Challenges and Strategies in Promoting Empowering Academic Settings for Learning Community Psychology Practice Competencies

This article will provide readers with practical strategies to develop meaningful opportunities for students to gain experience with community psychology practice competencies in educational settings. First, the authors will provide a brief program profile to better understand opportunities students have to gain experience in competencies within the Applied Community Psychology Specialization at Antioch University Los Angeles. Next, challenges in teaching students to gain experience with community psychology practice competencies at the master’s level will be presented. Finally, practical strategies for overcoming these challenges will be discussed. Literature on training in community psychology emerged in the 1970s shortly after the field’s inception. These early models were either focused on training researchers (Iscoe & Spielberger, 1970) or research practitioners. Writings on training for practice were formative in nature, conveying a theme of the incompatibility of community work within university structures (e.g., Kelly, 1970; Kelly, 1971; Newbrough, 1972; & Newbrough, 1973). Most of the literature on training for practice since then has focused on models of training specific to individual programs (e.g., Weinstein, 1981) with informative insights, but not necessarily knowledge that is transferable across programs, as there were no universally agreed upon criteria for a practice-focused education. In 2010, Kloos proposed three levels of training that are useful for educators to articulate the depth of mastery in which students are trained – Exposure, learning the value and applications; Experience, supervised practice; and, Expertise, multiple experiences over years in selected competencies – and provide a common language for educators to better understand training programs. In a previous article (Taylor & Sarkisian, 2011), the authors of the current paper articulated a values-driven pedagogy for students to gain a training level of Experience (Kloos, 2010) in community psychology practice at the master’s level within a clinical psychology program that may be transferable to similar programs but likely incomparable to doctoral programs training students to gain a training level of Expertise in community psychology practice. 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 Global Journal of Community Psychology Practice Volume 7, Issue 4 December 2016 Global Journal of Community Psychology Practice, http://www.gjcpp.org/ Page 3 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. Applied Community Psychology (ACP) Specialization Program Profile The Applied Community Psychology (ACP) specialization is a 17-unit optional course of study for master’s level psychology students at Antioch University Los Angeles. ACP student demographics To date, 125 students have completed the ACP specialization as graduates of the Master’s program. Approximately 30 to 40 students are enrolled in the specialization at any given time. The majority of the students in the specialization are adult learners (mean age=37.5), primarily female (79.2%), and typically working in addition to attending school (52.3% full-time, 47.7% part-time). More than 55% of ACP students self-identify as belonging to an ethnic minority group, with the majority identifying as AfricanAmerican or Black (34%), and nearly 21% identify as LGBTQ. Most ACP students enter the program with prior experience in community work, but few have had formal training in community psychology or practice competencies. Curriculum and Community Psychology Practice Competencies Students complete an introductory community psychology course – Community Psychology: Theories & Methods; four core courses – Community Consultation and Collaboration, Program Development and Evaluation, Prevention and Promotion, and Psychoeducational Groups and In-Service Training Development; a field study – Field Study in ACP; and elective units in ACP. See Taylor and Sarkisian (2011) for a complete description of the pedagogy – mentoring, student professional development and student empowerment – used to promote an empowering educational setting through the ACP specialization. In the introductory community psychology course, students are Exposed to all practice competencies through reading (i.e., Dalton & Wolfe, 2012) and class discussion, and students gain a training level of Experience in Ecological Perspectives and Collaboration. Through supervised fieldwork in core courses and the field study course, students gain a training level of Experience in Foundational Principles, Program Development, Implementation and Management, Prevention and Health Promotion, Small Group Processes, Resource Development, Consultation and Organizational Development, Collaboration, Information Dissemination and Building Public Awareness, and, Program Evaluation. While each core course has a primary focus on one or two practice competencies (e.g., the Community Consultation and Collaboration course focuses on the competency Consultation and Organizational Development), all core courses include secondary foci on developing experience with other practice competencies (i.e., Collaboration and Small Group Processes). One of the benchmarks of ACP is the inclusion of supervised fieldwork in the four core courses (in addition to the required field study) allowing students to gain a training level of Experience with selected practice competencies. Additionally, students often work in groups as consultation teams to further develop collaboration skills. Fieldwork related to core courses The majority of students gain fieldwork experience collaborating with communitybased non-profit organizations and public Global Journal of Community Psychology Practice Volume 7, Issue 4 December 2016 Global Journal of Community Psychology Practice, http://www.gjcpp.org/ Page 4 schools. The issues of focus for students tend to be tied to the course content (e.g., in the Program Development and Evaluation course, students work collaboratively with the organization to develop an evaluation plan). The populations served and social issues addressed by these organizations vary greatly. In the Community Consultation and Collaboration course, populations served by non-profit organizations have included: health of African-American families, empowerment of Latina teens, mothers who were prostitutes seeking child reunification, youth and young adults emancipating from the foster care system, empowerment of transgender youth, seniors who identify as LGBT, people with HIV/AIDS, cultural enrichment opportunities for Pilipino youth, and well-being of child caregivers to name a few. This variation reflects the diverse professional interests of students in the ACP specialization. Entry and non-entry into the Applied Community Psychology (ACP) Specialization Students enter the ACP specialization in one of two ways. Some students have knowledge of community psychology and elect to join the specialization upon admission to the master’s program, but many students learn about ACP in the introductory community psychology course and decide to join the specialization when they see the curriculum and professional development opportunities resonate closely with their academic goals for professional development. Once they complete the introductory community psychology course, they can proceed in completing the core coursework, field study, and electives. The introductory community psychology course is a requirement for all students in the clinical psychology master’s program and will typically include students who are not necessarily interested in community psychology content. These students complete 3 units of community psychology and 87 unit of clinically focused coursework, often leading to a strong bias toward reactive individualistic solutions to promoting well-being. Challenges and Strategies in Promoting Empowering Academic Settings These challenges and strategies were developed through the authors’ experience in teaching students who were interested, not necessarily interested and uninterested (at least initially), in community psychology content for the past 10 years. While students in the introductory community psychology course are provided with a training level of Exposure to all practice competencies, students gain a level of Experience in the practice competencies described in the ACP Program Profile. The purpose of