What is Deliberate Practice?
Defined by the psychologist Anders Ericsson and colleagues, Deliberate Practice is “the individualized training activities specially designed by a coach or teacher to improve specific aspects of an individual’s performance through repetition and successive refinement” (Ericsson & Lehmann, 1996, pp. 278–279).
Deliberate Practice focuses on a student’s individual skill threshold, emphasizes interactive rehearsal for skill acquisition, aims for higher levels of sustained effort, and uses homework to advance clinical ability. Empirical research suggests that Deliberate Practice can significantly improve the effectiveness and efficiency of psychotherapy education and training (e.g., Goodyear & Rousmaniere, 2017; Rousmaniere, 2016; 2019).
The Evidence for Deliberate Practice
Deliberate Practice is an evidence-based method of skill development. Top performers across a wide range of fields – including medicine, music, athletics, writing, and business – use Deliberate Practice to attain and maintain expertise. Deliberate Practice involves rehearsal within a person’s zone of proximal development, ongoing performance assessment, tailored goal-setting, and close mentoring with expert feedback (Ericsson & Pool, 2016).
Decades of research have demonstrated that lengthy engagement in Deliberate Practice is necessary for individuals to achieve the highest level of expert performance across many professions. Sentio University is the first graduate psychotherapy program to thoroughly integrate this approach to training, with half of nearly every class spent on Deliberate Practice.
Tailored to Your Current Skill Level
Deliberate Practice works best when training targets each student’s personal skill thresholds or current ability. If a Deliberate Practice exercise is either too easy or too hard, the student is unlikely to benefit from it.
To maximize training productivity, elite performers follow a “challenging but not overwhelming” training principle. This means that Deliberate Practice requires ongoing assessment of the student’s current skill and tailoring the difficulty of exercises to consistently target a “good enough” challenge.
Deliberate Practice Can Be Fun!
You might be worried that we’re a bunch of stuffy academics who take graduate psychotherapy education and training far too seriously. While we do believe in rigor, accountability, and being thorough in our roles as educators, we also have plenty of fun with Deliberate Practice.
Check out this training video and the promo and final round of the first-ever mental health training competition, the Therapist Throwdown.