Thursday 21 June 2012

Yorkshire PQT training day: Teaching psychology to non-psychologists

Two of the team from PFP&PC attended a one day workshop run by The Yorkshire Psychologists’ Post Qualification Training group, at University of Leeds. The day covered ideas around teaching psychological thinking to other professions. Interestingly, three of the speakers were non-psychologists which gave a good all round feel to the day, acknowledging areas of expertise amongst professionals willing to share.

The first sessions was run by Gary Latchford, a research director at University of Leeds. He introduced us to the amazing Dr Fox and we discovered that it’s not what people try and teach us that aids recall, but the dynamism of the person teaching us. He also gave us hints and tips from the famous, Steve Jobs, founder of the Apple company, and his approach to public speaking and selling his products. It is well worth noting that the need to physically practise cannot be over emphasised.

Jason Heppell, academic support officer, University of Leeds, gave us a more theoretical background on recent research in the literature on higher education. It would be worth your while to investigate some of the findings on e-learning, seminars, and self-directed learning followed by student teaching. Seems the work students put into preparing presentations and teaching projects, gains them valuable deep learning. Also interesting to note that in spite of all the evidence in support of learning styles, these have little bearing on how we might teach effectively. What matters is that the method of teaching is suited to the content of the material.

Rebecca Dearden, from the staff and departmental development unit, University of Leeds, blew us all away with her grasp of electronic availability and manipulation of material. She came up with some amazing suggestions for use of technology from instant video uploading, to tweeting, to texting questions within seminars. All worth some serious investigation for gaining and maintaining audiences.

Claire Dowzer then announced and facilitated some understanding of the new Sharepoint system between the University and the NHS to facilitate collaborative working. A small area of the site is available to PQT members too. The Sharepoint system is a Microsoft system available to all for the sharing of info between teams and across organisations.

After lunch, a consultant psychiatrist, Dr James Johnston, gave a fascinating talk on facilitating reflective practice groups for those working in acute psychiatric settings.

More to follow in a future blog.

Wednesday 20 June 2012

New sign up for Twitter

Finally beginning to coordinate our social media and networking to bring some of our thoughts and experiences to you from The Psychology Team. So you can follow us on our new Twitter feed @psydaily and we hope to bring you up to date information, comment and reflection. You can check out the work we do and who we are at http://www.patfrankish.com/or http://www.patfrankish.co.uk/