DIGEST-V8-i1

8 TPC Digest W hen counselor education doctoral students (CEDS) are given teaching responsibilities without the guidance of teaching mentors, they are at risk of developing poor attitudes and skill sets. CEDS need guided learning experiences with feedback from counselor educators to help them become successful university teachers. Although support for using teaching mentorships is present in higher education, less is known about the use of teaching mentorships in counselor education. Many CEDS who become faculty members will teach as a primary component of the faculty job, so it is imperative that counselor educators know more about how to intentionally prepare CEDS for these roles. New counselor educators reported that teaching mentorships by senior faculty members were helpful in enhancing their teaching skills, begging the question: Why wait to support CEDS’ teaching development until they are on the job? Teaching mentorships, like other mentor relationships, are described as having career (teaching skills) and psychosocial (mentor– mentee relationship) foci. Both career and psychosocial mentoring types, or some combination, are used by academic faculty mentors. Mentoring provides faculty members with a flexible vehicle for addressing the multiple aspects of being a teacher. Ultimately, teaching mentorships transpire between faculty members and CEDS through a variety of formal (planned and more structured), informal (spontaneous and less structured), or combined mentorship styles. We found no evidence in the counselor education literature describing common styles of teaching mentorship used by counselor educators. Our purpose was to learn more about how counselor educators understand and use their own teaching mentorship styles, thus requiring that we measure counselor educators’ subjective understanding of this phenomenon. Accordingly, Q methodology was used to identify the teaching mentorship styles of 25 counselor educators with at least one year of experience as teaching mentors. Our results suggest three teaching mentorship styles labeled as Supervisor, Facilitator, and Evaluator, which reflect counselor educators’ distinct viewpoints on how to mentor doctoral students in teaching within counselor education doctoral programs. The Supervisor is characterized by a more structured and progressive approach with a focus on teaching skill development, whereas the Facilitator is more relationally focused and student-centered. Evaluators mentor for the creation of higher-order learning environments and do so by using corrective feedback to support CEDS’ growth. Our findings provide counselor educators with ideas for transferring aspects of the identified teaching mentorship styles to their own practices. To start, counselor educators can consider their current style of mentorship in relation to the teaching mentorship styles (i.e., Supervisor, Facilitator, Evaluator) offered in this study. We encourage counselor educators to identify and discuss their teaching mentorship styles with CEDS early in the mentorship process to facilitate a goodness of fit. Conversely, when CEDS are assigned to a faculty mentor, it may be important for counselor educators to consider how their style of mentorship will fit with their mentee. Finally, counselor educators with a singular teaching mentorship style would do well to integrate strengths from other teaching mentorship styles into their practice. Eric R. Baltrinic is an assistant professor at Winona State University. Randall M. Moate is an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Tyler. Michelle Gimenez Hinkle is an assistant professor at William Paterson University. Marty Jencius is an associate professor at Kent State University. Jessica Z. Taylor is an assistant professor at Central Methodist University. Correspondence can be addressed to Eric Baltrinic, Gildemeister 116A, P.O. Box 5838, 175 West Mark Street, Winona, MN 55987-5838, ebaltrinic@gmail.com. Eric R. Baltrinic, Randall M. Moate, Michelle Gimenez Hinkle, Marty Jencius, Jessica Z. Taylor Counselor Educators’ Teaching Mentorship Styles A Q Methodology Study