PP0429 - Professional Contexts in Guidance and Counselling

You will attend a series of lectures and seminars to highlight key concepts including effectiveness of service delivery, accountability and policy implementation within professional contexts. Seminars will provide opportunities for sharing insights arising from initial desk-based enquiry, scoping activities, and post-visit processing of experiences. Visiting speakers from guidance and counselling agencies will give presentations about their work. You will engage in an active enquiry process to gather material for your assignment by organising visits to an agency offering guidance and counselling services and/or undertaking desk-based inquiry. Sessions are supported by the Electronic Learning Portal (eLP) where you can review key ideas from lectures and contribute to online discussions. An e-portfolio will be utilised as a tool for formative feedback. The online reading list will provide guidance as to key texts to support your learning.

Module tutors will use the eLP to provide support materials. Group and individual tutorials to support work towards assignments will be provided. You will be provided with opportunities to submit work and obtain formative feedback on your writing and skills development. Contact details for all tutors for this module are available in the module handbook and via the eLP.

All modules at Northumbria include a range of reading materials that students are expected to engage with. The reading list for this module can be found at: http://readinglists.northumbria.ac.uk
(Reading List service online guide for academic staff this containing contact details for the Reading List team – http://library.northumbria.ac.uk/readinglists)

Knowledge & Understanding:

1. You will demonstrate understanding of the key factors that might be used to analyse and evaluate the effectiveness of services in the field of guidance and counselling.
2. You will relate theory to practice by visiting or conducting inquiry into a guidance and counseling organisation.

Intellectual / Professional skills & abilities:

3. You will reflect upon your developing interpersonal and critical evaluation skills.

Personal Values Attributes (Global / Cultural awareness, Ethics, Curiosity) (PVA):

4. You will plan and successfully carry out an agency investigation entailing a series of enquiry-based visits or desk-based inquiry to a guidance and counselling organisation.
5. You will demonstrate awareness of ethical practice in guidance and counselling services.

Formative assessment
Visit Plan or Inquiry Plan

A clear and coherent proposal for a series of planned and purposive visits to a guidance and counselling organisation, submitted and approved by module tutor.

Summative Assessment

Written Assignment 2,000 words 100%

A critical examination of a guidance and counselling agency informed by a series of visits to the agency and/or desk-based enquiry.
(MLOs 1,2,3,4,5)

N/A

N/A

This module provides a first hand opportunity to experience and evaluate the effectiveness of guidance and counselling services within real life professional contexts. Inherent in this module is recognition that the most effective way to learn is through experience. With the support of tutors and equipped with an understanding of relevant policy, codes of practice, safeguarding, ethical practice and quality standards, you will plan and carry out a series of enquiry based visits. Visiting speakers from guidance and counselling agencies will give presentations about their work. Seminars will provide opportunities for sharing insights from initial desk-based enquiry, scoping activities and post-visit processing of experiences. To support your active enquiry into professional guidance and counselling services you will be introduced to research skills including observation and narrative recording.