Learn, Expand, Engage: A Model for Teaching Clinical Skills in the Helping Professions

Drawing upon foundations in constructivist philosophies, learner-centered and flipped-classroom pedagogies, the Learn, Expand, Engage (LEE) Model for teaching clinical skills across the mental health helping professions is presented. Utilizing and incorporating strengths of multiple helping professions, the goals of this model is to enable postsecondary instructors to create environments for learning which empower students to reach the highest levels of learning described in the revised version of Bloom’s Taxonomy. Implications for use of the LEE model include developmentally appropriate instructional strategies based on mastery of clinical skills, active learning activities, and flexibility to respond to individual student learning needs. The LEE model provides a framework for higher education instruction that directly responds to a recently identified need for competency-based student learning pedagogy in the helping professions