TPC-Journal-V5-Issue1

The Professional Counselor /Volume 5, Issue 1 148 a clear counseling approach with the guidance of supervisors, and are able to experience the school counselors’ roles of collaboration, advocacy, leadership and consulting with the guidance of professional school counselors. A few counseling interns in the current study had negative impressions of school counseling supervisors who were reluctant to share their experiences, organize practice sessions and give feedback. As a result, counseling students could not benefit from the experiences and skills of some school counselors. This finding is supported by the results of a study by Atici and Çam (2013). Similarly, some CITs in Portman’s (2002) study did not receive supervision at schools, and although they found that clinical supervision from the university supervisors was useful, there were deficits in the internship program, and they did not receive a real supervised experience. According to these results, it can be concluded that school counselors’ inability to create an environment in which they function as role models and provide feedback may affect the professional identity development of some counseling interns in a negative way. According to school counselors surveyed in the present study, counseling interns’ readiness, desire, comfort, self-efficacy, communication, leadership, group management and professional skills played roles in the effectiveness of group activities. This finding is consistent with the opinions of counseling interns regarding the contributions of the school counseling internship program to their professional development. Counseling interns reported that as a result of successful work they did, and during successful work, they felt happy, relaxed, eager and efficacious; thus, they acknowledged self-development in conducting group guidance activities and building counseling skills and group management skills. These findings parallel results from other studies, such as that CITs experience positive feelings like confidence, achievement and efficacy (Atici & Ulusoy, 2010; Nelson & Jackson, 2003) and develop their counseling skills, and that school counseling activities contribute to professional and personal development (Atici & Çam, 2013; Atici et al., 2005; Atici & Ulusoy, 2010; Jett & Delgado-Romero, 2009) and provide opportunities to do various activities (Studer, 2005). It is clear that feedback and advice from university supervisors were useful and effective in planning and carrying out successful activities, finding solutions to problems and assessing of activities. Watching video recordings of sessions enabled students to receive feedback from professional school counseling supervisors and their peers, which was very helpful and improved the conducting of group guidance activities. Similarly, in interviews, school counseling supervisors pointed out that their feedback for counseling students impacted the success of group activities. Counseling interns also reported that their feelings of happiness, pride, efficacy, confidence and love for the profession increased as they did successful work and received feedback from supervisors. These findings shared similarities with results in the literature, indicating that assurance and support from university supervisors and site supervisors in schools positively affect professional identity (Nelson & Jackson, 2003), that counseling students find feedback constructive, encouraging and helpful for improving their professional development (Özyürek, 2009). The literature also shows that nurturing feedback and advice from university supervisors and a relaxed supervision atmosphere have motivating effects (Atici & Çam, 2013), and supervision functions as a bridge between competencies in the counselor education program and the skills required in workplaces (Sutton & Page, 1994). School counseling supervisors reported that they met few problems during internship, and they solved these problems by talking with counseling students and expressing their expectations. The fact that school counselors encountered few problems emphasizes that they liked and were satisfied with the internship program, although they made recommendations in order to further develop the internship programs and counseling exercises. These recommendations were mainly to increase some activities and to start school counseling internship programs earlier than the last or fourth year of study.