Reflective Practice for Practitioners
(Volunteer and Professional workers)
Ballincollig, Cork
March – November 2016
Tuesday Evenings
All course participants will be highly subsidised by Bon Secours
Community Initiative Fund
Do you have a strong commitment to social justice and promoting
equality?
Have you ever wondered about your ways of working? Are you interested in reflecting with others,
and learning about the under-lying assumptions, motivations, feelings and
beliefs that shape your community practice choices? Are you interested in being better able to
bring about positive change in your own
community or with the organisations you are involved in? This part-time SHEP
course commencing in March 2016 may be of interest.
Some Participant
quotations of their experiences on the course
‘It was wonderful to engage with
fellow professionals and participate in their struggles alongside my own. This
was positive and life affirming as well as contributing greatly to the learning
of how to be reflective in my practice’
(participant)
‘This course provided me with the
space to take time out from day-to-day craziness of work to genuinely reflect
and think about what is important – really enjoyed it and benefitted from it
personally and professionally’ (participant)
‘This course allowed me to go into a
heart space which is often neglected and ignored in the heady obligations of my
working life’ (participant)
‘When I experience being seen and
heard without demand or judgement I can allow myself to be and be amazed at
what I learn about myself and the growth in self-acceptance that I experience’
(participant)
About the Reflective
Practice for Practitioners Course (SHEP Certificate)
This open-access and stand-alone SHEP course, is designed to create a
place to reflect on practice for people active in their communities who have a
commitment to enabling social change and working towards social justice. Participants
will share in the creation of a space that facilitates an exploration of the
assumptions, values, beliefs and feelings that underpin participants’ ways of
being active in their respective community settings. Participants will learn about
a number of frameworks that give structure to a reflective process and develop
a capacity to discern the applicability of these for themselves and their
practice. The course will be of interest to a wide range of people in
voluntary, paid and professional capacities involved in a various roles in
their communities.
Course Aim
The aim of the course is to provide, for people active in community or
organisational settings, a space for 8-10 participants to reflect on their
prior and current practice experiences. The course aims to enhance
participants’ capacity to engage in the critical reflective process and to
enhance their capacity to co-create the conditions for learning from practice
reflection. The focus of the course will be on the reflective phase of the experiential
learning/action planning cycle.
Philosophy
The course is underpinned by SHEP’s philosophy that self-awareness and
self-knowledge when combined with a commitment to community action is the basis
for personal and social transformation. The course reflects SHEP’s philosophy
that adults continue to learn throughout their life and that life and practice
experience is an invaluable source for that learning. The course is inspired by
SHEP’s commitment to equality, social justice, social transformation and the
contribution that group spaces can create for learning.
Certification
Upon
successful completion of the course participants will receive a SHEP
Certificate in Reflective Practice for Practitioners.
Learning Outcomes
Participants who complete
this course will be able to:
1.
Better reflect on their
practice
2.
Participate in the
co-creation of a group reflective practice space
3.
Discern the usefulness of
a number of frameworks for reflection on their practice (Critical Reflection, Experiential Learning Cycle,
Action Planning and Activity Theory)
4.
Adopt a facilitative stance
that, together with others in a group context, co-creates the conditions for an
effective reflective practice space
5.
Identify their preferred
learning styles but also be open to exploring other styles
6.
Reflectively write about
their practice and their reflective learning processes
7.
Draw up a personal plan as
to how they will support themselves in their practice
Course Content
This course will address a
number of key areas, as follows:
- What is the Critical
Reflection approach – are there others?
- What is the Experiential
Learning Cycle?
- What are different
styles of learning and have you a preference?
- How to be in a space
that supports your learning from practice reflection?
- What helps a group
reflective space to work well?
- What is an ‘activity
system’? Does this perspective aid your reflection on practice?
- How you can use a
writing process to support your learning from reflection?
- Reflecting on your
own reflecting and learning!
- How can you best
support yourself and others?
Approach
This
course is primarily experiential in the use of the frameworks for reflection on
practice, and participants will come to discern the usefulness of the
frameworks for themselves. An important part of the approach is a reflective writing
process. There will be very limited formal teaching and a small amount of
guided reading.
Commitment, Schedule
& Location
This
course entails 30 contact hours of participant effort through group time, with
the group meeting approximately once per month from March 2016 to November 2016
(6 sessions of 2.5 hours and 3 sessions of 5 hours with a break in July &
August). Participants will need to schedule a further one hour per week for
reflective writing and a small amount of guided reading.
Certification
A SHEP Certificate in
Reflective Practice for Practitioners will be awarded where an 80% attendance
record is achieved. There will be no formal assessment in the course.
Participants will be required, however, to submit one written reflective
learning piece at the end of the course that draws on their learning and their
reflective writing done through the span of the course. An input on reflective
writing skills will be provided early in the course.
Costs
This course is fully subsided
through the support of the Bon Secours Community Initiative Fund, Cork
Volunteer Centre, SHEP and the HSE and there is No Course Fee for participants. A personal
contribution of €10 per person is required as the course deposit, and this
small fund will be available for use by the group.
Entry requirements
Candidates must be adults
(18 and over) who:
- Have a strong
commitment to promoting social change, equality and justice and are active
in their community in either a paid or voluntary capacity
- Have a willingness
to be open in a group setting, sufficient for a process of reflection on
the assumptions, values and feelings underpinning their activity
The course is open to all
people from the Community and Voluntary Sector, either in paid or voluntary
capacities. It is not necessary to be involved in an organisation or group,
only that you are active for social justice or community empowerment in some
current way. Those who have completed other courses in SHEP can also apply.
Candidates will be shortlisted and all shortlisted candidates will be required
to attend for a short interview. Being called for an interview does not
guarantee an offer of a place.
Progression
SHEP has recently reconfigured its third
practitioner training programme which is now called the SHEP
Certificate in Applied Facilitation in Community & Organisational Settings. The aim
of that part-time programme is to resource local communities and organisations
by supporting programme participants to become more active citizens through
leadership and facilitation. The Reflective Practice for Practitioners course is
one of six modules comprising that programme. While not required for the Reflective Practice
course, applicants for the QQI Level 6 component modules of the Applied
Facilitation in Community and Organisational Settings practitioner programme
will normally have a Leaving Certificate/QQI Level 5 or equivalent
qualification. For more
detail on eligibility and progression criteria for that programme, please refer
to the accompanying one page document or to our website at www.socialandhealth.com.
Course Personnel
& Venue
One group will run in 2016
in Cork (Ballincollig) and the trainers on the course are Brendan O’Brien and Liam
McCarthy.
Booking
Interested
applicants should submit a completed application form along with the deposit by
5pm on the closing date for applications,
Wednesday 2nd March 2016
Interviews
(10-15min) will be scheduled for Friday
4th March 2016 between 4-8pm in Ballincollig. Successful
applicants will be notified by Friday, 11th
March 2016
·
The course will be held at the SHEP Training Centre in Ballincollig
with the first session commencing on Tuesday 15th March from 7.30-10pm
·
Sessions
will be on Tuesdays spaced approximately 3 weeks apart. The course runs from
March to November 2016 with a break during July & August
The
course will run subject to sufficient numbers applying to form a group of 8-10
participants.
Further Information
For further information
and an application form please see the Training and Development section of the
SHEP website www.socialandhealth.com
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