“Her Anger Frightens Me!” Using Group-Work Practice Principles and Feature Films in Teaching Clinical Practice in Mental Health

The Balancing Act of Repurposing Feature Films and TV Series for University Teaching

“…For instance, FF/TV are generally noted to appeal to students through their senses and emotions, helping them relate more readily to the subject matter [8,9] by offering a visible life-like representation of abstract concepts and real-life problems [9][10][11] and capturing multiple perspectives or dimensions of a topic (such as a medical case or a social problem) to showcase the complexities that are difficult for teachers to demonstrate in the classroom, for students to grasp verbally, or even for anyone to encounter in reality [10,11]. FF/TV can also enable the training of various cognitive skills from remembering to critical, analytical thinking, or creativity in problem-solving, perspective-taking, decision-making, ethics, and Encyclopedia 2024, 4 empathy training [8,[10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17].…”

“…Furthermore, the multimodal nature of FF/TV pedagogy is also believed to assist with developing multiliteracies [11,18,19]. When screened in class, the shared film-viewing experience may reduce students' participation anxiety, improve group cohesion, and increase students' participation in class activities such as group discussion [9,20,21].…”

“…In these contexts, the presence of FF/TV was found to help students feel more positive about the subject, enable more active engagement with other learning activities, and improve their performance in assessments. Additionally, integrating FF/TV into learning activities has also been suggested to create a 'safe zone' for exploring 'out there' issues [24] and an inclusive environment in which a variety of learning needs or preferences are accommodated [8,9,12,25]; this appears to be especially the case for learners who are new to the subject/discipline and for at-risk learners by providing a familiar or accessible entry point [5,26].…”

“…However, even the most enthusiastic advocates of FF/TV in teaching recognise their potentially detrimental side [8,9,12,27,28]. A key characteristic of FF/TV is their entertainment value, which can distract students from taking the represented issues seriously or mislead them about the actual scale of represented problems [9,27].…”

“…However, even the most enthusiastic advocates of FF/TV in teaching recognise their potentially detrimental side [8,9,12,27,28]. A key characteristic of FF/TV is their entertainment value, which can distract students from taking the represented issues seriously or mislead them about the actual scale of represented problems [9,27]. Since the craft of FF/TV allows for emotional manipulation of the audience coupled with high persuasiveness, FF/TV potentially provoke unpredictable reactions or interpretations from students [10,29,30] and negatively influence their ability to discern weak arguments [4,9,30].…”