Module Directory

This module aims to support the development of employability skills required in the social care, education and health sectors. It is composed of reflective groups in which issues emerging from the third year of the course, whether academic, personal or professional, can be addressed and integrated.

Reflective groups aim to establish a self-contained learning community and integrate students' learning experience. This means that you can acknowledge and process the emotional and psychological implications of undertaking a challenging programme, and especially the challenges involved in the third year in which you are seeking to consolidate your learning and negotiate moving toward the end of your programme.

Reflective practice modules adhere to the notion of 'situated learning', presented by McMahon (2003) as the 'matching principle' where the working methods of the student and tutor group will reflect the working methods potentially used in the therapeutic settings in which you may go on to work, e.g. staff discussion or sensitivity meetings.

You are required to keep a reflective journal throughout the year leading toward the end of year assignment: your final Reflective Report.

The aims of this module are:

• To establish a reflective space for acknowledging and processing the emotional and psychological implications of the material and experiences on this course


• To reflect upon your learning across three key areas in which the programme itself can affect you, i.e., academically, personally and professionally


• To reflect upon how you have grown and developed over the three years of your programme


• To recognise more fully and consciously the knowledge, skills, and professional qualities you can take into professional life


• To learn more about yourself as a member of a group – your valency, the kind of role you play and how to get the best out of group experience

By the end of this module, students will be expected to have:

• Had the opportunity to fully recognise and acknowledge the academic, personal and professional journey they have taken over the duration of the BA, and reflected upon the new competencies with which they leave university to enter the workplace


• Developed an advanced capacity to tolerate 'not knowing' and stick with learning even while it can be uncomfortable


• A stronger capacity to reflect critically upon their behaviours, responses and difficulties


• Gained a better understanding of how their background, life history and relationship have shaped their attitudes and patterns of behaviour


• Further developed a conscious use of self (self-awareness) in professional relationships


• Linked their theoretical learning to their personhood and thus have brought this more effectively into actual practice


• Further enhanced their capacity to reflect on their own process in the observing and learning contexts


• Become increasingly reflexive and recognise the relationship between self-awareness and psychodynamic practice and care

Key Skills

• Applying psychodynamic concepts and insights in a work setting


• Psychodynamic observation skills


• Reflective practice

Employability Skills

Reflective practice

• Use of self-awareness in professional relationships


• Knowledge and experience about a care sector

There are 14 seminars across the three terms. Teaching will be up to 2 hours duration and is composed of reflective activities such as reflective writing, work on CVs and Core Competencies as well as Reflective Groups.

Students will be discussing and reflecting upon the practical and professional issues thrown up by the experience of their third year of study including your professional, academic and personal development in readiness for careers in psychodynamic practice.