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Knowing Self in Professional Practice

Location
Southwark

Duration
3 months (part-time)

Start dates
September (additionally January if sufficientc interest)
Dates and times available on request

Number of places
Part-time: 30

How to apply
Direct to LSBU

Course contact
Judith Enterkin
enterkij@lsbu.ac.uk – 020 7815 8344

Non-standard entry requirements

You will normally require a degree in a relevant subject and have experience in a relevant field. Please contact the course director to discuss this further.

Typical background of applicant

Typical applicants for this course will be working within the field of health or social care.


Unit description

The key focus of this unit is on developing students’ reflective ability in order to increase their self-awareness and self-knowledge. The unit will introduce, debate and try out a range of techniques, which are thought to facilitate critical reflection on self. The students will subsequently utilise these techniques within their supervisory, mentorship and coaching relationships in the work place. The unit will focus upon exploring the concepts of professional expertise, leadership and professional practice knowledge.

This unit is a foundational unit for the Strategic Leadership and Expert Practice programme and its pathways and the Post Qualifying Awards in Social Work, but may also be studied as a stand-alone unit, by those wishing to accumulate credits at postgraduate level. In the last five years there has been increasing interest and debates around what constitutes expertise in practice, in health, education, social work and social care disciplines. Questions have arisen such as: what do we mean when we refer to a practitioner as an ‘expert’? How does one become an expert and how would one know that one had achieved ‘expertise’? Once a practitioner has reached the position of being known as an ‘expert practitioner’, what happens next?

This discussion is becoming increasingly important in light of current work within health and social care to ensure that nursing and other professionals are ‘fit-for-purpose’ and provide services to patients, service users and carers that are centred on their needs.

Explorations of the concept of clinical expertise have highlighted that practitioners find it difficult to articulate the nature of their expertise through formal linear modes. Some of the key attributes of expertise include selfawareness, the ability to utilise, challenge and develop practice knowledge, and effective leadership (at several levels). A key factor that can facilitate access and understanding of clinical expertise is reflective ability. This unit focuses on developing the students’ reflective ability in order to increase their self-awareness and self-knowledge so that they are able to critically appraise how they act in practice. This critical reflective process is at the heart of the programme. Within the unit, the students will be introduced to, debate, and try out a range of tools and techniques which are thought to facilitate critical reflection upon self and to enable the process in others.

Through the process of reflection, the unit will: explore the concept of self as a leader through evaluation and application of a range of theoretical frameworks, models of leadership and tools for enhancing self awareness and self knowledge, clarify the nature of professional expertise in order to enable students to begin to evaluate their own practice ability, and examine ways of knowing and learning through critical analysis and application of theoretical frameworks ideas and tools from education, nursing and other relevant fields of professional practice.