DIGEST-Volume10.4-FULL

3 TPC Digest D o ctoral-level education of counselor educators is critical to the development of future leaders in the profession as researchers, educators, and practitioners. Holding the terminal degree within the profession, counselor education doctoral students (CEDS) are prepared to meet the increasing demands across the country for a qualified workforce of school, college, rehabilitation, clinical mental health, addictions, and family counselors who can meet the psychosocial well-being needs of a diverse global population. Thus, fostering a better understanding of doctoral-level counselor education is critical for the sustainability of the profession. Research on counselor education doctoral study is essential for improving and maintaining the efficacy of doctoral training because CEDS are the future leaders, faculty members, supervisors, and advocates of the profession. This scoping review sought to construct a snapshot of the extant research and evidence base for doctoral-level counselor education utilizing the core areas of the 2016 CACREP Standards as the organizing framework. To foster rigor and replicability, this scoping review adhered to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR). Empirical research from the past 15 years (2006–2019) was examined utilizing the following domains: Professional Identity, Supervision, Counseling, Teaching, Research, Leadership, and Advocacy. Articles were considered eligible only if they were published in a peer-reviewed journal, were research-based with an identified methodology, focused on some aspect of counselor education doctoral study, and were published in the English language. Grey literature was excluded from this study, including dissertations, conference proceedings, magazines, or any other non–peer-reviewed media. Of all the research considered, only 39 published articles were found to satisfy the inclusion criteria. The domains that were covered by 10 or more studies included Supervision, Professional Identity, and Research. Domains that were covered by nine or fewer studies were Counseling, Teaching, Leadership, and Advocacy. Additionally, our scoping review yielded 38 articles that were categorized as “other foci.” Those articles focused on some aspect of doctoral counselor education but explored a topic that was not directly linked to our framework or to students’ learning, training, or skill acquisition. Trends across publication year, journals, journal professional affiliation, and research methodology were also reported to provide context. R ecommendations for further research on counselor education doctoral-level training are discussed, from building an organized collaborative of researchers to conducting regular diagnostic assessments of the state of the research. Recommendations for counselor educators are presented, such as building specialized doctoral-level andragogy, professional identity, and best practices for program implementation. In considering profession-wide implications, this scoping review lends support to the urgency of the call to promote research-based or empirically driven preparation practices in counseling. Fostering robust scholarship of doctoral-level counselor education and developing a corpus from which doctoral-level counselor education programs may draw remain critical tasks for future research. Gideon Litherland, PhD, NCC, CCMHC, ACS, BC-TMH, LCPC, is a core faculty member in the Counseling@Northwestern site of the Counseling Program at the Family Institute at Northwestern University. Gretchen Schulthes, PhD, NCC, LAC, is the Associate Director of Advisement and Transfer at Hudson County Community College. Correspondence may be addressed to Gideon Litherland, 618 Library Place, Evanston, IL 60201, gideon.litherland@northwestern.edu. Gideon Litherland, Gretchen Schulthes A Scoping Review | TPC Digest