School: Arts and Humanities

This unit information may be updated and amended immediately prior to semester. To ensure you have the correct outline, please check it again at the beginning of semester.

  • Unit Title

    Individual Psychotherapy Practice 2
  • Unit Code

    COU6324
  • Year

    2025
  • Enrolment Period

    1
  • Version

    2
  • Credit Points

    15
  • Full Year Unit

    N
  • Mode of Delivery

    On Campus
  • Unit Coordinator

    Dr Sonam PELDEN

Description

This is an applied skills unit focused on the practice of individual counselling and psychotherapy. The unit aims to develop student skills in the assessment of presenting issues, selection of appropriate therapeutic approaches and evaluation of outcomes. Students are required to attend and actively engage in at least 80% of classes to progress in this course. Successful completion requires all foundational competencies to be ready for progression to field placement.

Prerequisite Rule

Students must pass 1 units from COU6305

Learning Outcomes

On completion of this unit students should be able to:

  1. Analyse contemporary psychodynamic models of practice and implement active and psychoanalytic forms of listening.
  2. Appraise session outcomes both independently and in consultation with the client.
  3. Execute psychotherapeutic interventions and link these to observations about the client and the process of the counselling session.
  4. Formulate a psychodynamic case including an assessment of the client's suitability for counselling/psychotherapy and accomplish foundational competency in psychodiagnostics within a culturally humble and ethical framework.

Unit Content

  1. Active listening vs. psychoanalytic forms of listening.
  2. Conceptualising: using existing theoretical models to make meaning of clinical observations, sharing these conceptionalisations with the client in a manner befitting the client and context.
  3. Empathy and evenly suspended attention.
  4. Facilitating the client's understanding of his/her difficulties. Generating productive, well-timed interpretations appropriate to the client.
  5. The assessment/formulation process: observation, description and conceptualisation leading to a sound picture of client functioning and resources.
  6. Treatment appraisal: outcome evaluation, follow-up strategies.

Learning Experience

Students will attend on campus classes as well as engage in learning activities through ECU's LMS

JoondalupMount LawleySouth West (Bunbury)
Semester 25 x 7.5 hour seminarNot OfferedNot Offered

For more information see the Semester Timetable

Additional Learning Experience Information

A reflective team model of counselling supervision is used in this unit. Students will collaborate and reflect together to assess, conceptualise, intervene and evaluate outcomes in simulated counselling sessions. Students will actively engage with live observation, role-plays and video recordings of counselling sessions. The emphasis of this unit is on developing the personal qualities required to become a skilled and ethically-minded practitioner.

Assessment

GS1 GRADING SCHEMA 1 Used for standard coursework units

Students please note: The marks and grades received by students on assessments may be subject to further moderation. All marks and grades are to be considered provisional until endorsed by the relevant School Progression Panel.

Due to the professional competency skill development associated with this Unit, student attendance/participation within listed in-class activities and/or online activities including discussion boards is compulsory. Students failing to meet participation standards as outlined in the unit information may be awarded an I Grade (Fail - incomplete). Students who are unable to meet this requirement for medical or other reasons must seek the approval of the unit coordinator.

ON CAMPUS
TypeDescriptionValue
Exercise ^In-class observation of skills development40%
Performance ^Video-recorded skills assessment30%
Report ^Basic counselling skills report30%

^ Mandatory to Pass


Disability Standards for Education (Commonwealth 2005)

For the purposes of considering a request for Reasonable Adjustments under the Disability Standards for Education (Commonwealth 2005), inherent requirements for this subject are articulated in the Unit Description, Learning Outcomes and Assessment Requirements of this entry. The University is dedicated to provide support to those with special requirements. Further details on the support for students with disabilities or medical conditions can be found at the Access and Inclusion website.

Assessment

Students please note: The marks and grades received by students on assessments may be subject to further moderation. Informal vivas may be conducted as part of an assessment task, where staff require further information to confirm the learning outcomes have been met. All marks and grades are to be considered provisional until endorsed by the relevant School Progression Panel.

Academic Integrity

Integrity is a core value at Edith Cowan University, and it is expected that ECU students complete their assessment tasks honestly and with acknowledgement of other people's work as well as any generative artificial intelligence tools that may have been used. This means that assessment tasks must be completed individually (unless it is an authorised group assessment task) and any sources used must be referenced.

Breaches of academic integrity can include:

Plagiarism

Copying the words, ideas or creative works of other people or generative artificial intelligence tools, without referencing in accordance with stated University requirements. Students need to seek approval from the Unit Coordinator within the first week of study if they intend to use some of their previous work in an assessment task (self-plagiarism).

Unauthorised collaboration (collusion)

Working with other students and submitting the same or substantially similar work or portions of work when an individual submission was required. This includes students knowingly providing others with copies of their own work to use in the same or similar assessment task(s).

Contract cheating

Organising a friend, a family member, another student or an external person or organisation (e.g. through an online website) to complete or substantially edit or refine part or all of an assessment task(s) on their behalf.

Cheating in an exam

Using or having access to unauthorised materials in an exam or test.

Serious outcomes may be imposed if a student is found to have committed one of these breaches, up to and including expulsion from the University for repeated or serious acts.

ECU's policies and more information about academic integrity can be found on the student academic integrity website.

All commencing ECU students are required to complete the Academic Integrity Module.

Assessment Extension

In some circumstances, Students may apply to their Unit Coordinator to extend the due date of their Assessment Task(s) in accordance with ECU's Assessment, Examination and Moderation Procedures - for more information visit https://askus2.ecu.edu.au/s/article/000001386.

Special Consideration

Students may apply for Special Consideration in respect of a final unit grade, where their achievement was affected by Exceptional Circumstances as set out in the Assessment, Examination and Moderation Procedures - for more information visit https://askus2.ecu.edu.au/s/article/000003318.

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