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Publication Date
2013
Document Type
Dissertation
Department
School for Social Work
Keywords
Acting out (Psychology), Psychotherapy-Study and teaching (Graduate)-Psychological aspects, Social work education, Teacher-student relationships, Interpersonal relations, Intersubjectivity, Enactments, Clinical practice, Teacher/student interpersonal dynamics, Pedagogic impasse
Abstract
Learning and teaching clinical practice can often evoke emotional reactions in both students and instructors that lead to intense, interesting, and complicated interactions. This study created and explored a theoretical application of the psychoanalytic / psychodynamic construct of enactment to a classroom setting. This study aimed to capture the ways that clinical social work practice instructors conceptualize and manage complex interpersonal events and conflicts in their classrooms. The design of this project was exploratory and qualitative, based on content analysis. Eighteen clinical practice instructors teaching at 10 different schools of social work were interviewed. Participants all taught from a psychodyanmically oriented perspective and all used case material in their teaching. One time qualitative in person and Skype interviews were conducted, and subsequently coded line by line for analysis. Three major themes emerged that characterize the nature of complicated interpersonal moments in the classroom; (1) how instructors handled enactments, (2) how instructors conceptualized the occurrence of enactments, and (3) how instructors think about the potential pedagogic use of enactments. The findings of this study reveal an effective application of the construct of enactment to interactions between clinical social work practice instructors and their students. This study opens the possibility for expounding upon a psychodynamically informed theory of pedagogy that has the potential to help instructors create useful ways of thinking about these inevitable, and potentially instructive classroom moments.
Language
English
Recommended Citation
Segal, Cara A., "Enactments between clinical practice teachers and their students : how do we understand and make pedagogic use of this phenomenon" (2013). Dissertation, Smith College, Northampton, MA.
https://scholarworks.smith.edu/theses/353
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Comments
v, 110 p. Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Smith College School for Social Work, 2013. Includes bibliographical references (p. 87-93)