Promoting wellness by increasing competence in dealing with emotion

In 2014 I introduced a restructured Family Law Practice course within the ANU College of Laws MLP (then GDLP) program, which has an explicit, and substantial, focus on developing competence in dealing with emotion. The promotion of lawyer and client well-being are two of the primary goals of the course design. The course is taught as a highly authentic simulation, which uses a professional scriptwriter and actors to create a realness that is otherwise only achievable in a clinical learning environment. The learning opportunities created by this realness are harnessed through a scaffolded series of individual and group reflective exercises. In this paper I will outline the interventions, discuss how the skills being developed relate to emotional intelligence, as conceptualised in Mayer & Saloveys four branch model, present some preliminary observations of the success of the interventions, and explain my plans for empirical evaluation of the learning design. If time permits I will also talk about how these interventions compare to other approaches to teaching emotional intelligence.