Teaching Techniques

(Adapted from training materials from Adelphi University)

Didactic Teaching

• Offering students information or suggestions as they need it and are ready for it.

Collaborative Discussion

• Building on ideas, mutuality in exchange of questions and ideas.

Curiosity About Student’s Perceptions, Ideas, Plans and Strategies

• Problem of Socratic Teaching: asking student questions or leading student so that they are supposed to “figure out supervisor’s answer.”

Use of Role Play

• Reversing roles between supervisor and student to alternately play client and worker. Different purposes in use of role play for teaching purposes, eg – develop empathy, plan strategies, etc.

Use of Analogy

• Develop parallel connection to student’s experiences, ie – can you think of a time you had to ask for help; what was it like; and what might have been helpful to you? Or imagine being a parent and your child was bright and brought home a failing report card; how might you feel, how might you have reacted?

Crediting Positives or Growth in Student’s Work

• Acknowledge what they are doing well and what are the next steps toward mastering this skill.

Identifying to Reaching for What the Student Needs to Work on

• How does student experience their practice, their feelings, their binds, etc.

Perceiving Student’s “Mistakes”

• In other than negative terms by looking for the positive, the good intentions in their efforts, and the risk taking involved, eg – yes, you over identified with the child against her parents, but I can also see how much empathy you felt for the child, or you ran away from the client’s pain, but I could also see the sensitivity you were feeling for his pain.

Generalizing and Partializing (Inductive and Deductive)

• Adding individual incidents or data into patterns or themes.

• Deducing or specifying individual situations, techniques, or variations from general concepts.

Re-creation

• Help the student to make connections between:

  • Class and field

  • Variations in professional language and concepts

  • Different points of view between student and field instructor and perhaps School in how they define and implement assessment and practice (ie – intrapsychic assessment or systemic/ecological assessment.