BSc (Hons) Counselling Psychology with Integrated Foundation Year

Foundation in Knowledge and Skills

In this module, you will develop your basic knowledge and skills to support your academic development and improve your confidence in your academic writing and reading.

Foundations in Psychology 1: Being and Feeling

In this module you will explore ‘being’ and ‘feeling’ — two components that enable us to experience the inside and outside worlds. Understanding these primary aspects of human psychology will create the foundation of your learning.

Foundations in Psychology 2: Thinking and Developing

This module is designed to develop your personal study skills. You will undertake an independent study into an aspect of education under the guidance of the module co-ordinator. You will accommodate new principles and new knowledge through your own study. This will involve knowing the complex interactions between education and broader contexts. Through carrying out your personal study, students should learn how to analyse the complex situations concerning human learning and development.

Project

This module is an applied piece of work related to your chosen degree. It will require you to apply the knowledge and skills developed throughout the foundation year and will enhance your ability to work individually and as part of a team.

During the project, you will develop in-depth knowledge of your chosen future specialisation. You will be encouraged to demonstrate creativity in the design, planning and execution of a project.

Analysing Attitudes to Work & Performance

This module helps define a range of everyday experiences using psychological models of attitudes, as you learn how to analyse attitudes and explore psychological constructs, methodology and theories associated with experiences. Fundamental data analysis skills will be developed through lectures and the use of statistical software, with a focus on understanding patterns of data via visualisation.

Assessment

You will be assessed through a coursework assignment and a practical report.

Counselling Frameworks

This module aims to enable students to become familiar with some of the major theoretical approaches to counselling.

The module will familiarise students with aspects of a common core within counselling frameworks with specific reference to the course philosophy and principles.

The module will also enable students to recognise some of the areas where counselling philosophies diverges along with some of the differences in counselling techniques.

The module also gives students an opportunity to reflect on their individual responses and relationship to the counselling frameworks. the practical aim is to enhance student’s ability to link theory with practice and to critically examine counselling theories.

Counselling Psychology Skills

In this module, you will develop your competence in the use of counselling skills through both your active participation and tutor led skills demonstrations.

Personal growth is often a by-product of entering into the experiential mode of learning, enhancing the possibilities for change in an individual’s life.

The Humanistic approach recognises the importance of self-discovery and provides you with a useful platform for the acquisition of both personal effectiveness in using counselling skills and personal insight.

Counselling Skills With Ethics

You will become familiar with the Psychotherapy Scale (PCEPS) and be introduced to PC10 on learning to offer clients choice and autonomy.

You will practise and be assessed in PC1-6; setting the therapeutic frame with clients, establishing the working alliance, working in the client’s frame of reference, counsellor warmth, clarity of language which communicates simply and clearly to the client, and therapist’s responses which intend to direct the client’s content.

Assessment:

Familiarity with the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy’s (BACP) Ethical Framework for Good Practice in Counselling and Psychotherapy underpins this module and you will be assessed through an essay and a live counselling session.

Experimental Design in Context: Usability and Cognition

This module explores functions and experiences relevant to using technology, focusing on the criteria used to assess technology’s usability and how human limitations relate to this usability and usage. You will be introduced to certain psychological theories and empirical findings from investigations into information processing by the mind, and discuss a range of methodologies and analyses such as laboratory experimentation and inferential statistics.

Assessment

You will be assessed through a practical report and research participation.

Perspectives On Psychology

This module seeks to enable you to understand the contribution of key thinkers to the development of modern psychology and to appreciate their biographical backgrounds. The lives and work of key thinkers will be introduced and contextualised with reference to contemporary ideas and more.

Study & Research Skills for Social Scientists

This module is an opportunity to advance your personal, research and study skills and will support other content-led teaching. You will be assessed through a report and research participation.

Biological Psychology

This module explores the ways biological processes have been studied, for example through brain lesions and cell stimulation methodologies.

The areas of behavioural genetics, neuro-imaging, neuropsychology, socio-biology and evolutionary psychology will be investigated in terms of underlying theory and empirical research.

Cognitive Psychology

This module will introduce you to the ways cognitive processes have been studied in the past. This includes studying experimental and cognitive neuropsychological methodologies. You will investigate the areas of attention, perception, learning, thinking and language and relate your findings to underlying theory and empirical research.

Developmental Psychology

This module explores the study of development and maturation in cognitive, personality, and social processes, as well as introduce you to basic theory, research findings, and methods of investigation in childhood, adolescence, and lifespan development.

You will consider the ways in which behaviour is influenced by developmental factors, the nature of developmental processes, and the ways in which empirical research can help us to understand how developmental processes influence what we do.

Individual Differences Psychology

On this module, you will be introduced to how individual differences processes have been studied in the past, for example through psychometrics and case study methodologies.

You will investigate areas of personality, intelligence, cognitive style, motivation, gender, and ethnicity in terms of underlying theory and empirical research.

Assessment

You will be assessed through an essay and a lab report.

Lifespan Development

This module aims to enable students to understand some of the major theories of developmental psychology.

The module will familiarise students with the diversity of lifespan development models and enable students to recognise critical and transitional points in human development and the influence of these in later life.

This will include an introduction to psychopathology reviewed from counselling and therapeutic perspectives. the practical aim is to enable students to appreciate the multi-dimensional nature of the human life course, thus developing a flexible practice framework which includes a clarity about theories of development and psychopathology.

This module will prepare students to work with clients from various stages in their developmental process (students are permitted to work with clients aged 16 or over) as well as accommodating the uniqueness of individuality.

Research Methods: Experimental Designs & Analysis

This module will develop your understanding of experimental designs and associated methods of analysis, and introduce you to research ethics.

Research Methods: Survey and Qualitative Designs and Analysis

The module aims to develop your understanding of survey and qualitative designs and associated methods of analysis related to Psychology.

Understanding the Therapeutic Process and Working With Diversity

This module gives you an opportunity to revise and consolidate your growing familiarity and expertise in applying the Humanistic attitudes and skills PC1-10 from the PCEPS Scale (V.10.5, 01/03/11).

You will practise therapist accepting presence, therapist’s attitude conveying an unconditional acceptance of whatever the client brings and therapist responses which genuinely convey their moment to moment experiencing with the client.

This module also aims to explore the factors that may affect mental health in diverse populations in society. The roots of prejudice will be examined and how issues such as difference and discrimination can be experienced as a result.

The module will explore how prejudice can be counteracted through policies and projects aimed at equality of provision of psychological services in health and social services.

You will be encouraged to explore your own prejudices through a phenomenological approach.

Brief Therapy

You will be introduced to the history of brief therapy and the characteristics of the main schools.

You will explore the brief therapy humanistic beliefs about people and their potential and be introduced to some of the main ways of working in brief time frames, noting the differences between these and ‘budget therapy’.

You will be invited to check how this approach works with your own therapeutic philosophy and practice, and to consider its efficacy, uses and application in the contemporary therapeutic context.

Assessment:

You will be assessed through a 1750 word essay.

Critical Thinking in Humanistic Counselling

This module will deepen your critical understanding of Humanistic theory as you consider whether you can coherently integrate aspects of non-Humanistic theory into your Humanistic base.

You will explore humanistic counselling in its historical context and make comparisons between the Humanistic model, the Psychodynamic model and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) as you analyse similarities and differences in the models’ varying theoretical perspectives and practices.

Assessment:

You will be assessed through a 1750 word essay.

Independent Project

In this module, you are encouraged to adopt a problem-oriented approach. The first stage is to identify a problem in psychology of interest and relevance to your studies.

You will determine an appropriate approach to addressing the problem through discussion with tutors who have relevant theoretical and practical expertise.

Your investigation may be based within a single discipline, or it may involve more than one discipline, but it must be based within your chosen degree programme.

Mindfulness and Compassion-Focussed Therapies

The broad aim of the module is to provide a critical understanding of mindfulness and compassion-focussed psychotherapies, including studies of mechanisms of change, acceptance and commitment-based therapy, and dialectical behaviour therapy.

Person-Centred Therapy & Professional Development

You will develop your understanding of Roger’s ‘Conditions Statement’ and explore the ‘Tribes of the Person-centred Nation’ including the classical approach, focusing, experiential work, existential ideas and integration.

Project Management and Presentation Skills

This project will support you to develop a wide range of skills from project management to the ability to present your research results in an accessible form. You will develop their scientific reasoning and reporting skills and produce a poster to present your research work.

Working in Counselling Psychology

This module provides students with an opportunity to review and clarify many of the practice issues raised in previous modules, giving students a chance to continue to develop their ethical and professional awareness, as well as their employability. Further aspects of employability such as developing the CV, preparing for interviews and answering job applications will be discussed. Students will have an opportunity to review and clarify their values and beliefs in relation to professionalism, assessment, outcome measures and contemporary developments in the world of counselling psychology.