Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca (UPSA)
www.upsa.es
UPSA was originally founded in the 13th century but closed in the mid-1800s. In 1940, the school was re-established and has continued to broaden its academic offerings with new opportunities for degrees and fields of study.

Courses

The following English-taught courses in psychology are confirmed for 2019-20:

Solution Focused Brief Coaching (Fall)
In this class, we will learn how to conduct conversations that are most useful to clients as they work to achieve their goals witin a brief period of time. We will learn the whole brief coaching process, from the first to the last sessions, using the tools taken from the Solution Focused Therapy Model. We will learn how a coaching conversation may be guided to be useful to clients and that brief coaching can be adapted for use in a variety of settings: educational, organizational, health. This course is aimed at those who are involved in helping professions.

By the end of this course, students will have:

• Knowledge and understanding of the Solution Focused Model
• Knowledge of the coaching process (and its limitations)
• Application of basic tools to conduct a brief coaching process
• The knowledge to adapt the tools learned to a variety of settings (organizational, education...)
• The knowledge to refer clients to other services when necessary

Developmental Psychology in Childhood and Adolescence (Fall)
This course focuses on the study and analysis of the processes of psychological change that occur from the beginning of life through adolescence.  The bases of this discipline are studied, the main theories addressed, with a deep focus on the different areas of development.  Goals for the course include:

• learning the foundations of developmental psychology as a scientific discipline;
• learning the main theories of developmental psychology;
• understanding the identity of each stage for development and its cognitive psychomotor, communicative, social, affective aspects;
• learning how to promote and facilitate learning among children in school with an integrating perspective of the cognitive, emotional, psychomotor, and volitional dimensions;
• and applying knowledge acquired in the course to specific case studies.

Affective and Sexual Development (Spring)
We will discuss the fundamental aspects of human development from infancy to adulthood and old age, mainly emphasizing the development and deterioration of the processes that are characteristic of each phase. The key concepts to be analyzed are focused on the affective, social and sexual development of the individual, pathology and improvement of the functions.

The Neuroscience of Learning Fast and Slow: Implications on Education (Spring)

Through a variety of workshops included in this course, we will review cases and experiments with the purpose of viewing how intuitive thought works, how cognitive and social psychology interpret the heuristics of judgment, decision-making and intuition.  Additionally, the course will examine the gap between educational programs and the latest finding in neuroscience, focusing specifically on the teaching and learning of reading skills.  Questions to be considered include:

• Why is reading so difficult to master?
• What profound alterations in brain circuitry accompany the acquisition of reading skills?
• Are some teaching strategies better adapted to the child’s brain than others?

*A link to the UPSA website where syllabi for these courses will be posted will be included here as soon as the syllabi are available.

Location & Commute Time
UPSA is five minutes away from Salamanca's historic Plaza Mayor and has numerous departments and university schools spread out among the Salamanca campus. UPSA also has departments and schools in Madrid and throughout twelve Spanish provinces.