Learning to be a counselor: a prepracticum point of view.(Counselor Preparation)(Report)

Research team conducted 8 phenomenological interviews with prepracticum counseling students at a southeastern research university regarding the students' experiences of learning to be a counselor. Seven themes emerged from analyzing transcripts of the audiotaped individual interviews: the journey, decision making, self-doubt, counseling is, learning, boundaries, and differences. Results indicate that students view their experiences as a journey permeated with self-doubt.

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Counselor education focuses on educating and training students to become professional helpers who have a professional counselor identity, as well as the knowledge, values, and skills to provide counseling services. Hackney and Cormier (2005) suggested that learning to counsel others is a developmental process. They stated that individuals beginning to develop a helper identity could be educated and trained to understand professional issues, the context of helping, the development of personal qualities that facilitate helping, the development of skills, and the integration of skills into practice. MacCluskie and Ingersoll (2001) used a rope imagery to describe the development of a counselor. Each experience represented a strand; multiple strands (or experiences) are integrated into a whole that represents the current development of the individual.

Development Beginning Counselor Trainees

Models of counselor trainee development guide the education of future counselors. In the Integrated Developmental Model, Stoltenberg and Delworth (1987) proposed three overriding structures of counselor development: autonomy, motivation, and self- and other-awareness. Each structure included eight domains of functioning progressing sequentially. Nelson and Johnson (1999) supported a stage model of development in which school counseling interns experience orientation, working, transition, and integration. Stewart's (1995) model began with students feeling overwhelmed by new roles and information and ended with students completing the internship process and beginning to perform as helpers. These models are useful for both students and supervisors, but they tend to focus on counselor trainees during their 2nd year of training in practicum and/or internship. Thus, an entire year of counselor development has received less attention from counselor educators.

There are a limited number of research studies on beginning trainees. Arman and Scherer (2002) investigated the influence of service learning on students' understanding of the theory and practice of school counseling using a case study approach. They reported that students valued these early experiences as they integrated theory into practice. Barbee, Scherer, and Combs (2003) studied the effects of a two-semester prepracticum service learning experience on counseling students, concluding that students who participated in service learning had lower state anxiety scores and a higher level of confidence.

Recent research also has compared the development of 1st- and 2nd-year counseling students (Granello, 2002; Lyons & Hazier, 2002). Granello focused her investigation on the cognitive development of master's-level students, finding that early counselor trainees tended to be frustrated and searched for a "truth" in counseling, whereas those ending the program seemed to be more accepting of "multiple truths." Lyons and Hazier compared 1st- and 2nd-year counselor education students regarding empathy and cognitive development, finding that students improved significantly in empathy and cognitive development between their 1st and 2nd years. Fong, Borders, Ethington, and Pitts (1997) studied the relationship between counselor cognitions and counselor response behaviors across four levels of counseling students. They found that confidence in providing counseling increased after the practicum and continued to improve throughout the internship.