Teaching Group Dynamics: Process and Practices

(Hardback)

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This practical volume concentrates on teaching group dynamics with an experiential, process focus. The procedure for instruction, which has been tested in the classroom, seeks to provide an integration of congnitive and affective components in learning how to tune into, and effectively use, group dynamics. Instructors and supervisors are provided with specific techniques for helping students understand mainfestations of resistance, countertransference issues, assuming a process orientation, and dealing with both individual and group-as-a-whole concerns. The initial chapters provide an overview and a discussion of ethical principles in group work; focus on how to structure the class, including a systematic method for monitoring group sessions, providing feedback to students, and addressing specific ethical concerns such as confidentiality and involuntary group membership; develop the importance, and a process for, helping students to stay present-centred, keeping the group in a here-and-now focus, which recognises process; and present the barriers to self-awareness and group process. Further chapters show how developing trust and cohesion in groups leads to therapeutic work on significant issues for group members; describe the link between what is taking place in the present-centred group session and the past; focus on the roles that group members assume and the impact these roles may have on the progress and functioning of the group; deal with teaching students to recognise and cope with overt and covert conflict in the group; and provide an introduction to the use of expressive techniques in groups. The final chapter presents specific exercises that are useful in teaching concepts, ranging from get-acquainted exercises to more complex ones for uncovering the self.

Author Bio

NINA W. BROWN is Associate Professor of Counselor Education at Old Dominion University in Norfolk. She is the author of Interpersonal Relations (1986) and co-author of Readings in Education and Psychology (1968). She has written for Group and Organizational Studies, Journal of Instructional Psychology, Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, and Psychological Reports.