Instructor’s Manual
for Gray’s
Psychopathology: A Competency-Based Assessment Model for Social Workers (fourth edition)
Susan W. Gray
Copyright © 2016 by Cengage
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Instructor’s Note
Chapters corresponding to the sixteen chapters of Psychopathology: A Competency-Based Assessment Model for Social Workers, fourth edition organizes this manual. The format for each chapter consists of an outline of each chapter, a chapter summary, “practitioner reflections” that reinforce the student’s knowledge of formulating competency-based assessment of psychopathology, suggested websites, suggestions for further study, and test bank of questions (test bank questions are provided in a separate addendum). You might consider adapting the practitioner reflections as homework assignments or decide that they may better lend themselves to classroom activities. The suggestions for further study offer a series of strategies to encourage students to complete assigned readings. Also available is a series of Power Points supporting each chapter. The additional practitioner reflections included in the Instructor’s Manual are intended to promote additional learning experiences that compliment the practitioner reflections found in the accompanying book. The revised fourth edition is part of the Cengage Learning empowerment series and you will find relevant Council on Social Work Education Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (EPAS) competencies located throughout the book. As with the practitioner reflections in the book, the activities in the Instructor’s Manual help instructors to find additional ways for students to demonstrate their competence with the subject matter in each chapter. The intent of this Instructor’s Manual is to help users to create an environment that cultivates the classroom climate that fosters students’ involvement in their learning. All too often, listening to a class lecture or reading a text can become essentially a passive event. The practitioner reflections involve interactive and experiential learning activities. Certainly, a more effective way to learn is to become involved actively in the process. Some activities divide students into pairs or teams that foster an atmosphere of cooperation and collaboration within the classroom. It is well documented that adults learn best in classroom situations that are friendly and informal, not aloof or formal. Adults have many different reasons for wanting to learn. All in all, they regard learning as a process for improving their ability to deal with current situations and tend to enter classroom activities with a problem-centered frame of mind. Hopefully the practitioner reflections will help shift your classroom toward a more participatory atmosphere whit a focus on practical applications. The extent to which students participate largely depends on the instructor’s success in establishing a classroom atmosphere where students feel free to ask questions, interpret concepts, and contribute their own experiences working with mental illness. Hopefully, you will find that this Instructor’s Manual provides materials that support a participatory classroom.
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Students also bring different backgrounds and life experiences with them into the classroom. New learning can be made easier by relating content to the adult student’s past experiences. Furthermore, adults themselves become a rich resource for each other’s collaborative learning. Involvement in the learning process is extremely important for the student and instructors are repeatedly challenged to find ways to afford a variety of strategies to help make learning psychopathology more effective. “Practitioner reflections” at the end of each chapter and the additional reflections provided in this manual to accompany the fourth edition of the book are all designed to tap into student’s experiences. These activities engage students actively in their own learning experience and foster a collaborative classroom environment. The practitioner reflections and the supplemental activities included in this Instructor’s Manual can be used as a starting point in class sessions, particularly when students identify specific content they need to understand and know. By using a participatory approach, students are encouraged to accept responsibility for their own learning in the classroom, encourage one another’s learning, and foster critical thinking. It is exciting when the classroom comes alive with discussion groups, learning teams, and task group activities. Some of the activities are structured so students have the opportunity report their reactions to the content of psychopathology. Others encourage the use of role-plays to create situations for students to apply the competency-based assessment and demonstrate competence. This teaching method helps students demonstrate their burgeoning assessment skills while the instructor has the opportunity to provide feedback. In this way, course content is reinforced on several levels. To further facilitate participatory learning, you may consider rearranging classroom seating that promotes a supportive climate for learning. Students seated at tables and chairs arranged in a “U” or a circle format instead of formal rows provide a much friendlier atmosphere for students to communicate with you and with each another. Establishing this kind of environment conveys that you are interested in their opinions, questions, and ideas. Consider being an active participant in some of the practitioner reflections detailed in this Instructor’s Manual. Not only will your students enjoy your participation but you will be able to do more in terms of role modeling a safe climate for learning, and reinforce a collaborative relationship with students. When you step outside of your “formal lecture,” the classroom becomes more spontaneous and unpredictable. Use your participation as an opportunity to talk about your mistakes and triumphs. Learning is not an even process and your students will feel less intimidated when they can actually see your missteps and willingness to talk about them. This may lead to a lively class discussion but unfortunately about two weeks later no one can remember what was talked about. As a strategy to reinforce classroom discussions, consider appointing student recorders to outline those lively class discussions, another group to develop a list of unanswered questions, and yet another group to identify the important points that were made. Consider asking the student (or students) who monopolize(s) the discussion to assume the role of recorder. Alternatively, you can become the recorder. Post your notes 3
to the class on-line and ask them to identify unanswered questions or key learning points to bring to the next class session. This tactic creates opportunities where students will need to organize their learning. As well, this approach becomes way to help students become proactive in their learning. Working together in this way also helps students to learn from one another outside the classroom. A number of the activities described in this Instructor’s Manual provide topics for discussion that help to foster critical analysis. This pedagogical approach is important to understanding and using information effectively. It is the basis for the formulation of independent ideas while at the same time allowing your students to differentiate between fact and opinion, compare and contrast information and other points of view, make judgments, and draw relevant conclusions. Some activities focus on building sensitivity to diversity while examining the influence of age, gender, culture, ethnicity, sexual orientation and socio-economic status on persons with mental illness and/or their families. Hopefully, you will find that this Instructor’s Manual provides interesting ideas for class activities, support the “teachable moment,” and offer various strategies to help your students visualize abstract concepts thus making psychopathology content real and viable. Looking to the test items for each chapter, you will find that the number of test items ranges from fifteen to twenty depending on the difficulty of the chapter. The first chapter sets the stage for the competency-based assessment model and subsequent chapters address aspects of mental illness organized around the DSM-5. Every effort has been made to test content on all of the topics contained within the book and hopefully instructors will liberally use the questions provided. The test questions consist of multiple-choice, true/false, fill in the blank, mix and match items, and short essay. Some of the test items are designed around application of concepts to practice and some students might consider these questions more difficult. As with other test items that accompany the book, the questions are formatted as multiplechoice and generally organized around a brief case vignette. Other test questions, primarily the matching items, require simple recall of data. The items are not developed for their order of complexity and students may find some questions “easy.” For each of the test items, the correct answer has been highlighted in bold font. Overall, the manual’s test questions have been designed in a multiple choice or true/false format because they are easier to score. Short essay questions are more difficult to grade and allow for less objectivity but several have been added so you have greater flexibility when testing your students’ knowledge. For ease of scoring, a listing of preferred answers for the essay questions is included. For instructors who prefer the essay format, many of the multiple choice questions can easily be converted. Some of the multiple choice questions may contain answer options that are unfamiliar to you. In these instances they are more than likely made-up responses. On some occasions, students will easily recognize these fabrications. In other instances, it serves to test the student’s knowledge of psychopathology. In either 4
case, these items are intended to challenge the student to discern the correct answer and not intended to be trick questions. We turn to a series of assignments you may wish to use to further support your psychopathology course. Suggested Course Assignments Final Integrated Assignment As mentioned, students learn best by “doing” and the emphasis throughout the book is on active learning; that is, students become actively involved by using the case studies from the text and learning about psychopathology as it emerges in the lives of real people. The following suggested assignment extends that pedagogical approach. It is best used as a final course assignment that serves to bring together course content learned throughout the semester. Ask students to select any “star” or famous person who they believe has a clinical disorder. Encourage them to choose someone they find intriguing and famous; for example a movie star, musician, politician, historical figure or even a criminal. a. Caution students not to select a family member, friend - or even a professor or anyone else in the local community. b. Students can gather data from a variety of sources including books, popular magazines, Internet sites, and even television interviews. c. Emphasize that the material gathered should be congruent with existing evidence about their selected person’s behaviors and symptoms. d. Instruct students that you must approve their subject before starting the assignment – this helps avoid excessive overlap in assessment subjects. e. Ethical considerations – Instruct students to indicate in their “report” that the person named in their paper was never evaluated. Also instruct students to note that they are using this as a course assignment as a part of their professional training and that (at this point in their professional development) they are not qualified to conduct psychological evaluations. Consider a minilecture on the relevant sections of NASW’s Code of Ethics. f. Hint: Keep a number of “subjects” in mind to suggest to students who may need help identifying disorder categories and accompanying “stars” – i.e.: major depression (Kurt Cobain, Ludwig van Beethoven, Elvis Presley); bipolar disorder (Walt Disney, Linda Hamilton, Margot Kidder); eating disorders (Tyra Banks, Paula Abdul); antisocial personality disorder (Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, Adolf Hitler); obsessive compulsive disorder (Melvin Udall played in the movie As Good as it Gets by Jack Nicholson); attentiondeficit/hyperactivity disorder (Bart Simpson, Robin Williams); or body dysmorphic disorder (Michael Jackson). g. Select a due date near the end of the semester.
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