Self-awareness and reflection: exploring the 'therapeutic use of self'

Assesses what the participants gained from a pilot partnership course set up to help social care staff to explore new therapeutic ways of working with people with learning disabilities. Therapeutic use of self; Empathy as a cornerstone of therapeutic work; Presencing; Illustration that all the participants felt that the course had increased their awareness in the areas addressed by the course

The views of trainee clinical psychologists and student nurses about the involvement of clients with a learning disability in their training

The present study compares the views of trainee clinical psychologists (n=31) and student nurses (n=15) about user involvement in formal teaching. The study found no significant differences between group views. Eighty-two percent of the all participants thought that user involvement was important, but only 29% had had such involvement in their own teaching. Of these, the mean rating of usefulness was 2.2, indicating that it was not perceived as being particularly useful. The group were significantly more likely to identify the area of ‘service provision’ as an area of teaching for clients to be involved in and ‘gaining client perspective’ as a benefit of user involvement in teaching. Client difficulties, such as communication were identified by a significant number of participants as a drawback of involving clients in teaching. The implications of these findings, in terms of promoting meaningful user involvement in formal training programmes are discussed

Theorising the value of collage in exploring educational leadership

This article contributes to theorising the value of collage as a methodological approach. It begins with a discussion of the methodological difficulties of exploring hidden meanings and individual experience through the research process. The illuminative potential of arts-based methodologies in qualitative research is then investigated. The article makes the case for the specific advantages of using collage to explore the experience of leadership, through a discussion of two collage-based studies. It proposes a variant of the ‘think aloud’ process, used in conjunction with collage, as a route to producing deep understandings of the multiple ways in which leadership is experienced and understood as a social process. The argument is made that collage enables the accessing and sharing of profound levels of experience not accessible through words alone, and considers the impact of the physicality of collage on its potential to release these profound insights. A five-stage process for the analysis of collage is then set out. The article concludes by offering a theory of the value of collage as a methodological approach to exploring experiences of leadership, through use of the concepts of physicality, wholeness and participant agency.Peer reviewe

Don't hold me back:Using poetic inquiry to explore university educators’ experiences of professional development through the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

Institutional schemes that offer financial and other support to carry out Scholarship of Teaching and Learning projects have a valuable part to play in the personal and professional development of academic staff. We investigated the experiences of 12 recipients of the University of Edinburgh SoTL Scheme awards, drawing on a poetic inquiry approach in order to understand what that development meant to them. We found that poetic inquiry surfaced stumbling points and frustrations as well as triumphs and transformation and provided insight into the kinds of emotional and practical support required by participants. Unexpectedly, it also shed light on methodological issues for the researchers.<br/

What can academic development learn from the Health Humanities?

The Health Humanities is a movement that seeks to promote engagement with arts and humanities disciplines as a way of helping professionals, patients, informal carers and members of the public to understand healthcare more fully. In this paper I draw parallels between health and learning and suggest that a similar approach would be of value for academic developers working with colleagues and students. I indicate the potential scope for the Learning Arts and Humanities, and provide examples of existing practice, in which the methods and sensibilities of literary studies are shedding light on learning and teaching in Higher Education.<br/

Putting ourselves in the picture: art workshops in the professional development of university lecturers.

Nurse education is characterised by dissonance, ambiguity and uncertainty. Such a context makes demands on the educator’s authenticity or sense of self. This paper reports an attempt to provide a space where dissonance, ambiguity and uncertainty could be held, tolerated and examined and where authenticity could be recovered or developed through the practice of artistry. Three art workshops were offered to 8 nurse educators over a period of three months. Each of the participants and the co-facilitator were subsequently interviewed. All welcomed the opportunity to find meaning in their practice and to be listened to in a climate of empathy, acceptance and congruence. They undertook novel activities that allowed for discovery and surprise. They explored their sense of self and coined fresh metaphors to communicate their experiences. The paper argues that there is room for approaches to academic staff development that go against the mainstream

Poetic transcription with a twist:Supporting early career academics through liminal spaces

As pressures on new academic staff members increase and change, academic developers need to find different ways of working with them. This paper offers for discussion a new way of supporting early career academics in their negotiation of liminality, the betwixt and between space separating old and new roles. We call this innovative approach poetic transcription with a twist. We begin by describing the approach, before reflecting on its value in our work with a group of colleagues who came together to share their stories of early career academic life. The paper outlines the responses of the individuals who engaged in the process before considering the possibilities and perils for wider use