Frontiers of Psychotherapist Development

Frontiers Friday #41. Becoming a Deep Learner (Part II)
 

1. Request: May I ask for you to add my email daryl@darylchow.com to your contact list please? This helps to ensure that my emails to you doesn't go to your spam folder (For ways to do whitelist my emails, see this link). Of course, please feel free to unsubscribe if these emails do not bring you any value. No hard feelings).
    
2. New Couples Therapy Study: We just published a study regarding the alliance-outcome of couples therapy. This study conducted in Singapore, took place some years ago, and we only just managed to get it published, thanks to all the co-authors. Click here to view the article.
    
3. Better Results 1st Year Anniversary: It has been one year since the publication of our book, Better Results! I can't believe it. This book took so long in the making, and now, one year has passed. Writing with Mark Hubble and Scott Miller, my heroes, have made me wanna raise my standards in writing. If you haven't seen the book, check it out on amazon, etc. 
   And hopefully, before the year is out, we will get the audiobook version completed!

1. From Deep Learner: The Lack of Direction and Depth
   Here's a sneak peak into one of the modules in Deep Learner, as we address why deep learning suffers when we lack a clear individualised direction.
    
2. Bookworm: Make It Stick
   This is book is one of the materials that influenced the creation of the Deep Learner course. 
   One of the things that the authors point out, that I often see in the learning sciences, is the fallacy of re-reading. Re-reading a text gives an illusion of fluency. Instead, we should be testing ourselves with what we've learned. 
   Test in order to learn, instead of "learn for the test."
   
    
3. Research: Merits of Withholding Performance Feedback
   This blog by the Learning Scientists talks about a series of experiments that show the benefit of withholding marks so as to increase learning. 
   This has been a repeated theme that I see: An over-emphasis on performance can impede learning.
   
   While this study in question came out after our Difficult Conversations in Therapy (DCT) study was completed, this was an approach that we took. We didn't want to give the learners in the RCT their performance scores/feedback because this would seem like there are trying to "perform" for the test, instead, we only gave them "learning feedback". 
    
4. Watch: Mindset Theory (Is it All That It's Hyped Out to Be?)
   I've talked about Carol Dweck's Fixed vs Growth Mindset in the past. 
   In our original supershrink's study, we didn't find any predictive value of therapists' mindset on their outcomes. 
   In this video, fellow Aussie-American Jared Horvath and co-author David Bott talks about this. 
   In their book 10 Things Schools Get Wrong: (And How We Can Get Them Right) has one chapter devoted to the contradictory findings in mindset studies. Brilliant summary. 
   
    
5.  Words Worth Contemplating: 
   "What grades offer is spurious precision ... a subjective rating masquerading as an objective evaluation.” ~ Alfie Kohn

Based on 4 tenets to help you for the rest of your professional career, Deep Learner is specially designed to 
 

1. Extend your mind by tapping into the powerful cutting edge science of how we learn best

What Deep Learner is Not?

1. It is not a bag of tricks;

2. It is not a theoretical online course;

3. It is not a pre-recorded lecture, and a poor substitute of face-to-face learning, and

This course is a must if you want to get help in building your own learning system. And I would like to raise a warning finger at the same time, you will need to challenge many of your ideas what will be required of you to become a more helpful therapist. 

That being said, you are not alone in this, above all, Daryl Chow generously shares his knowledge and experience in an educational and personal way. 

~Bengt Göran Lindberg

Lic. psychotherapist, Supervisor, Sweden.
 

Daryl Chow has an amazing ability to translate incredibly complicated material into comprehensible, bite size chunks of wisdom which can be applied in clinical practice and in daily living. 

Daryl's grounded and gentle style engages participants into a rich, collaborative learning experience. This is the second course I've taken with Daryl (the other being Reigniting Clinical Supervision) and he is truly one of the important voices shaping the field of psychotherapy in the 21st century. 

~Keith Klostermann, PhD, LMFT, LMHC, CFT, NCC, AS
Fulbright Specialist Roster, US State Dept.

The Deep Learner Course brings most ordinary learning experiences back to life. I can now more effectively extract the gems from activities that would have been meaningless before.

~ Bert Munger, Licensed Mental Health Counselor, Licensed Alcohol and Drug Counselor, Vermont, USA

Dr Chow provides a very in-depth and thought provoking course on what it means to be a deep learner and shows you strategies and tips which will help you not only improve your clinical practice, but your work/life balance as well. 
- Melvin S. Marsh, MS (graduate student)