled in another postgraduate program in Social Sciences, such as Social and Community work, Health, Arts in Health Education or Bachelor of Research Studies.

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this subject, students should be able to:

1. Effectively and empathically practice beginning skills in counselling.
2. Integrate these counselling skills effectively into professional practice, from a critical social science perspective.
3. Recognise and constructively critique the major frameworks of counselling.
4. Respond appropriately in professional situations that require counselling skills.
5. Understand the similarities and differences between different professional roles and the possibilities and limits of their own role and expertise.
6. Establish a �eholding environment�f with people in distress, in order to continue to offer therapeutic/ relational support or refer on.

Subject Content

Reflection on the development of the self as practitioner.
In-class practice of foundational counselling skills.
Reflexive analysis of the experience of counselling practice from the position of trainee practitioner, participant and observer, including close analysis of recordings of practice sessions.
Critical consideration of the major theoretical frameworks of counselling.
Exploration of the connections and tensions between the values, beliefs and practices of the student?fs chosen profession and the values, beliefs and practices of professional counselling.