An Exploratory Investigation about Graduate Counseling Students’ Perceived Competencies in Integrated Care

Integrated care is a holistic treatment modality that increases collaborative efforts between primary care and mental health providers. Support for integrated care is evident, but the development of counselors for this level of care is limited. This study examined graduate counseling students’ (N = 243) perceived competencies about integrated care. Additionally, the study shares findings regarding students’ experiences, useful skills, and concerns about their work in integrated care settings. The results from this study suggest that students have encouraging perceived competencies. However, there were indications that specific contextual challenges remain, but exposure to integrated care training will be valuable. Implications for didactic and practical exposure to integrated care in counselor education programs are discussed

Development and Initial Psychometric Properties of the Integrated Care Competency Scale for Counselors

This study provides the development phases and initial psychometric evaluation of the Integrated Care Competency Scale (ICCS) with sample (n = 243). Specifically, quantitative methods with graduate counseling students were used in this study. The ICCS through a three-phase study process was honed to 65 items and broadly assesses graduate counseling students’ perceived competencies in integrated care. Phase 1 reports on item generation and issues related to content validity, Phase 2 describes the results of a pilot study and preliminary psychometric properties, and Phase 3 discusses the exploratory factor analysis, and further psychometric properties conducted to assess the usefulness and reliability of the ICCS items. Results from the three-phase study process revealed satisfactory reliability, factor structure, and usefulness of the newly constructed ICCS in measuring integrated care competencies. Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for the overall scale was .98. Discussion, limitation, and implications for future research are presented

Virtual School Counseling during COVID-19: Perspectives from School Counselors and Interns

Although virtual school counseling (VSC) has been present since the early 2000s, the COVID-19 pandemic conditions caused mandatory implementation of this modality in K-12 schools. Many school counselor supervisors (SCSs) and school counselors in training (SCITs) had no experience in VSC. Therefore, this interpretative phenomenological analysis research is developed to explore the lived experiences of SCSs and SCITs in VSC during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data collection was completed using interviews with data analyzed through manual coding and thematic analysis. Three themes emerged showing the challenges and outcomes of VSC. Implications to counselor education, school as a system, professional identity and policies, limitations and future recommendations are discussed. Keywords: virtual school counseling, school counselors, school counselor in training, COVID-19, qualitative research DOI: 10.7176/JEP/14-27-08 Publication date:September 30th 2023

Fostering teacher candidate dispositions in teacher education programs

The role of teacher preparation programs is to ensure that candidates are effectively prepared in the knowledge, skills and dispositions needed to be an effective educator.  However, dispositions have always been a challenge to the field of teacher education, particularly in response to assessing dispositions and in answering the question; can dispositions be taught?  Many professionals in education and career counseling believe that candidates come endowed with the dispositions needed to be an effective teacher and this “endowment” is the reason the candidate has chosen the career of teaching.  Though, to a certain degree this premise may hold true, this article discussing a study done in an early childhood teacher preparation program with teacher candidates and demonstrated dispositions can be “taught” if there is intentionality with effective teaching methods related to dispositions. Pre and post assessment results of 99 teacher candidates are compared in an introductory early childhood education course to measure candidates’ tendencies to act in ways conducive to appropriate professional dispositions.  A teaching intervention related to dispositions is also discussed and provided the premise that with intentional and effective teaching, comes intentional and effective learning