TPC Journal V7, Issue 1-FULL ISSUE

The Professional Counselor | Volume 7, Issue 1 25 positive impact on their teaching skills. A smaller group of participants (22.2%) responded that PME had no impact at all on the development of teaching skills. Four themes emerged from the written responses describing how PME impacted the development of teaching skills. Theme 1: Confidence in teaching . Having more confidence was frequently cited as a benefit to hav- ing PME and developing teaching skills during doctoral study. Some participants stated that many aspects of counseling involve teaching to a degree; therefore, having PME strengthened the ability to teach in the classroom. On the other side, there were some participants who regretted not having more PME directly related to teaching. One participant wrote, “I wish I had more experience teach- ing, managing a classroom, developing innovative and attention catching ideas. I know it’s more me than anything else so I need to develop my style more.” Theme 2: Providing examples in the classroom . Perhaps the theme with the most support from participants was the perceived benefit of PME in their ability to provide examples while teaching. Those with PME had plenty of practical examples from their experience to draw from, which helped them a great deal while teaching. One participant wrote, “I was able to use examples drawn from my clinical experience to bring certain topics to life. I was also better able to describe some clinical issues and to teach certain skills.” Several participants wrote that they received positive feedback from students about the value of their stories and examples to enhance learning. Some also stated that they felt better prepared to conduct a live role-play in class to bring a technique to life because they had benefitted from PME. One respondent illustrated this idea well: “It’s difficult to teach something you have no experience with. There were others in my cohort who had no real clinical experience prior to starting their doctoral program and they were much less effective as teachers.” Theme 3: Developing a new skill . Some participants responded that teaching was an entirely new skill that was unrelated to their PME. For these participants, teaching was a skill that was solely developed during doctoral study, as this respondent wrote: “Teaching was not a part of my post- master’s work. This was an entirely new set of skills I learned in doctoral study. Neither more nor less experience would have made a difference for me in this area.” Theme 4: Value of prior teaching experiences . The fourth theme captures the positive impact described by those participants whose PME included teaching experiences prior to pursuing their doctoral degree. In particular, those with school counseling experience described preparing and implementing classroom guidance lessons as a natural comparison to teaching. Some participants had PME that involved providing training and giving presentations, which was also associated with teaching. For these participants, their specific PME had a positive impact on their development as a teacher during doctoral study, as this respondent reported: “Having an education background and then opportunity in my school to perform classroom guidance lessons, while different, still gave me an important opportunity to practice developing lesson plans.” Core Area of Doctoral Development: Research and Scholarship . The largest group of participants (46.3%) responded that PME had no impact on their ability to develop research and scholarship skills in their doctoral program. Smaller groups of participants reported a range of weak to moderate to strong positive impact on their research and scholarship development. This was the only area of doctoral development that most participants described as being unrelated to PME. Three themes emerged from the written responses describing how PME impacted the development of research and scholarship. Theme 1: No impact on research development . Most participants stated that their ability to develop research skills during their doctoral program was unrelated to having PME in the field. For these