This ethnographic study explores the teaching role of activists and community advocates who have become involved in the education and preparation of mental health professionals. Placed in the transcultural mental health context, the study aims to identify central features of the ?teaching role? of consumer and carer advocates as they have become employed via participatory strategies and employment scenarios within mainstream teaching programs and transcultural mental health centres. The central theme of the study is how consumer and carer advocates teach via the notion of lived experience, a key expression of recent workforce development policy in Australian mental health. The research outcomes from this focus indicate that the teaching work of advocates in contributing authoritative knowledge of self and others is influenced by many factors intrinsic to their performed representative role, rather than exclusively by their personal experience as a consumer or carer, as the policy of lived experience would suggest. I argue that the requirements of teaching as defined by the expectations of employing organisations and the clinical audience, and by traditions in representative advocacy and professional education all shape the way in which advocates build and express their knowledge in educational work.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/284044 |
| Date | January 2006 |
| Creators | Loughhead, Mark |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | EN-AUS |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | Copyright Mark Loughhead 2005 |
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