The Role of Graduate Courses in Training Graduate Students in Group Counseling

Abstract

Increased demands are being placed on school and mental health counselors as a result of economic pressures, reduction in resources, and changes in health care (Corey, 2012; Poey, 1985; Slocum McEneaney & Gross, 2009) that have created a need for changes in the delivery of counseling services (MacKenzie, 1994). Group counseling is an effective treatment modality that enables school and mental health counselors to meet these rising demands (Burlingame, Fuhriman, & Mosier, 2003; Corey, 2008; Shechtman, 2007). The Professional Standards for the Training of Group Workers developed by the Association for Specialists in Group Work (ASGW, 2000) recommends that graduate counseling programs provide foundational knowledge of skills competencies of group work. The Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP, 2009) identifies group work as one of the eight essential core classes to be taught within graduate programs. Limited research has been conducted to understand how and what graduate counseling students are learning (Conyne, Wilson, Line, Morran, & Ward, 1993). Reflective practice has been identified as an effective teaching method to deliver complex subject matter such as that in the helping fields. Most research has focus on the use of reflective practice in teacher education and the medical fields (Sandars, 2009). This qualitative study examined the use of reflective practice to teach graduate counseling students. Constant comparative analysis provided information about how to teach and what graduate counseling students learn in a single course about group work when reflective practice was used to deliver course material.