Informing educational psychology training with students' community engagement experiences

Abstract

The purpose of this article was to describe students’ experiences of community engagement in an Educational Psychology practicum in order to inform relevant educational psychology training literature with experiences of students’ community engagement. Experiential learning served as our theoretical framework and we employed an instrumental case study design, purposefully selecting eight students in the MEd Educational Psychology programme to participate in a focus group. Other data sources included reflective journals and visual data. The following themes emerged from the thematic analysis: students gained insight into themselves as prospective educational psychologists, the curricular community engagement benefited students’ professional development and the practicum supported students in integrating theory with practice.