Learning Community Psychology Practice Competencies: Student Pathways through the Applied Community Psychology Specialization

Abstract

Community psychology practice competencies provide a framework of skills students can learn to promote social change processes in communities. However, there is great overlap and cross-over of skill sets among some competencies. The complex nature of learning any competency will likely take multiple learning experiences to master and span years beyond a student’s exit from training to achieve expertise. Programs training students in practice competencies can benefit from working collaboratively with students to better understand how students develop experience and skill in utilizing competencies across the curriculum. This article explores five narrative accounts of how students and graduates learned selected community psychology practice competencies through their training in the Applied Community Psychology (ACP) specialization at Antioch University Los Angeles. Students and graduates were asked to select a competency and write a two-page narrative of how they learned the competency through their training in the ACP specialization. Implications for academic program development and training in community psychology practice competencies are discussed. The Applied Community Psychology Specialization1 (ACP) is a 17-unit degree option within the Masters Programs in Psychology at Antioch University Los Angeles. The majority of students in ACP are pursuing a Master’s in Clinical Psychology in preparation for licensure as marriage and family therapists, while students in the nonclinical degree options are planning careers in the non-profit sector or plan to pursue doctoral education in the future. A course, Community Psychology: Theories and Methods, serves as a prerequisite course to all core specialization courses. The core ACP curriculum consists of four core courses (Community Consultation and Collaboration, Program Development and Evaluation, Prevention and Promotion, Psychoeducational Groups and In-Service Training Development) 1 2010 Outstanding Program Award, Society for Community Research and Action (American Psychological Association Division 27) Council of Education Programs. and Field Study in Applied Community Psychology. Students round out the specialization with electives that include courses in grant writing, asset-based community development, social justice advocacy, coalition building, empowerment and community practice, to name a few. In the Community Consultation and Collaboration, Program Development and Evaluation, and, Prevention and Promotion courses students work in collaborative teams on projects in partnership with communitybased organizations (non-profits, public schools, or city/county government). For each of these courses student teams serve as consultants to the organizations, working on a project identified by the organization as an area for further development and/or external input. These projects are closely supervised by program faculty who guide students through the process of developing a technical report for the organization to also be shared in class with peers. In the Psychoeducational Global Journal of Community Psychology Practice Volume 8, Issue 1 March 2017 Global Journal of Community Psychology Practice, http://www.gjcpp.org/ Page 4 Groups and In-Service Training Development course students work independently with a community organization to develop psychoeducational workshops for their clientele or in-service trainings for program staff. In this course students develop workshop content and resource material for participants. Field study in Applied Community Psychology often emerges from one of the projects in the core courses. For example, students might work with an organization to implement recommendations from a consultation, or finalize and deliver a psychoeducational program to an organization. The emergence of community psychology practice competencies (Dalton & Wolfe, 2012) has provided training programs with an opportunity to become: (1) transparent about the skills students can expect to learn through specifying which of 18 practice competencies are offered; and, (2) specific to the depth of mastery students can expect to gain in practice competencies by articulating the levels of training – Exposure, Experience and Expertise (Kloos, 2010) for each that are offered. For more information about the utilization of community psychology practice competencies (Dalton & Wolfe, 2012) in the ACP specialization, see Taylor & Sarkisian (2011), Sarkisian & Taylor (2013), and Sarkisian, G. V., Saleem, M. A., Simpkin, J., Weidenbacher, A., Bartko, N., & Taylor, S. (2013). Because the ACP specialization is designed so that students gain a training level of Experience, i.e., supervised practice (Kloos, 2010), through multiple courses that include a fieldwork component, we were interested in learning about what students’ journeys look like over time. Previously, faculty and students in the ACP specialization have utilized curriculum mapping with selected community psychology practice competencies learned in one course (Sarkisian, et al., 2013) but have not investigated learning competencies across the ACP curriculum. This article explores five narrative accounts of learning a practice competency across the ACP specialization. Two students nearing completion of ACP specialization coursework, two students nearing graduation, and one graduate of seven years all chose a practice competency and described how they learned the competency through the specialization in a two-page narrative. The purpose of this paper is to share student accounts of learning practice competencies through the ACP specialization and identify implications for academic program development and training in practice competencies. Narratives are presented in order of tenure in the ACP specialization. Prevention, A Novel Concept: Huda Bayaa While all of the concepts of community psychology are pertinent and critical components, for me, concepts around prevention and promotion offered the foundational basis on which to connect all of the other building blocks of community psychology into my work. Working in community mental health, one sees the existence of cycles of violence, poverty and addiction that pervade many of the communities being served. Often, interventions are occurring after the proliferation of these issues, rather than before. What I learned in Prevention and Promotion trained me to be able to identify some of the stressors and modes of exploitation the community I serve may be exposed to and weigh that against the prevalence of social supports, confidence and coping capacity to better ascertain the likelihood that maladaptive behaviors may develop. Mental health tends to be a reactive practice in response to existing malady; prevention and promotion offers me the opportunity to conceptualize things from a position of empowerment rather than containment. Global Journal of Community Psychology Practice Volume 8, Issue 1 March 2017 Global Journal of Community Psychology Practice, http://www.gjcpp.org/ Page 5 Prevention and promotion motivate the work around my desire to inform the Arab and Muslim communities of the vital importance of mental health, especially as an influx of refugees and asylum seekers who have experienced unspeakable atrocities arrive looking for the opportunity at a new life. With community psychology concepts, and prevention and promotion specifically, gauging strengths and limitations that exist in a community help to formulate what direction my work can take to provide the most fruitful and positive influence. One of the ways I can do this with the refugee and asylum populations is by assessing what sorts of social supports that they may have on arrival, consider the trauma or experiences they may have, and the linguistic, social, and job skills they hold. These factors, among others, can help guide the development of programs and policies that will make adjustment to life in the United States easier and more successful. When interviewing for traineeships, community psychology concepts played a key part in helping me secure an AmeriCorps trainee position doing the work I aimed to do. During that interview, I talked about my desire to create programs and workshops aimed at fostering greater understanding of what mental health and illness look like, but also at increasing social support and a greater sense of community. Identifying and creating support systems and uplifting the individual to foster resilience have all been key pillars in the work I do. As we prepare to receive more refugees in the United States, the urgency in creating a plan to help safeguard against unnecessary strife and distress that communities may face becomes more imperative. Making refugees’ transition into the United States as seamless as possible is a main priority of mine. There is a recognition of how distress can create barriers to their integration and to the community they resettle in. Rather than wait for these issues to arise, I can begin to assess what potential stressors and social oppression they may face while I consider how to increase their selfesteem and coping skills through community support and psychoeducation. Today, I am creating psychoeducational workshops utilizing prevention and promotion concepts along with the knowledge and experience I gained in other ACP courses to make a lasting impact in the Arab and Muslim communities. The organization I work for recognizes the skills I have acquired in ACP as valuable and has provided me with the support and leeway to develop programs and opportunities as a result. ACP has given me not only the tools and experience, but also the confidence to go into my community and believe that I can be an agent of change. Further, an emphasis on concepts of prevention and promotion has taken me out of the standard reactionary practice to a more proactive interventionist mindset. That is something I feel will be an invaluable resource for me and the commu