Content area
Full text
Though counseling graduate programs often rely heavily on field site supervisors for help remediating interns with professional competence problems, there is little published research on the remediation and gatekeeping strategies used by field site supervisors. This article presents the results of a descriptive study of 103 field site supervisors on perspectives and strategies for gatekeeping and remediating counselors- in-training. The most common gatekeeping and remediation strategies reported by participants were consulting with other professionals, discussing the issue directly with the supervisee, and increasing live supervision. Only 35% reported discussing the student with counselor education faculty.
Keywords: gatekeeping, remediation, counseling supervision, field supervision
Assisting students with issues of professional competence is one of the many day-to-day responsibilities of field site supervisors (Shen-Miller et al., 2014). Yet, upon rare occasions supervisees are unable to demonstrate an adequate level of professional competence. Professional competence, also referred to as unsuitability, may reflect trainee developmental issues, inadequacy in counselor training, insufficient supervision, deficits in moral character, or dispositional factors (Johnson et al., 2008). When professional competence issues are evident field site supervisors may engage in remediation or perhaps gatekeeping processes. Gatekeeping is defined as an ongoing process used by counselor educators to intercede when counseling students are making insufficient progress toward acquiring the knowledge, skill, and dispositional competence necessary to effectively practice counseling (Ziomek-Daigle & Christensen, 2010). Gatekeeping is an ethical responsibility undertaken to safeguard the integrity of the profession, protect the consumers of counseling, guard the entrance into and exit from graduate programs (Elpers & FitzGerald, 2013; Kitchener, 1992), and promote equity in the treatment of students (Brear & Dorrian, 2010; Brear, Dorrian, & Luscri, 2008; Enochs & Etzbach, 2004).
Academic institutions carry the primary burden for gatekeeping. The American Counseling Association Code of Ethics (2014) mandates that "Counselor educators, through ongoing evaluation, are aware of and address the inability of some students to achieve counseling competencies..." (p. 15). The 2016 accreditation standards of the Council for the Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP) require that "Counselor education programs have and follow a policy for student retention, remediation, and dismissal from the program consistent with institutional due process policies and with the counseling profession's ethical codes and standards of practice" (CACREP, 2015, p. 5). Though it...