| Popis: |
This special section addresses learning in the context of teaching couple and family therapy in the classroom and in clinical-supervisory settings. Like many educational and supervisory experiences, the best part of the learning process occurs in what appears as an improvisation. In this case, these papers were regular submissions addressing compelling areas of concern in the education of couple and family therapists. Like a good improvisation, though, we sensed that these contributions may be a small response to a larger set of other ideas (unpublished) that could contribute with new knowledge to the education and supervision interface. We hope this is the beginning of a series of articles about training, education, and supervision to which the Journal of Systemic Therapies hopes to be the preferred publishing outlet. Moving beyond the conceptual boundaries of teaching the specific systemic theoretical models of the early couple and family therapists has had various responses. One answer has been to focus on teaching specific evidence-based approaches and the various therapeutic integrative models (Fraenkel & Pinsof, 2001; Pinsof, 1994). Another answer has been to focus on learning as a process of reflection-in-action of the teacher’s and student’s experience of being in the process together (Hoffman, 2002). Still another response is a call for de-emphasizing models of couple and family therapy and teaching common factors that have been found to be important across models (Sprenkle & Blow, 2004). In the supervision arena, our efforts have lacked a distinct response to the concern about an overemphasis on model driven practices. Overall, in both teaching and supervising couple and family therapists there seems to be a growing trend towards a focusing on the learning process or in other words a learner—student and supervisee—focused perspective. This is not surprising in the relational world of couple and family therapy. We hope this special section is one more contribution to that dialogue, a dialogue to which we invite others to respond actively. |
