Problem

During the past four years I have introduced service-learning into my abnormal psychology course as a way to help students meet goals of learning to see situations from multiple perspectives and develop strategies to confront the social implications of mental disorders. The attempt to link course goals with service experiences has had varying degrees of success. In one semester, service-learning was required, and the integration of goals was more easily accomplished since all students were able to relate similar experiences from outside of the classroom. In my community college setting, it has been more realistic to have the service component as an option. Students select either a project involving service in the community and a paper or two papers dealing with a variety of topics. A recurrent problem has been how to integrate and share the learning between students working in the community and those completing more traditional investigations. In my project I would like to use the generative topic of resiliency as a way of linking course goals across the semester to integrate what is learned by students engaged in different forms of inquiry.

Importance

A course in abnormal psychology presents a wide range of disorders and focuses on deficits rather than strengths. It defines problems in neat categories that do not reflect the complexity of the world beyond the classroom. Experiences in the community help in providing a more realistic context, but they also often expose students to more deficiencies.

At the end of last semester (Spring 1998), I introduced the concept of resiliency as one way to reframe ideas in a more positive way. Students engaged enthusiastically in discussions of resiliency and suggested that the topic be introduced early in the semester. Recent publications from the American Psychological Association (Seligman, 1998) and time-effective psychotherapy (Friedman, 1997) support a focus on finding strengths rather than cataloging deficiencies. The texts in abnormal psychology do not yet reflect this trend. The American Psychological Association's guidelines for teaching psychology (McGovern & Reich, 1997) emphasize the importance of active learning and multicultural perspectives. The service work in the community helps students to engage in their learning and creates an opportunity to address ways in which diversity issues intersect with definitions of abnormality.

Relevant Context

Each semester in my classroom there are some students who have been diagnosed with disorders, many who are struggling with difficult life situations, and many who have stereotypical views of mental illness. Students often do not have positive views of themselves as learners and enter the classroom with much ambivalence. Weaving the topic of resiliency throughout the course may provide one way for students to connect with the course content more effectively and to consider alternative coping strategies in their own lives.

Methodology

I would like to introduce new components into the course:

(1) Resiliency as an organizing topic

Students will be asked to free-write on the question of how to promote resiliency early in the semester. Responses from the class will be recorded and distributed to students. The same exercise will be repeated at the end of the semester. Students will be asked to reflect on the assignment and to work in small groups to design a community program that will support resiliency. Student responses to the assignment will provide one opportunity for probing levels of understanding.

(2) Common Experience

All students will visit selected community sites during a class session in the second week. Although some students will choose to work at a site and others will not, the common experience will serve as a way to connect them. Students (individually or in pairs) will capture pre-visit expectations and post-visit impressions either through written papers, drawings, collages, photo essays, or taped conversations.

(3) Student pairs or teams

Students involved in service-learning will be placed in pairs or small groups with students who are not working in the community. Students will work cooperatively on journal assignments three times during the semester. For example, a service-learning student may explain a critical incident in the field and the partner students will try to connect course concepts to the incident. In contrast, a student may describe a concept from the course and the service-learning student will try to provide a concrete example from the community. Students will use a three-part journal with the service student presenting experiences, the partner student providing connections, and both students reflecting on what they have learned.

Resources

I will continue to use my standard assignments for students who work in the community and those who do not. I need to find more appropriate material on resiliency and additional ideas for creating unifying questions for the semester. Although I have a general picture of how the topic of resiliency and the service-learning activities fit with the goals of the course, I need to frame the relationships in more explicit ways and to develop rubrics to assess results.

Anticipated Products/ Results

I anticipate obtaining samples of student understanding related to the goals of the course. Professors who teach psychology may be interested in the findings related to using resiliency as an organizing topic for the course. Faculty engaged in service-learning may consider adapting the course model of using a generative topic with common experience and student journal pairs as a way to integrate service experiences more effectively into courses.

References

• Friedman, S. (1997). Time-effective psychotherapy: Maximizing outcomes in an era of minimized resources. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

• McGovern, T. V., & Reich, J. N. (1996). A comment on the quality principles. American Psychologist, 51, 252-255.

• Seligman, M. E. (1998, April). Behavioral researchers call for more study on human strengths. APA Monitor, p. 11.

The reality of SO 5115 50 Abnormal Psychology (fall semester 1998) reflected many of the ideas presented in the course proposal in June but also created questions and surprises. I found that my initial plans for the course were too ambitious, and I spent considerable time rethinking what aspects of the course were most critical for student understanding. The lessons learned focused on how the common experiences, free-write exercises, and three-part critical incident journals supported resiliency as a path to integration.

The topic of resiliency provided an effective way to engage students, to link course goals across the semester, and to integrate what was learned by students involved in different forms of inquiry. An older student hesitant to join the class stated that she changed her mind immediately when the topic of resiliency was introduced. She said, "It was a sense of moving right to the goal--made me want to stay in class and hear more." At the end of the semester several students remarked that resiliency seemed so central that they couldn't imagine the course without it.

Using a generative topic led to a more engaged classroom, but it presented challenges. In the early weeks students reported feeling overwhelmed by the many activities and handouts. They were accurate in their assessment, and I realized that I needed to be more limited and focused in my assignments. The new common experience of having all students visit sites in the community in the first weeks involved many logistical issues that added to student confusion. The time and organization required for the visits did not seem worth it in terms of student learning. From discussions with the class I think that a better plan would be to have students not involved in service-learning visit other students at a site later in the semester. In this way both students would have more context for understanding what was happening.

The exercise of having students write on the question of how to promote resiliency at the beginning and end of the semester did not work well. Students did provide somewhat more complex responses at the end of the semester, but they were not that much different from earlier answers. One activity that seemed to generate more reflection involved responses to a good article (from Psychology Today) on resiliency. The article was assigned to students on the first day of class; I then asked students to reread the article in the last week and to highlight information that they now understood in a different way. The more structured activity of responding to the article helped students to assess how their understanding had changed. I plan to develop this assignment in more detail for next semester.

The three-part critical incident journal showed the most promise for helping students to see situations from multiple perspectives and to confront the social implications of mental disorders. In using examples from class to model how to complete the journal, I found students actively involved in questioning and offering alternative explanations to each other. The critical incidents students presented had more meaning because they emerged from student's own experiences at service sites. For example, the critical incident of one student involved dealing with a child who had attention deficit disorder. As the semester progressed, the child began to lie and skip school regularly. The class discussions on how to deal with lying and how to accommodate for the child's diagnosis provided an excellent forum for understanding the social implications of mental disorders.

I would like to develop the critical incident journals in stages over the next semester with more pair and small group activities. Students involved in service-learning will continue to select a critical incident from their sites, while other students can create a critical incident based on current news stories. The incidents became a central topic of discussion this semester; students were interested in the dilemmas of classmates and often related concepts of resiliency in their explanations. We videotaped class discussions of critical incidents early in this semester and again in the final week. The final video served as a culminating performance for the class and will provide a way to introduce the incoming class to practical applications of course content.

My own investigations into the area of resiliency have been productive. At the American Psychological Association's conference I learned about many programs in intervention and prevention that fit into the course and the theme of resiliency. I introduced some of the ideas this semester and plan to focus more on ways to create safety nets in communities. The APA has many initiatives dealing with topics such as adolescent health and anger management that may help students to better understand the role of society in dealing with mental health issues.

I used the act and image of juggling throughout the course to talk about how to develop coping strategies; resiliency is learning how to juggle and be able to add one more ball at the right time. The image was helpful throughout the course as an informal way to monitor student understanding. We talked about juggling too many things too fast at the beginning and figuring out how to find a comfortable balance at pressure points during the course. I think the juggling image fits with my own attempt at integration. The balance was off somewhat this semester, and I realize that I need to make more adjustments in my approaches. I am struggling with the most effective way to weave in the topic of resiliency while using the text and community as resources. I would like to create a guide for the course with different pathways available for students, similar to the books in which you create your own end to the story. Such a guide may provide the structure for most students who need more help in finding connections, but it would also permit multiple paths for learning the material. Responses to guide questions would serve as ongoing assessment and allow for corrections when things get out of balance.

One of the best surprises this semester was Ralph, a 105 year-old veteran who was visited weekly by one of the students. Ralph's stories of surviving three wars, his positive attitude in viewing life's predicaments, and his goal of surviving until 2000 left all of us in awe. I am now trying to figure out how to include Ralph in next semester's course. What an incredible model of resiliency!