Effective decision making as a psychologist.

Preparation
Throughout this course, you had opportunities to clarify your passions and interests in psychology practice and scholarship, create SMART goals to help you achieve your vision, and explore the competencies and requirements for pursuing a career in your specialized field of psychology. This final assignment provides you an opportunity to transform your vision into reality by translating your exploration and brainstorming activities into a plan to actualize your vision and achieve your goals. This assignment will integrate information from all previous assignments and several of the unit studies and discussions. You are encouraged to cite relevant information from your interview with a psychology professional where it is relevant to this assignment; however, remember to critically evaluate the information you use.
Your writing in this assignment should not just be a collection of notes, lists, or questions and answers. Instead, it should be a well-organized discussion that flows logically from one idea to the next.
Instructions
Complete the following in your assignment template:
Vision and Goals
By the time you complete this final assignment, you will have gained a lot more knowledge and insights about your interests in psychology and your career trajectory. To begin this assignment, take some time to reflect on all you have learned about the field and ways you can contribute to psychology.
• What aspects of your research affected your vision or goals? Given this, what topics do you think you would be interested in researching in the future?
• How was your vision affected by the career information in your readings from your Career Paths in Psychology text and your exploration of the Career Center and other resources?
Revise and refine the vision statement and long-term goals that you developed earlier in response to the feedback you have received and your studies in this course. Update your Articulating Your Purpose activity to help support these revisions.
Professional Competencies and Requirements
Understanding the competencies and responsibilities involved with your future career in psychology is essential for preparing yourself to become a practitioner-scholar in your field. It is also necessary to understand any requirements needed for your specialized practice and scholarship.
For this step in the assignment, analyze the competencies, responsibilities, ethical considerations, and other requirements needed for achieving your vision and goals as a professional in psychology. These may include:
• Capella program and specialization requirements.
• Skills, abilities, and attitudes critical to success in the field of psychology, such as those related to critical thinking, decision making, problem solving, evidence-based practices, ethical integrity, cultural competence, and conflict resolution.
• Make note of skills, abilities, and attitudes related to the practitioner-scholar model and the experience you had in researching scholarly sources in your last assignment.
• Credentialing, certification, licensure, and accreditation practices and standards.
• Ethical codes, principles, laws, and policies applicable to your chosen career path.
Self-Assessment
Reflect on your current competencies, previous experiences, and achievements that help you meet those requirements. Since you are at the beginning of your journey to a future career, you will have gaps in required knowledge, skills, attitudes, and credentials. Identify any areas in which you need further development to achieve your goals and vision as a psychology practitioner-scholar.
Action Plan
With all this knowledge of your vision and goals, and the competencies and requirements for the field in hand, you are ready to plot your course to making these aspirations a reality. The final step in this assignment is to create a revised action plan to achieve your goals. This means translating the requirements for your profession and the development areas you identified into specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timed (SMART) steps to achieve your vision.
Include these elements in your action plan:
• Completion of your Capella program.
• Possible opportunities for additional training or volunteer work to address gaps in your knowledge or skills.
• Possible opportunities in your current position to develop additional skills through coaching or stretch assignments.
• Capella Community groups and professional organizations that you could join for networking with others and completing additional informational interviews.
• How you will stay current with the research and literature in the field.
• How you can apply what you have learned in this course about researching psychological literature and evaluating it in terms of reliability, credibility, ethics, and value.
• How you will apply critical thinking and effective decision making as a psychologist.
How you will use Capella’s support resources to develop the skills required to successfully develop your writing and other competencies essential to the profession and your role as a graduate learner.