Volume_7_Issue_2_Digest

8 TPC Digest C linical courses are important in the development of students pursuing a master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling (CMHC). Despite the importance of clinical courses, little is known about what CMHC students perceive as being helpful about their teachers of clinical courses. To investigate this, we sought the viewpoints of beginning counselors who were in their first four years of working as licensed counselors post-graduation. We were curious about what beginning counselors perceived as most helpful about their teachers of clinical courses during their master’s degree programs and helped them to become the counselors they are today. Thirty-two beginning counselors completed a Q sort that assessed the perceived helpfulness of their teachers of clinical courses in their CMHC master’s degree program. Participants were prompted to reflect on teachers they had in clinical courses during their master’s degree programs and then to reflect on what it was about those teachers that had been most helpful to them in becoming the counselors they are today. Participants were then directed to read 34 statements and rank order them on a response grid that ranged from +4 ( most helpful ) to -4 ( most unhelpful ). After rank ordering the statements, participants were asked to provide written responses to several post-Q sort questions designed to elicit qualitative data about why certain items were important to them. Three different learner preferences about teachers of clinical courses were observed among participants in the study (i.e., application-oriented learners, intrinsically motivated learners, affective-oriented learners). When considering the different learner preferences that emerged in this study, it may be helpful to conceptualize each factor as a student-learner archetype present in CMHC clinical courses. Below, we provide a brief description of each student-learner archetype, and what they might perceive as an ideal educator in a clinical course. Randall M. Moate, Jessica M. Holm, Erin M. West Perceived Helpfulness of Teachers in Clinical Courses