TPC-Journal-V5-Issue1

The Professional Counselor /Volume 5, Issue 1 155 experiences , and students were told that the purpose of the seminar was to infuse the didactic content of counselor development with creative, hands-on learning opportunities. Following the facilitation of each activity, students were invited to reflect on their experiences through electronic journaling in the university computer lab. The following section outlines the structure of the seminar across both days for all participants: 1. Discussion of professional development, including CACREP core curriculum requirements for graduate-level counselor training; 2. Discussion of developing the counselor professional identity across training and clinical experiences; 3. Discussion of the role of counselor educators and supervisors; 4. Discussion of professional fit, critical incidents in counselor training and career concerns of CITs; 5. Discussion of research into models of professional identity development including transformational tasks; 6. Discussion of the role of self-reflection in counselor personal and professional development; 7. Discussion of CIT self-efficacy; 8. Facilitation of transformational learning experience 1: True north activity; 9. Discussion of wellness and self-care in counselor training; 10. Facilitation of transformational learning experience 2: Puzzling wellness activity; 11. Discussion of the use of music as an expressive art in counseling practice; 12. Facilitation of transformational learning experience 3: Lyrics to my life activity; 13. Discussion of the use of cinematherapy in counseling practice; 14. Transformational learning experience 4: Viewing of the movie Prayers for Bobby , and facilitation of discussion following viewing the movie; 15. Discussion of values as a determinant of counseling theory and practice; 16. Facilitation of transformational learning experience 5: Values bench activity; and 17. Final post-seminar discussion of experiences. (For a full explanation of each transformational learning exercise facilitated in the seminar, please contact the first author). Students completed the PPRPS pretest, demographic sheet and informed consent prior to arriving at the seminar on day 1. The PPRPS pretest data collection will be referred to as Time 1 data. The demographic sheet included a personal 4-digit code (for participant anonymity) and gathered information about the counseling specialty track in which the participants were enrolled, their year in the counseling program and their gender. Students completed the PPRPS posttest at the start of the seminar on day 1, subsequently referred to as Time 2 data. Throughout the 2 days, students completed five transformational learning experience activities and reflected on each through electronic journaling following each activity. Students were asked to save their reflective journals and submit them to the principal investigator at the end of the 2-day seminar. At the end of day 2, students completed the PPRPS posttest again, subsequently referred to as Time 3 data. In addition, students wrote down the two most meaningful transformational learning experiences of the 2-day seminar, to be used in a frequency count by the researchers. Approximately 3 months following the completion of the seminar, students completed the PPRPS posttest for the final data collection time point, subsequently referred to as Time 4 data. Researchers kept all student data confidential at each data collection time point through the use of the personal 4-digit codes. Electronic journals were submitted by students to the principal investigator via a protected email server and saved in a password-protected file for review and coding. Results A one-way, within-group, repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to compare students’ self-reported professional performance using the PPRPS before, during and after the seminar. The comparison was conducted using the mean PPRPS score for all participants at Time 1, Time 2, Time 3 and Time 4. Nine participants did not submit PPRPS results at a minimum of one data collection time point and therefore were