Narrative Practice & Research Synthesis

This subject has the following teaching availabilities in 2016:

170 hours per 12.5 credit point subject

To enrol in this subject, you must be admitted in MC-NTCW. This subject is not available for students admitted in any other courses.

For the purposes of considering requests for Reasonable Adjustments under the Disability Standards for Education (Commonwealth 2005), and Students Experiencing Academic Disadvantage Policy, academic requirements for this course are articulated in the Course Overview, Objectives and Generic Skills sections of this entry.

It is University policy to take all reasonable steps to minimise the impact of disability upon academic study, and reasonable adjustments will be made to enhance a student's participation in the University's programs. Students who feel their disability may impact on meeting the requirements of this course are encouraged to discuss this matter with the Student Equity and Disability Support Team: http://www.services.unimelb.edu.au/disability/

In this subject, students are challenged to innovate their own forms of narrative practice. Teaching focuses on some of the different methods of innovating that have contributed to new forms of narrative practice (co-research, partnerships, cross-cultural invention, folk cultural innovation, synthesis of practice with readings from outside the field, responding to challenges in relation to politics of experience, translations across languages). This involves revisiting some of the social and intellectual histories of narrative practice and drawing on recent international innovations as case studies of innovation. Drawing on these histories and practices of innovation, in the second half of the subject as the capstone experience, students are then required to undertake an original piece of practice research, with findings presented in a standard required for publication.

Students who complete this subject will be able to:

• Analyse and distinguish the ways in which narrative practices have been originated in the context of translating them into one’s own context.
• Appraise the ethics of one’s own practice by critiquing the operations of power and privilege in one’s relationships with those with whom one works (‘clients’); and demonstrate practices of accountability to respond to these operations of power and privilege.
• Demonstrate and discuss ‘double-story development’ and the rich description of preferred storylines in one’s own practice.
• Synthesise one's own practice with the histories and theories of narrative therapy.
• Produce an original piece of practice scholarship that is to be of a standard required for publication.
• Design teaching materials and approach, and teach others about the narrative practices they have engaged with.
• Appraise one’s own use of narrative practices and one’s own teaching about these.

Type of Assessment (Including Extent/Duration):

1. Five written reflections (5 x 1200 words)

• Timing of Assessment - Mid and End of Semester 1
• Assessment % - 25

2. One oral presentation (40 minutes, equivalent to 4,000 words)

• Timing of Assessment - Beginning of Semester 2
• Assessment % - 15

3. One written essay (8,000 words)

• Timing of Assessment - End of Semester 2
• Assessment % - 50

4. One poster presentation (equivalent to 2,000 words)

• Timing of Assessment - End of Semester 2
• Assessment % - 10

5. Client contact record

• Timing of Assessment - End of Semester 2
• Assessment % - Hurdle requirement

• White, M. (2004). Narrative Practice and Exotic Lives: Resurrecting diversity in everyday life. Adelaide: Dulwich Centre Publications.
• O’Farrell, C. (2005). Michel Foucault. London: SAGE Publications.
• White, M. (2011). Narrative Practice: Continuing the conversations. New York: W. W. Norton & Company

This subject is not available as a breadth subject.