Counselor Education in the 21st Century

Issues and Experiences

Jane E. Atieno Okech, Deborah J. Rubel, Jane E. Atieno Okech, Deborah J. Rubel

• Publisher: American Counseling Association
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781119535195
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Professional Development

This distinctive text provides master's- and doctoral-level students, as well as new professionals, with a thorough exploration ofthe range of responsibilities, working conditions, roles, evaluation criteria, benefits, and challenges experienced by counselor educators. Each chapter focuses on a key aspect of the field, including teaching; supervision; mentoring; gatekeeping; research and grant writing; tenure; adjunct, part-time, and nontenured positions; program administration; leadership; and collegiality and wellness. Case vignettes and personal narratives from counselor educators are engaging and informative, and literature reviews are useful for introducing students to the material covered.

*Requests for digital versions from ACA can be found on www.wiley.com.

*To request print copies, please visit the ACAwebsite here. *Reproduction requests for material from books published by ACA should be directed to [email protected]

Chapter 1
Introduction to Counselor Education in the 21st Century

Jane E. Atieno Okech and Deborah J. Rubel

Counselor education is a profession with a unique identity supported by a professional organization dedicated to the practice of educating and supervising counselors and an articulated set of standards for counselor preparation, practice, and employment (Association for Counselor Education and Supervision [ACES], 2016; Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs [CACREP], 2015a; Gibson, Dollarhide, & Moss, 2010; Lloyd, Feit, & Nelson, 2010). The development of the counselor education field is closely associated with the evolution of counseling as a distinct profession.

The counseling profession has distinguished itself among the helping professions, with the master’s-level degree accepted as the entry-level requirement for certification and licensure for professional practice (Sweeney, 2001). Professional counselors, the American Counseling Association (ACA) and counselor educators have advocated for the counseling profession, clarified the role of professional counselors among helping professionals, and laid a firm foundation for the role of counselor educators in counselor preparation programs.

ACES has a long history of advocacy for counselor educators and supervisors. By the 1970s, the organization had developed standards for counselor preparation (ACES, 1979, 2016) and advanced “accreditation-related documents that allowed them to conduct voluntary accreditation of counseling programs” (CACREP, 2015a, para.1). The ACES vision statement states in part that it “advances professional counseling through counselor education and supervision” (ACES, 2016, p. 5), reflecting the core role that this organization has in these related professions. It was ACES’s efforts at standardizing counselor preparation and establishing accreditation standards and its consultation with the American Personnel and Guidance Association (a precursor to ACA) that led to the creation of CACREP (CACREP, 2015a).

Since its inception in 1981, CACREP’s mission has been “to provide leadership and to promote excellence in professional preparation through the accreditation of counseling and related educational programs” (CACREP, 2015a, para. 1). The accrediting body has had a significant impact on the standardization of the counselor education curriculum, the shaping of the professional identity of counselor educators, and the hiring practices in counselor education programs. By 2014, 63% of counselor preparation programs in the United States were accredited by CACREP (Honderich & Lloyd-Hazlett, 2015; Lee, 2013).

The foremost accrediting body for counseling programs has continued to expand and define the field of professional counseling. In 2015, CACREP announced plans to merge with the Council on Rehabilitation Education, an organization that accredits professional rehabilitation programs (CACREP, 2015b). With this merger, the two organizations have formed a powerful body overseeing the accreditation of a broader range of counselor preparation programs.

Over the years, the more the CACREP Standards laid out specific criteria for master’s-level counselor training programs, the more its standards evolved to shape the counselor education curriculum at the doctoral level also. Ultimately these evolving guidelines have influenced the identity, role, and function of counselor educators (CACREP, 2015a). This development has intersected with the influence of certification and licensure bodies and the increasing prominence of counselor education programs and counselor educators in shaping the standards and requirements for training, certification, licensure, and professional counseling practice (Bobby, 2013; CACREP, 2015a; National Board for Certified Counselors, 2016).

One result of the widespread acceptance of CACREP Standards is the consistency in focus and content of the doctoral curriculum across accredited programs. The 2009 and 2016 CACREP Standards clearly identify the doctoral degree in counselor education and supervision as the preferred degree for faculty teaching at the master’s and doctoral levels. The identity of counselor educators therefore has become deeply entrenched in the training parameters established by the accreditation standards, resulting in the unique academic preparation, professional role, and experiences of counselor educators.

Relationship to Higher Education

Although counselor education is a unique professional and academic field, its practice resides within the larger realm of higher education. Within higher education, the practices commonly engaged in by educators (teaching, research, and service) are affected by the history, evolution, and current status of higher education as well as the standards and traditions of the particular institution within which a program, discipline, or department resides (Altbach, 2016). To understand counselor education faculty practices and experience, it is necessary to understand the higher education context within which counselor education occurs.

Higher education is a high-status field in which faculty maintain relatively high levels of autonomy around their teaching and research activity (Altbach, 2016). Some of the stability of higher education can be attributed to its complex, hierarchical, and culturally entrenched nature (Geiger, 2016). In general, this structure buffers institutions of higher education from external influences, promotes very slow change, and may promote historical inequities (Geiger, 2016). However, higher education is also an evolving field that has experienced profound shifts that affect the professoriate (Altbach, 2016). Although globalization trends place increasing emphasis on the international context of higher education, the American system of colleges and universities remains the gold standard (Finkelstein, Conley, & Schuster, 2016). Thus, the evolving trends that may affect future counselor educators may be usefully informed by examining higher education in the United States.

Trends that are relevant to the context of higher education can be conceptualized as those associated with student characteristics, governmental influence, and actions within institutions (Geiger, 2016). Over time, the students in higher education have become increasingly diverse and focused on preparation for work rather than preparation for entry into academe. Governmental influence can be seen as dual shifts, one from high financial investment to lower financial investment and the other from low regulatory involvement to higher regulatory involvement. At the institutional level, these shifts have resulted in tensions between commitments to teaching and research, with demands for higher productivity in both areas with fewer resources. This has been coupled with a growing focus on accounting for productivity related to student and scholarly outcomes. In addition, these shifts have also resulted in increased financial pressures that have resulted in increased entrepreneurial activity in both teaching (such as growth in for-profit education) and research (such as research collaborations with private companies; Geiger, 2016).

Altbach (2016) interpreted these general trends into more specific effects on the professoriate. Current economic struggles broadly affect pay, program resources, and teaching loads for faculty (Altbach, 2016). And although the valuing of research within higher education remains high, funding for research is increasingly difficult to acquire. This, along with the increased vocational focus of students and the pressure to prioritize teaching, creates a difficult division of purpose for many faculty. This division of purpose has affected the structure of higher education. It has caused declines in tenure-track positions and increases in part-time, adjunct, and full-time nontenured positions while also perpetuating inequality among these positions. Finally, increases in governmental oversight and public calls for the accountability of academic institutions have increased the influence of administrators, decreased the power of faculty, and further shaped their work (Altbach, 2016).

Each of these trends affects counselor education programs and the counselor educators working within them. The effects on teaching and research are obvious and related to productivity and accountability pressures with dwindling resources. The declining emphasis on tenure-track positions and growing use of non-tenure-track faculty and part-time faculty are also changing the face of counselor education faculty. Although this shift is usually in response to universities’ teaching mission, it also presents growing issues within faculty, such as pay inequality, marginalization, and shifting expectations about academic careers (Banasik & Dean, 2016). These are but a few ways the current context of higher education may affect the 21st century counselor educator; the effects can be seen in each of the domains discussed in the ensuing chapters. To fully understand what it means to be a part of counselor education, one must understand higher education; consider the specific employment settings within which counselor educators work; and consider institution type, program accreditation status, program model (traditional, online, or hybrid), professional identity, professional development, and social justice and diversity issues.

Counselor Educators’ Employment Settings

A quick cross-referencing of accredited counselor education programs (CACREP, 2015a) and institutional characteristics (Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research, n.d.) provides a useful perspective on the diverse academic settings in which counselor educators work. The academic settings range from research-intensive to teaching-intensive institutions. The settings may offer only master’s degree programs or may offer both master’s and doctoral degree programs. Counselor education is offered at both nonprofit and for-profit institutions as well as those classified as public and private. In addition, academic settings that house counselor education programs differ in terms of training modality, from online or hybrid to traditional training, in which the majority of training experiences are completed face to face. These contextual differences in the types of institutions in which counselor educators work and the types of delivery models used contribute to the differences and similarities in counselor educators’ professional functions and experiences in academia. It is for this reason that the authors of these chapters also address the intersection of the attributes of counselor education and the domains of institutional characteristics, accreditation status, traditional or variations of online models of curriculum delivery, professional identity, professional development, and diversity and social justice issues (see Figure 1.1).

Understanding Counselor Educators’ Work Experience in Context

Understanding counselor educators’ work experience requires an understanding of the history of and current trends in counselor education and higher education and also an understanding of several domains of counselor education. These domains include institution type, accreditation status, professional identity, professional development, and diversity and social justice issues. What follows is a general introduction to the background, significance, and scope of influence of each of these domains. The interactions between each of these domains and the individual attributes of counselor education are explored in more depth in Chapters 2 to 12.

Figure 1.1 An Overview of the Focus of the Book and Each Chapter

Institution Type

Counselor educators’ work experience is influenced by institutional characteristics. The most familiar way in which universities and colleges are categorized in terms of their institutional characteristics is via the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. This system originated in 1973 and was intended to facilitate research on institutions of higher education by providing ways to differentiate between institutions (Altbach, 2015). Changes in institutional ch...