How do psychologists maintain their professional competencies? : voices from the field : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Educational Psychology at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
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Date
2018
DOI
Open Access Location
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Publisher
Massey University
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Abstract
This research explored how five psychologists in Aotearoa New Zealand maintained
their professional competencies throughout their careers. Using a qualitative
approach, and drawing from social constructionism and phenomenology, the collective
case study research design facilitated the exploration of participants’ experiences of
maintaining their mandatory competencies required to practice as psychologists,
through semi structured interviews. The research found that the participants identified
themselves as reflective and evidence-based practitioners, with a strong sense of
personal responsibility towards maintaining their competencies. The challenges they
faced in maintaining the competencies and the solutions to mitigate the challenges
were all centred around the workplace. Based on the findings the key suggestions
made include: Aligning policies and procedures in all psychologists’ workplaces with
legislation and evidence based practice; aligning continuing competence programmes
with performance planning; building leadership and cultural supervision, and making
high quality supervision accessible throughout the profession; better access to
professional information and new research in the field; adopting a coaching and
mentoring approach to professional learning and development; and legitimising the
valuable collegial support that psychologists relied upon to maintain their
competencies. These suggestions are also well supported by the literature in helping
psychologists to practice psychology competently in order to ensure public safety.
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Figure 1 was removed for copyright reasons.
Keywords
Psychology, New Zealand, Practice, Psychologists, Interviews