Transformative Learning for Counselor Trainees: Implementation of the Multicultural Immersion Experience Model

In this qualitative inquiry, we studied the lived experiences of counselor trainees who participated in a short-term study abroad program in Dublin, Ireland. It was found that counselor trainees self-reported transformative growth as a result of their cultural immersion. Specifically, counselor trainees identified an increase in cultural self-awareness, other awareness, and global connection. The implications of applying transformative learning theory and the Multicultural Immersion Experience model to guide cultural immersion programs are discussed.     

Problems of Professional Competence Among Counselor Trainees: Programmatic Issues and Guidelines

Counselor education programs have a responsibility to ensure that individuals are competently trained, demonstrate understanding of ethical guidelines, and are free of observable psychological issues that may affect their ability to provide adequate counseling services. Counselor trainees who do not reach or maintain these professional standards may exhibit problems of professional competence (PPC). This position paper provides a review of the issues related to PPC among counselor trainees. It offers guidelines to counselor education programs for developing PPC policies and procedures. Future directions for research and training practice are discussed.     

Effects of Verbal Interaction Analysis Training with Counseling Practicum Students

This article investigates differences in counselor verbal style and type of counselee talk in two groups of counselor trainees. The first group consisted of 15 counselor trainees who received a training program with an Amidon-type Verbal Interaction Analysis System; the second group was a control group of 15 counselor trainees who received no interaction analysis training as part of a semester-long counseling practicum. The results indicated that the counselors receiving interaction analysis training tended to talk less and Use indirect influence techniques more often than the counselor trainees in the control group. Clients of the counselors in the experimental group tended to talk more often and use more self-initiated talk than did the clients of counselors in the control group.     

Effects of Counselor's Ordinal Position When Involved in Role Play Practice in Triads

To investigate the effects of the order of being the counselor when involved in role-play practice, 36 novice trainees were assigned to counseling triads and then to the levels of ordinal position—counselor first, second, or third. Each participant also served as a client and as an observer within the triad. No difference among the three ordinal positions was found in the trainees' abilities to produce reflection of feeling responses. Similarly, there were no differences between those trainees who functioned as as observers before being the role-play counselor. There was a significant positive linear trend, however, for ordinal position (i.e., the accuracy of the trainees' reflection of feeling responses steadily improved from first counselor role play to third counselor role play). These results are discussed from a social-learning theory perspective.     

Relationship of a Group Counseling Course,Hours in Counselor Education,and Sex to Empathic Understanding of Counselor Trainees

This study investigated the relationship of a graduate course in group counseling, the number of hours completed in counselor education, and sex to the empathic understanding of trainees in a counselor education program. The trainees were taped in similar counseling sessions, and their responses were rated independently by three counselor educators, who used Carkhuff's empathic understanding scale. A three-way analysis of variance determined only one significant difference. The trainees who had completed a course in group counseling were significantly higher (p <.05) than those who had not. The level of empathic understanding of the higher group, however, was less than the level considered to be the minimum for effective counseling.     

Counselor Education Students’ Exposure to Trauma Cases

In the past two decades there has been an increase in the number of studies that have examined the psychological effects on counselors who provide counseling to clients with trauma experiences. However, little is known about the experiences of counselor trainees who provide counseling to their clients seeking counseling because of trauma. This qualitative study explored the experience of eight doctoral students in a counseling program who completed their master’s-level training in the United States. Three themes emerged from the inductive data analysis process, namely: (1) immediate reactions, (2) information processing, and (3) post-exposure development. Implications for counselors, counselor educators, and clinical supervisors are examined and recommendations to enhance counseling and supervision services are offered.     

Effects of Discrimination Training on Counselor Trainee Response Choice

The purpose of this study was to assess whether counselor trainees who received training in identifying and producing 10 response types as well as training that emphasized when to use the response types would be more effective in using responding skills than trainees who received only training in identifying and producing response types. Thirty-two master's level counselor trainees from a large midwestern university participated in a three-session training workshop and responded to three dependent measures developed to assess effectiveness in using response types along three dimensions: (a) identification, (b) performance, and (c) evaluation. Statistical analysis indicated significant differences between treatment groups. Treatment seemed to decrease the extent to which counselor trainees questioned the client and expressed their own opinions and values during counseling interviews and increase the extent to which trainees used action-oriented statements aimed at encouraging the client to work on problem solving. Trainees in the treatment group showed a tendency to try out complex response types and to use these more frequently and appropriately. Treatment differences were maintained over time.     

The Skilled Counselor Training Model: Skills Acquisition,Self‐Assessment,and Cognitive Complexity

The authors evaluated the effectiveness of the Skilled Counselor Training Model (SCTM; M. H. Smaby, C. D. Maddux, E. Torres‐Rivera, & R. Zimmick, 1999) in teaching counseling skills and in fostering counselor cognitive complexity. Counselor trainees who completed the SCTM had better counseling skills and higher levels of cognitive complexity than did counselor trainees who did not receive the training. Before training, both experimental and control group participants overestimated their skills performance. The control group persisted in this overestimation after training, whereas students who completed the SCTM had a much more accurate self‐assessment. Results suggest that skills‐based training may improve counseling skills and cognitive complexity in counselor trainees.     

Critical Incidents Among Novice Counselor Trainees

The authors attempted to gain an understanding of critical incidents (CIs) from the perspective of novice counselor trainees during their 1st year of supervised clinical practicum. Journals kept by 9 trainees in master's‐level counseling programs were qualitatively analyzed using the discovery‐oriented research methodology (A. Mahrer, 1988). One hundred fifty‐seven CIs emerged in 5 major categories: (a) professional identity, (b) personal reactions, (c) competence, (d) supervision, and (e) philosophy of counseling. Implications of the findings are discussed for counselor development theory and research, as well as counselor training.     

Peer Ratings Revisited

The present study compares the differences in peer and supervisory judgments of counselor trainees in both guidance institutes and regular program groups. The key conclusion of the study is that institute supervisors and institute members have significantly higher positive agreement (r = .77) on who is a good counselor than that found among supervisors and students in a regular education program, where (r = .46).     

Advocacy Counseling for Female Survivors of Partner Abuse: Implications for Counselor Education

This article outlines ways by which counselor educators may prepare counselors and counselor trainees to be advocates for survivors of partner abuse. Advocacy strategies for counselors and counselor trainees working with survivors of partner abuse are provided, integrating the 5 components of collaboration, context, competence, critical consciousness, and community (E. McWhirter, 1998) within an ecological framework.     

Concerns of Beginning Counselor Trainees

The concerns of beginning counselor trainees were factor analyzed. The analysis yielded five distinct variables about which trainees expressed concerns: whether clients liked the counselor, counselor adequacy, counselor role, counseling techniques, and client needs. The relative importance of the concern variables, the specific items that trainees rated of greatest concern, and the implications of these findings for counselor educators are presented.     

Coached Clients as Raters of Counseling Effectiveness

The study was designed to investigate whether coached clients, trained in objective rating techniques, were more consistent with the ratings of counselor educators when evaluating the counseling effectiveness of counselor trainees, as compared to the same ratings completed by non-coached clients using the same criterion. A sample of ten counselor trainees were each rated by two coached and two non-coached clients using the Counseling Evaluation Inventory. The results indicated that the coached clients significantly agreed with the criterion, while the non-coached clients exhibited bias and subjectivity in their ratings.     

Strength Challenge as a Process for Supervision

Strength challenge is described as a method of giving feedback that helps counselor trainees identify and use their strengths more fully.     

Career Problem Assessment: A Conceptual Schema for Counselor Training

Counseling students learn about various theories, models, and career assessment measures during their training. However, the transition to practicum and internship often challenges students to decide on when to apply career theories and measures to specific problems. An assessment schema is proposed to assist counselor trainees with a systematic approach to conceptualizing a client's career problem. With this assessment schema, counselor educators can help trainees organize data into meaningful categories, reduce conceptual confusion, and engage students in the study of careers.     

Suicidal Clients and Supervisees: A Model for Considering Supervisor Roles

It is likely that counselor trainees will be exposed to suicidal clients and subsequently face personal dilemmas, stress, and feelings of incompetence. Ethical guidelines mandate that supervisors have procedures to assist supervisees in such times. Currently, the literature does not provide a framework for providing such supervision. This article presents a theory‐grounded model to assist the supervision of supervisees working with suicidal clients.     

The Crisis of Relativism: Helping Counselors Cope with Diversity

Counselors are sometimes disoriented by the massive variety of approaches to the helping process. This plurality of counseling methods often pushes both students and practitioners toward an epistemological crisis—“the crisis of relativism.” A developmental scheme outlined by William Perry in 1970 is employed to interpret some of the typical cognitive transitions that can occur among counselor trainees who struggle with diversity. Also, the authors offer suggestions that may meet the particular needs of counselors coping with this multitude of therapy options.     

The Evaluation of Filmed Excerpts of Rogers,Perls, and Ellis by Beginning Counselor Trainees

This study investigated the perceptions of beginning counselor trainees regarding the therapeutic effectiveness of Carl Rogers, Fritz Perls, and Albert Ellis. Twenty-nine students viewed three stimulus films and rated the therapeutic effectiveness of the therapists. The students were subsequently rank-ordered by their prepracticum course instructors on the basis of skill development and assigned to one of three groups (high, middle, or low.) The results of a two-way analysis of variance revealed an overall higher evaluation for Rogers as compared to either Perls or Ellis. Further analysis revealed that the top-ranked group of counselor trainees rated Perls significantly higher than the other two and that the bottom-ranked group ranked Ellis higher than Perls or Rogers. Several conclusions concerning the use of stimulus films for demonstration and training purposes in counselor education are drawn.     

Effects of Client Race‐Ethnicity on Perceptions of Counselor Trainees: Study 1 and Study 2

The authors investigated the impact that racial stereotypes have on counselor trainees' perceptions of the attributes and behaviors of ethnically diverse male clients. Two studies were conducted in which participants were counselor trainees (Study 1, N = 58; Study 2, N = 75) who received a case study in which a male student sought counseling for problems affecting his school work. No differences were revealed in Study 1. In Study 2, counselor perceptions of client attributes differed across client race–ethnicity. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for training counselors, particularly regarding multicultural courses and workshops.     

Finger Blood Volume Responses of Counselors,Counselor Trainees,and Non-Counselors to Stimuli from an Empathy Test

Measures of 4 physiological variables were obtained while 30 counselors, 30 counselor trainees, and 30 graduate science majors were evaluating a series of dramatic dialogs and slides taken from an empathy test. Significantly more vasoconstriction, indicative of arousal, was observed in the counselors and counselor trainees than in the science majors. This finding is consistent with the proposal that empathy is related to physiological responses and serves as contributing evidence for criteria in the selection, training, and evaluation of counselors.