DIGEST-Volume10.4-FULL

20 TPC Digest | Teaching Gatekeeping to Doctoral Students A Qualitative Study of a Developmental Experiential Approach Brenda Freeman, Tricia Woodliff, Mona Martinez I n the counseling process, counselors have therapeutic power, and distressed or impaired counselors may misuse that power, potentially leading to a lack of growth or even direct harm to their clients. For these reasons, counselors and counselor educators have an ethical obligation to foster professional competence and to protect the profession from distressed or impaired counselors. Counselor education and supervision (CES) faculty members contribute to the protection of clients from distressed counselors by monitoring student dispositions, a process referred to as gatekeeping. Accreditation standards and ethical codes clearly establish the expectation that counselor educators practice gatekeeping and remediate impaired students when necessary. When it becomes evident that a student is struggling with dispositional problems, burnout, or impairment, counselor educators often work with the student on a professional development plan to remediate the issues, or to eventually suspend or dismiss the student. Gatekeeping and remediation processes are stressful for students and faculty alike, and new professors are already burdened with learning to teach and research. How do new entrants into the CES workplace prepare for the difficult role of gatekeeping? T he responsibility for preparing counselor educators to practice gatekeeping falls squarely on the shoulders of CES doctoral programs. Though counseling accreditation standards require that gatekeeping be taught to doctoral students, there are many competing priorities for the doctoral curriculum, including instruction in clinical work, supervision, teaching strategies, and research.