APPLIES TO ACADEMIC YEAR 2015/2016

GRA 2237 Counselling

Responsible for the course
Jan Ketil Arnulf

Department
Department of Leadership and Organizational Behaviour

Term
According to study plan

ECTS Credits
6

Language of instruction
English

Introduction
All contemporary human service providers and personnel managers encounter situations in which they are required to help people to change some aspect of their behaviour. In the workplace, such situations may include employees’ need for improved role effectiveness, personnel conflicts, organizational changes that affect the individual, such as job loss, restructuring and reorganization. All people who counsel operate from theoretical frameworks about how people become the way they are, how they respond to situations, how problems evolve and are maintained, and how people can be helped to change. Counseling is also at the heart of coaching, which has become very popular as a tool in many contemporary leadership development programs. This course will give students an up-to-date overview of major theoretical approaches in counseling and how they are used in counseling work problems.

Learning outcome
The objective of the course is to provide students with knowledge of different theoretical approaches to counselling as well as awareness of how and why these theories are used to counsel employees. At the end of the course, not only will students have an understanding of the major counselling theories and their academic roots, but will also have gained a better understanding of their own behaviour and some practical skills in counselling. They should have a realistic expectation about the possible contributions they can make by using conversations as tools for changing clients, with a particular emphasis on workplace problems and leadership development. Further, the course will train the students to see that ethical issues protecting client integrity is an integrated part of professional helping relationships. The students will be aware their limitations in that this is not a course enabling them to treat people, but instead an orientation to make them able to choose from the available counselling and coaching techniques to find practical courses later on that will further their professional skills.

Prerequisites
GRA 2203 Psychological Measurement or equivalent
GRA 2205 Organizational Behaviour or equivalent
All courses in the Masters programme will assume that students have fulfilled the admission requirements for the programme. In addition, courses in second, third and/or fourth semester can have spesific prerequisites and will assume that students have followed normal study progression. For double degree and exchange students, please note that equivalent courses are accepted.

Compulsory reading
Books:
Colledge, Ray. 2002. Mastering counselling theory. Palgrave
Nelson-Jones, Richard. 2012. Basic counselling skills : a helpers's manual. 3rd ed. Sage

Collection of articles:
A collection of research articles will be made available at the start of the course

Other:
During the course there may be hand-outs and other material on additional topics relevant for the course and the examination.


Recommended reading

Course outline
- Introduction to counselling and counselling theory
- Humanistic approaches to counselling
- Existential approaches to counselling
- Behavioural approaches to counselling
- Cognitive and cognitive-behavioural approaches to counselling
- Integrative approaches to counseling
- Differences between counseling and therapy.

Computer-based tools
Not applicable

Learning process and workload
The course is structured as a combination of lectures, discussions, in-class activities, role plays and student case presentations. It requires substantial amount of preparation by the students and active involvement during class.
A course of 6 ECTS credits corresponds to a workload of 160-180 hours.

Please note that it is the student’s own responsibility to obtain any information provided in class that is not included on the course homepage/It's learning or text book.

Examination
The course grade will be based on the following activities and weights:
30% - Case presentations
70% - Term paper (written in groups of 2 students, single students possible after approval by the teacher)