JCNT - May 2025 Release - Full Release - Flipbook - Page 78
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art and craft of becoming a therapist. It seems that the assumption has been that
learning to become a therapist is not different than learning any other profession.
Any attempts at coming up with a pedagogy for learning to become a therapist
have been chaotic at best—combine a bit of didactic teaching, experiential
activities, and case consultation related to learners9 clinical work, and there you
have it. One ideology that has permeated the various therapy disciplines is
outcomes-based education. While I wouldn9t call this a pedagogy by any means, it
is informed by neoliberal ideologies that promote the idea of learning as a
product or commodity that can be achieved by the learning of facts, the mastery
of general competencies, as well as the ability to follow steps and interventions
prescribed by a particular model. The push toward outcome-based learning has
been driven by the so-called evidence-based paradigm, where fidelity to following
a model in a stepwise fashion takes priority over the philosophy, attitude, ethics,
or spirit that is the driving force of any theoretical orientation. As a consequence
of this obedience orientation, therapists are required less and less to rely on their
capacity as thinkers and puzzlers of complex human dilemmas. As a consequence
of this obedience orientation, therapists are not required to do the heavy labor of
thinking alongside their clients when every effort and every attempt at change
has failed them. As a consequence of this obedience orientation, therapists are no
longer required to do the intellectual labor of understanding their theory well
enough to tell them what to do
