Assessment strategy and rationale

The three assessments used in this unit assist students to achieve the unit learning outcomes and develop the associated graduate attributes. 

Task 1: Journal Keeping: Personal-Professional Journal, Hurdle

The Journal is a comprehensive record of students' thoughts and experiences. It provides an emotionally honest and safe personal recording of reflections, self-reflections, ideas, feelings, and emotional responses which emerge in the course of the interaction in the tutorial team, role play or while viewing a video recording of a family session. This journal builds students' capacity for generative and precise reflection and open-dialogue as an acquired tertiary skill. By recording and discussing with their lecturers and tutorial team their observations and emotional responses, students develop their capacity to manage emotional reactions, improve flexibility and improve emotional self-regulation. The journal keeping task contributes students' cognitive-relational functioning, that is, developing their capacity to manage their attentional and memory process, so that they can notice and recall sequences of interaction and focus on important relational episodes. This task also builds the students' confidence in their unique personal knowledge, as well as their capacity to share expertise and skills in collaborative engagement in systemic process. This task has been found to facilitate development of the complex constellation of cognitive–affective skills which underpin the development of the automaticity of therapeutic responses and sound clinical decision-making in the heat of the moment.

Task 2: Oral Presentation of learning from participation in tutorial team dynamics, Pass/Fail

In this task students are introduced to constructing a systemic conceptualisation and formulation in the collaborative learning relational system, both of which are fundamental Family and Systemic Therapy competencies. This task requires students to draw a link between day-to-day phenomena, and appropriately and succinctly use Family and Systemic Therapy concepts and language-practices, to describe ‘what’s there’ and how they and others respond to a particular experience. This task provides students with authentic practice of these Family and Systemic Therapy competencies. By producing a coherent and succinct narrative of their experience and perspective on how they are facing the dilemmas and challenges of integrating the relational language of Family and Systemic Therapy into their practices, students are generating a systemic formulation. The act of sharing their understanding, which is an analogue for systemic formulation, within the larger group, provides students with both additional practice and valuable feedback. This task allows students to practice and genuinely build their confidence in having a voice in the group, and as an analogue of one of the core processes of Family and Systemic Therapy, generates change in students, contributes to the richness of learning for their colleagues and can be directly translated to work with families.

Task 3: Oral presentation of learning about family of origin and how it impacts on clinical skills, Pass/Fail

In this task students are introduced to constructing a systemic conceptualisation and formulation about their experience in their family of origin, and reporting it to a supportive collaborative learning relational system. These are fundamental Family and Systemic Therapy competencies. This task requires students to draw a link between how they functioned and adapted in their day-to-day life in their family as a child, and adolescent and adult, and how they are responding to clients and functioning as a professional. It draws a link between their past experience and current functioning, and phenomena that they find anxiety provoking, challenging, or exposes their ‘biases’ and ‘blind-spots’. Students need to know about these in order to be effective in using Family and Systemic Therapy practices. Appropriately and succinctly naming these ‘blind-spots’ and ‘biases’ using the Family and Systemic Therapy concepts and language-practices, allows students to generate ‘self-compassion’, free themselves from shame, embarrassment and anxiety, and improves their capacity to describe, with ease and honesty, ‘what’s there’ and how they and others respond to a particular experience. This task provides students with a deep and authentic practice of these Family and Systemic Therapy competencies. By producing a coherent and succinct narrative of their experience and perspective on how they are facing the dilemmas and challenges of integrating the relational language of Family and Systemic Therapy into their practice, students are elaborating on their authentic and generative systemic formulation. This task allows students to practice and genuinely build their confidence in having a voice in the group, and as an analogue of one of the core processes of Family and Systemic Therapy, generates change in themselves, and contributes to the richness of learning for the entire learning relation system.