Working with Groups (ref. D11)
Do you work with groups?
Do you manage a team or work as part of a team?
Do you ever experience challenges in your work with groups and teams?
Are you interested in making your team or group work more effectively?
This course will help you to:
- Develop an understanding of group dynamics and how groups work - what makes groups and teams function effectively and what may ‘get in the way’
- Gain a grounding in psychoanalytic and systemic approaches applied to groups
- Achieve a greater self-awareness and understanding of the roles you take up in groups, and how you contribute to group functioning
- Develop an understanding of the impact of differences in groups and teams
- Develop more effective skills as a group leader, manager, facilitator or member
Who is this course for?
The course is for anyone interested in how groups and teams work and seeking to understand working groups and the dynamics that exist within them. You may be a member of a group or organisation, a team manager, or you may be working with groups in your professional role.
Most people spend most of their lives in groups:
• As part of an organisation
• Work group
• Project team
• A particular division or department of an organisation
• Being part of a student group, or a class in school
• Being part of a family
Some people also spend their time running or facilitating groups, such as:
• Occupational therapy groups
• Parenting groups
• Creative arts groups
• Other clinical groups
Others spend their time working in group settings, such as:
• Therapeutic communities
• Residential services
• Prisons
• Multidisciplinary teams (in health, social care and voluntary sector services)
• Hospitals and clinics
• Schools
• Management groups and teams
• Creative production teams
• Project teams
Others spend their time teaching student and trainee groups in professional trainings such as:
• Mental health nursing
• Counselling
• Occupational therapy
• Educational and clinical psychology
Content/Teaching components
The course is based on four elements of learning:
• Theoretical concepts from lectures and reading
• Application of ideas to current work situations, through work discussion seminars
• Observations of individuals, groups and organisations
• Learning from experience in an experiential group (and group relations conference/s)
Lecture Topics: An Overview
N.B. These are adjusted from time to time in response to students and tutors feedback
YEAR 1
- Beginnings
- Anxiety in individuals groups: Concept of container/contained
- The unconscious and the internal world: Splitting and projection
- Transference and counter-transference
- Setting up groups – general principles
- Bion on groups 1: The workgroup
- Bion on groups 2: Basic assumption groups
- The family as a group
- Working with difference in groups
- Groups as systems
- Defences in groups and social systems
- Children and groups, adolescence and groups
- Adults and groups
- Co-working
YEAR 2
- Experiences and behaviour between groups
- Groups as organisations
- Leadership and followership
- Oedipal issues in organisations
- Group relations: The Leicester model
- The group analytic approach
- Systemic groups
- Groups in society
- Small groups
- Large groups
- Therapeutic communities
- Process consultation
- Staff groups and teams
- Resistance to change in groups and organisations
- Endings
Assessment
Assessment will be by written papers relating to the work discussion seminar and, in year one, to the Nursery Observation and in year two to the Organisational Observation.
Course members will also be required to monitor their learning experience overall and will be expected to write a paper charting their development over each year, linking theory to practice and experience.
After 2 years, students are awarded a Postgraduate Diploma. Students may enrol for a third year for an MA award. The MA is awarded following successful completion of a 14,000 word dissertation.
Leads to eligibility for membership of the Tavistock Society of Psychotherapists, Allied Professional Division.
Closing date
24th June 2012 (late applications may be considered).
Professional accreditation
The award of Postgraduate Diploma may be made after two years. Successful completion of a dissertation in the third year leads to the award of an MA.
Time commitment
Diploma - Fridays, 9.15am - 1.45pm.
Two years.
MA - Fridays, 9.00am – 12.00 up to five times per term.
One subsequent year.
Attendance at Tavistock Group Relations conference, five full days (December, year two).
Attendance at one other residential group relations conference (September, year three).
Course Readings and Access to Library Resources
When you begin your course you will be issued with an online study pack which you can access via our Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) called Moodle. Having a study pack means most of your key course readings for the whole year will be available to you simply by logging onto your Moodle course page. You can then print off the readings as you require them. Our students find this resource invaluable and it means you can have 24/7 access to your readings. Readings that are not included in your study pack can be obtained from the Library once you have enrolled with the Library at the end of September.
The Tavistock and Portman Library is nationally recognised as a leading UK therapeutic resource. For more information about our library visit: www.tavistockandportman.ac.uk/library
Programme Specification
