TPC-Journal-V5-Issue1

The Professional Counselor /Volume 5, Issue 1 140 in their group guidance activities in the schools and from these students’ teachers regarding their views on the effects of group guidance activities. An agreement of consent regarding the purpose of the study, the research procedure and confidentiality was obtained from each of the participants. All participants voluntarily accepted participation in the study. Description of Course Process Counseling students in this study each attended a course for school counseling internship, taking place at three schools and at one university in Adana, Turkey. They went to their respective schools for half a day each week during the autumn and spring terms in their fourth year of undergraduate study. During internship, counseling students conducted group and classroom guidance activities, consulted with teachers and parents, applied assessment techniques and measurement tools, interviewed individual students, and observed other school counselors working. One group guidance session was observed by a university supervisor and/or a professional school counselor site supervisor, who provided feedback about the intern’s activity. Supervision at the university was 3 hours per week; all students and the university supervisors attended this session. During this session, counseling students discussed their activities and difficulties, and received feedback from supervisors and other students in the group. At the end of the term, students submitted a portfolio of all of their activities during the internship, with a general evaluation of the supervisory course and supervision; the school, school personnel and school counselor; and the contribution of the supervisory course to their professional and personal development. Data-Collecting Procedure Interviews and data from documents were used as qualitative data-collecting tools. The researcher interviewed nine school counseling supervisors individually using a semistructured interview guide. Open- ended questions were used to elicit supervisors’ views on the effectiveness of the school counseling internship program, problems encountered during internship, their recommendations and the assistance they provided. Interviews were recorded digitally and transcribed. Three different documents were used in this study. Counseling interns were asked to evaluate their school counseling internship programs, supervisors and supervision in terms of their professional development at the end of the term. Interns wrote about their internship programs and submitted these written texts to their supervisors as part of their final portfolio. High school students who attended group guidance activities and their teachers provided their ideas about the effects of group guidance activities on participating students’ behavior by responding to an open-ended question. These written forms of data were collected from 11 counseling students, 11 teachers and 34 students who attended group activities conducted by six counseling students. Analysis of Data The researcher analyzed qualitative data by using content analysis. To begin with, an open coding procedure was followed (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). Interview transcripts and written documents were examined by line, sentence and paragraph, and a code or a name representing a particular idea, activity or event was given. Then the researcher combined related codes into categories. For example, in coding data regarding influential factors in conducting group guidance activities, the codes of enthusiasm, not feeling anxious and feeling efficacious were grouped under the heading emotional state. Axial coding was carried out to identify main categories, their subcategories, and relationships between main and subcategories. For example, one of the categories that identified influential factors in conducting successful group guidance activities was titled counseling student - related . Emotional state and professional skills were placed under the counseling student-related category as subcategories. Finally, in the selective coding stage, the main categories and their subcategories were grouped together.