VERB3100 Ecological Perspectives in Social Education Course description

Milieu therapy work in an ecological perspective involves a holistic approach to person-centred services where one considers which factors and conditions in the environment affect behaviour at the individual and group level.

As a social educator, the student performs his or her work in meetings with other people. These are people who often find themselves in vulnerable and difficult situations in society. During the course, the student will be challenged with his/her behavioural ecological perspective and his/her relational, communication, and guidance skills when it comes to achieving a good and developing collaboration with users, relatives, colleagues or other partners.

Approved coursework requirements in VERB2300, passed part 1 (practical training) in VERPRA20, as well as passed all other credit-earning courses from the 2nd year of study.

On successful completion of the course, the student has the following learning outcomes classified as knowledge, skills and general competence:

Knowledge

The student

• can give examples of leadership in organizations by applying behavioural analytic principles
• can explain what milieu therapy work in an ecological perspective entails
• has knowledge of the digital transformation of the health services, and the opportunities and limitations that come with welfare technology measures, e.g. digital exclusion
• can account for service innovation and new ways of organizing and providing health services
• can account for the connection between the UN's Sustainable Development Goals and the importance of the goals for milieu therapeutic work and explain the epidemiological and demographic basis for public health work
• can identify and describe various factors that affect disease, health and quality of life

Skills

The Student

• can demonstrate culturally sensitive communication and supervision skills that motivate members of a group
• can establish good meetings and demonstrate good meeting management
• has digital relational, communication and guidance skills that enable the candidate to understand and interact with users, patients and relatives. Furthermore, the candidate can supervise users, patients and relatives and relevant personnel who are in learning, coping and change processes
• demonstrates conflict understanding and skills that promote cooperation and reduce conflicts
• can digitally and physically interact both interdisciplinarily, interprofessionally, cross-sectorally and across agencies and levels, and initiate such interaction
• can assess the risk of, prevent and handle undesirable incidents caused by technology and is familiar with methods for following this up systematically
• can identify, reflect on and deal with ethical issues related to health technology, including digital exclusion.

General competence

The student

• can discuss how different aspects of a person's environment affect their development and health
• can reflect on welfare policy and care ideologies in an ecological perspective and how these macro-level factors can affect the service recipient's quality of life and coping.

The work and teaching methods include lectures, seminars, group work, self-study and skills exercises related to supervisory skills and meeting and group leadership.

The following required coursework must be approved before the student can take the exam:

• participation in group work with skills exercises
• Participation in group presentation of individual video
• Answer a case according to given criteria and give peer assessment of cases according to given criteria

Individual home exam (multiple choice assignment), 45 minutes.

All.

Pass/fail.

A internal examiner checks the question set and the answers.

An external examiner is used regularly, and at least for every third completion of the course. When selecting answers for external grading, the selection must include a minimum of 10% of the answers, but in any case no fewer than 5 answers. In the event of exclusion, the external examiner's assessment shall benefit all students.

5 ECTS from VERPRA30