TPC-Journal-V5-Issue3

The Professional Counselor /Volume 5, Issue 3 380 Teaching practices such as contextual teaching, constructivist pedagogy, experiential teaching approaches and transparent counseling pedagogy share commonalities with, and reflect certain ideals of, learner-centered pedagogy. We believe that learner-centered pedagogy could represent an overarching theoretical umbrella, under which previous teaching practices presented in the counseling literature could represent different forms of learner-centered instruction. In this way, learner-centered pedagogy may serve as a conceptual framework that educators can use to provide an impactful learning experience for counseling students. We provide a brief description of the learning needs of counselor education students based on the demands they will face working as professional counselors, followed by an explanation of how learner-centered pedagogy may ultimately help professional counselors meet these demands. A case study is then presented to demonstrate how learner-centered pedagogy was applied in a couples counseling class. Preparing Counselor Trainees for Professional Practice: Facilitating Deep Learning Master’s degree programs in counselor education are designed to prepare students to begin working as professional counselors upon graduation. To learn to be professional counselors, students must develop a sense of comfort with ambiguity and a capacity for independent and reflective thinking (Dollarhide et al., 2007). Counseling students also must develop competent clinical skills and adequate knowledge to pass licensure examinations. Traditionally, courses thought to be didactic (e.g., theories, ethics, diagnosis, couples and family counseling) have tended to emphasize the acquisition of important content knowledge. In contrast, seminar courses (e.g., prepracticum, practicum, internship) are oriented to experiential learning and the development of clinical skills (Sperry, 2012). Counselor educators have designed curricula with the dual focus of acquiring important content knowledge and the development of clinical skills. Yet it is unclear what approaches to teaching are helpful for preparing counselor trainees for the demands of being a professional counselor, particularly approaches to teaching didactic courses. One means of gaining insight into this question of helpful teaching approaches to didactic or seminar courses is to explore what counseling students and practicing counselors believe is important in their training. A comprehensive review of the literature revealed only a few articles that offer some evidence of what students and practicing counselors perceive as important learning experiences during their graduate degree programs, experiences that help to prepare them for professional counseling careers. Orlinsky, Botermans, Rønnestad, and the SPR Collaborative Research Network (2001) found that professional therapists recall practical and experiential learning as most helpful in facilitating their professional development. Similarly, Furr and Carroll (2003) found that experiential learning activities and activities that involve immediate application of knowledge have a greater impact on students’ development than cognitive teaching strategies. Grant (2006) supported these research findings; she posited that counselor education programs should expand beyond didactic- intensive approaches to teaching to incorporate more opportunities for experiential learning and activities that generate reflective thinking. Grant surmised that these approaches to teaching are helpful for preparing counselor trainees for the complexity of working with challenging client populations. Experiential and applied learning are important facets of learner-centered pedagogy that can help instructors move away from didactic-intensive styles of teaching and enhance deeper approaches to learning in their students. Researchers have identified a deep approach as one of two approaches