Abstract:

In a higher education institution that frames its offerings as focused on the scholarship of engagement for societal impact, professional programmes offered at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa have the potential to produce graduates who can contribute to this social justice agenda through best-practice learning and teaching efforts. One such programme is the Masters in Research Psychology. The programme is designed to advance efforts towards the attainment of several of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals and the National Development Plan, a guiding SA policy document. The curriculum is designed around the integration of learning and teaching, research, and community engagement. As the only programme that leads to professional registration in the region, we use this programme to grow research psychologists who are equipped to address the social ills in SA society through research and community engagement. We train them to develop a research agenda that is socially responsive and give them the skills to be able to develop and execute these projects in scientifically and ethically sound ways. As an institution that is proud of its historical background as well as its ethos, students are primed to make a sustainable difference in the communities that we penetrate and from which they hail. We do this in a way that encourages partnerships with the communities so that these co-created research projects lead to sustainable solutions for the communities.

There are ten modules in year one of the structured Masters programme, and the following paper focuses on a year-long module within the programme that focuses on research skills development and the integration of theory and practise. The following paper provides reflections from two student cohorts, i.e. 2022 and 2023 (n=18) on this skill development through one of the practical modules. A lead psychologist from a local psychiatric institution approached the programme coordinator, and following a series of meetings between the teaching team and the psychiatric facility, a collaborative research project focusing on women’s health and the continuity of care was developed and registered with the home institution. Ethics approval was obtained from the academic institution and the Department of Health. The research plan was structured according to three different phases with each phase held by the specific year’s class that commenced in 2022. The second phase of the study will be concluded at the end of 2023. Each phase requires that students, as researchers in a qualitative exploratory study, engage in a reflective process around the influence of their values and the research experience. Key findings included the benefits of contextual awareness through immersion in a specific research context, the importance of collaboration with peers and participants in research and knowledge production, and the meaning of flexibility in recruitment and data collection approaches within a community setting.

Keywords:

Learning, teaching, postgraduate psychology students, reflections.