Join us on 3 March 2026, 12:15 pm (AEDT) for a 90 min, live workshop hosted by the Australian Educational and Developmental Psychology Association. While the session will be recorded, participants are strongly encouraged to attend live.
Many therapists care deeply about improving their work, yet much of professional development does not reliably translate into better client outcomes. In recent years, deliberate practice has gained attention as a more focused and evidence-informed approach to developing clinical expertise. At the same time, the concept is often misunderstood, simplified, or applied in ways that limit its effectiveness.
In this session, Dr Daryl Chow will explore what deliberate practice actually looks like in the day-to-day life of a therapist, what it is not, and why good intentions, experience, and even years in practice are not the same as getting better. The talk will examine some common traps in how clinicians approach learning and supervision, and what it means to become a deeper, more effective learner in clinical work.
Rather than focusing on techniques, this session is about how therapists develop: how we use feedback, structure our learning, reflect on our work, and turn experience into real improvement over time. The emphasis is on practical, realistic ways of thinking about growth in practice, supervision, and ongoing professional development, with the ultimate aim of improving outcomes for the people we serve.
This session is suited to psychologists and therapists at all stages of their careers who are interested in strengthening how they learn, not just what they do.
About the presenter
Dr Daryl Chow is a practising psychologist, trainer, and researcher who has spent much of his career thinking about a deceptively simple question: how do therapists actually get better at what they do? He is a senior associate with the International Center for Clinical Excellence (ICCE) and is widely known for his work on deliberate practice and the development of clinical expertise.
Daryl was part of the team that published the first study on deliberate practice in psychotherapy, which was nominated for the American Psychological Association’s “Most Valuable Paper,” and he is a co-author of Better Results and A Field Guide to Better Results. Alongside his clinical and training work, he writes and podcasts about learning, supervision, and professional growth, with a strong focus on helping therapists become more intentional, reflective, and effective in their everyday practice.
He is often described as “a therapist for therapists,” bringing a thoughtful, grounded, and deeply practical perspective to how clinicians learn, develop, and sustain their work over time.
