Читать книгу Critical Incidents in Counselor Education - Группа авторов - Страница 64

Olga R. Dietlin and Jenny L. Chien

This case highlights the importance of considering the unique experiences and challenges of graduate students who enter master’s studies with significant life and career knowledge. Counseling programs attract a high percentage of older adult students (Schaefers, 2012), and experiences like Carla’s are likely to occur.

Older adult students sometimes display characteristics such as “respect, experience, enthusiasm, perfectionism, rigidity, greater need for faculty support, and a high number of demands external to the program” (P. J. Jordan, 2018, p. 5). Carla’s discouragement, disconnection, and resistance, coupled with her conscientiousness, mirror these characteristics. Older adult students may struggle to consider feedback from students who are younger than themselves, and they may have a tendency to “talk down,” be “motherly,” or show impatience with younger students (P. J. Jordan, 2018, p. 113). Older adult students may also have a tendency to develop stronger bonds and be more comfortable with same-age peers than with their younger colleagues (P. J. Jordan, 2018). Improving collegial relationships, rapport, and a sense of safety for older students is important. Professor Dixit needs to monitor and discuss these group dynamics to ensure all students are engaged in the experiences they need to be effective counselors. This would include exploring and challenging assumptions about commonalities and differences between groups.

In keeping with the MSJCC (Ratts et al., 2016), Professor Dixit could support Carla and encourage group development by exploring students’ beliefs, attitudes, knowledge, and skills. An exploration of beliefs and attitudes includes self-growth experiences as recommended in the ACA Code of Ethics (ACA, 2014, Standard F.8.c.). Students should be encouraged to understand their experiences of self and their personal perspectives before beginning learning experiences (C. D. Chan et al., 2018; Melamed et al., 2020). This can be accomplished using case vignettes and reflection activities (Mitcham et al., 2013).

Professor Dixit may also introduce the concepts of bracketing and broaching. “Bracketing revolves around the counselor’s ability to take [their] own personal values and set them aside—suspend them—but not give them up or change them” (Kaplan et al., 2017, p. 116). This is a necessary skill for students to develop as they work with peers with different values and life experiences and transition to working with clients. It will be important for Professor Dixit to model and teach students to honor their own values while also keeping their professional obligations (Kocet & Herlihy, 2014). By directly addressing Carla’s age-related apprehensions, Professor Dixit could strengthen rapport and a sense of safety in the classroom, helping his students realize that age-related issues and other culturally specific issues need to be openly discussed. He could also model broaching behavior, demonstrating specific skills to initiate and respond to cultural concerns and “facilitating a kind of cultural catharsis” (Day-Vines et al., 2020, p. 108).

In closing, adhering to a pedagogy that simultaneously honors students’ life work and experiences (P. J. Jordan, 2018) and provides opportunities for growth and development is imperative when educating master’s counseling students. We recommend that Professor Dixit use a balanced dialectical approach that affirms and validates Carla’s experience while also stretching her skills and comfort zone. This instruction methodology will benefit Carla and encourage all students to achieve greater counseling competency.

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