Postgraduate - Edith Cowan University

are examined. The complexities and sensitivities surrounding
safeguarding and vulnerability, guardianship and administration,
sexuality and parenting with a disability issues are also explored.
DIS5107 15 Credit Points
Communication Skills and Disability
FACULTY OF EDUCATION & ARTS
This unit extends students’ interpersonal skills by focusing on
principles for communicating with people with disabilities,
including those who have minimal verbal communication skills.
Communication barriers experienced by people with disabilities
are examined and ways of avoiding or overcoming those barriers
explored. The unit examines the use of unaided and aided systems
of communication and provides basic knowledge and skills in the
use of the Makaton program using keyword signing, as well as
broad based and electronic symbol systems.
DMT5102 20 Credit Points
Introduction to Creative Arts Therapy
FACULTY OF EDUCATION & ARTS
Prerequisite :
ART5180 Introduction to Art Therapy
This unit introduces the student to creative arts’ therapies using
alternative modalities to Visual Art such as Drama, Music, Dance
and Movement. It will provide scope for the student to explore a
variety of approaches and techniques, which demonstrate areas of
difference and similarity between art therapy and other arts’
therapies. During the course of the unit, the student will learn how
some of these areas might be usefully adapted to a more
integrated use of creative arts’ modalities within a therapeutic
framework.
DMT5151 30 Credit Points
Module 1
FACULTY OF EDUCATION & ARTS
This module provides an experiential basis for the development
of the role of drama therapist. Students take part in a training
group which demonstrates the process and progression of a drama
therapy session from the establishment of a playful, creative
environment to the development of indepth personal and
interpersonal work. Throughout the module students work with
key drama therapy concepts, including improvisation, role-play,
role theory and projective techniques. Students are introduced to
the theory and practice of psychodrama and sociometry, Moreno’s
action based methods. Image seminars provide the opportunity for
students to respond to a range of images and in so doing become
conversant with the ways in which images (objects, music,
gestures, poetry etc) relate to stories and how these in turn can
generate images. Through lectures and reading students will
become conversant with the historical, philosophical and cultural
background to contemporary arts therapies practice.
DMT5152 30 Credit Points
Module 2
FACULTY OF EDUCATION & ARTS
Prerequisite :
DMT5151 Module 1
The work in this unit stresses the unique role of art, images and
enactment in psychotherapeutic work. Artists and performers
present their work to the students. Through interactive reflection,
students grapple with the theories of artistic creation and different
cultural accounts of creativity, and begin to make sense of these
issues within their growing understanding of therapeutic work.
Students begin preparation for the various situations in which
their placements and future work might occur. Through lectures
by visiting practitioners students become familiar with some of
the relevant models and schools of thought used in various
therapeutic, educational and community settings. It is designed to
help students understand the practices and termnologies they
might encounter in some of the settings where they will do their
placements during training and possibly seek employment after
qualification. Students are introduced to models of assessment and
processes of referral. Lectures include models of understanding
systems and social contexts. Ethics and other issues of
professional practice are introduced.
DMT5153 30 Credit Points
Module 3
FACULTY OF EDUCATION & ARTS
Prerequisite :
DMT5151 Module 1
Students refine and develop their work as they continue with their
training group. Students use roles from dramatic fiction to develop
their understand of patterns of human behaviour, and practice the
processes of finding metaphors, through props, masks and
enactments, that explicate psychotherapeutic models of
understanding human behaviour. Throughout the sessions students
have opportunities for modelling from the group leader, and
practising their developing skills with one another. Students create
autobiographical performances and reflect on the inherent
processes. Students are introduced to the theory and practice of
Theatre of the Oppressed. Drama therapy is a predominantly
group based modality, and students learn theories of group
processes, learn to focus attention on members of a group, as well
as the group as a whole and develop their role as a therapeutic
group leader. Leading local exponents of relevant models and
schools of psychotherapeutic understanding (Psychodynamic,
Narrative, Jungian, Gestalt, Cognitive, Behavioural, etc) lecture
on theory, and provide skill based practice. Image seminars
continue in this unit.
DMT5154 30 Credit Points
Module 4
FACULTY OF EDUCATION & ARTS
The module also serves as an introduction to research, particularly
the kinds of research methodology most suited to the specific
kinds of phenomena arising in drama therapy, and assists students
in developing ideas for their 8,000 to 10,000 word Project. This
will be on a topic of each student’s choice and will embody
elements of research. It will also help students in the writing of
their Case Studies. Students attend seminars presented by students
in their final semester of the MA programme in which they
present their project or case work. It is in this module that students
will discuss possible placement situations with their tutor and
other staff and possibly make some preliminary observational
visits to placement situations.
DMT6155 60 Credit Points
Module 5
FACULTY OF EDUCATION & ARTS
Prerequisite :
DMT5154 Module 4
All students commence their placement, and prepare for the
second of their two major writing assignments, the Case Study of
8,000 to 10,000 words. Its purpose is to examine and
communicate a student’s work on placements in depth and can
concern one or more individuals, or a group. It will be in a similar
format to Project Research and addresses some of the same issues,
in this instance the case study as a genre of writing spanning the
‘scientific paper’, biography, narrative and story telling. An
understanding of this, familiarity with such literature, and ability
to use it both as a reflection on their own work and
communicating it in the public domain, is vital for art
psychotherapists and their profession. As in psychotherapy the
case study is one of the primary research methods of drama
therapy. In its completed form the Case Study, like the Project,
will be assessed against the criteria for published work.
For their placement, individual students are placed in an
institution, agency or other setting where, with on-site
supervision, they may work with clients one-to-one and in groups.
As far as possible students' preferences to work with particular
kinds of clients are taken into account. Placements involve
contact between the student, the on-site supervisor and course
staff. Art therapists, psychodramatists, occupational therapists,
social workers, psychologists and counsellors will supervise
students on site. While students are on placement they must attend
a specific university based drama therapy supervision group. This
group provides students with the opportunity to pay close
attention to the development of their therapeutic understanding
and skills in practice. Placements must be completed to the
228 ECU Postgraduate Course Guide 2008