Perceptions of what facilitates learning on psychodynamic counselling courses: eight students' views

Abstract

The main purpose of the research was to explore factors that facilitate learning in psychodynamic counselling courses. The psychodynamic approach has no intrinsic theory of learning. The research approach was therefore conceptualised from a sociocultural model to enable an understanding of students’ learning within the social concept of the course. The learning environments were Higher Education psychodynamic counselling courses at two UK Universities. Eight adult students were encouraged to use qualitative judgements and personal views and reflections on what supported or constrained their learning during the course of their studies. Data were collected at important points across four years of study and analysed from a critical understanding of sociocultural theories (Vygotsky, 1934, 1962) and psychoanalytic/psychodynamic psychotherapeutic theories (Freud, 1963). Results are presented for a qualitative study from snapshots in time in the light of these seminal theorists’ work as well as more modern theorists’ application of historic thought to modern circumstance. Nine dominant themes emerged from data analysis, which related to students’ personal development. These themes were: autonomy; self-changes; closeness; encouragement/ discouragement; individual learning process; ambivalence about judging the tutor; private life; self-esteem and confidence. The over-arching theme that emerged was the tutor-student relationship, understandable in sociocultural constructivist terms as enabling learning within a zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978, 1986) and in psychodynamic terms as provision of a secure base from which students journeyed towards autonomous independent learning. The outcome suggests that eliciting and analysing students’ views may be important when planning and teaching counselling training in order to meet students’ individual learning needs. The originality of this research lies in its use of elements of the two paradigms to create lenses in an innovative way. A sociocultural constructivist framework has been used through which to understand psychodynamic counselling learning and training.