TPC Journal V8, Issue 2 - FULL ISSUE

The Professional Counselor | Volume 8, Issue 2 195 cultural values of the counseling profession, counselor education programs, and the community in which the program is embedded can shed light on what behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs are valued and considered norms . This examination can prompt critical awareness of how CITs differing from cultural norms may be assessed and evaluated differently, and even unfairly. Jacobs et al. (2011) described insufficient support for evaluators in how to facilitate difficult discussions in gatekeeping-related issues, specifically when the issues included attention to diversity components. Doctoral students must be given ample opportunity to identify cultural facets of case examples and talk through their course of action as a means to raise awareness and practice looking through a multicultural lens in gatekeeping-related decisions and processes. Of equal importance is familiarity with legal and due process considerations, which are addressed in the section below. Legal and Due Process Considerations Three governing regulations that are often discussed in the literature, but left to the reader’s imagination in how faculty members actually understand them, include the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) of 2000, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990, and a student’s rights and due process policy within an institution. Presenting these three concepts and their implications to the gatekeeping process is warranted, as doctoral students are assumed only to have the understanding of these concepts from a student perspective. Although FERPA, the ADA, and the due process clause may be covered in new faculty orientation, how these regulations interface with gatekeeping and remediation are generally not reviewed during standard university orientations. It is recommended that training and curricula include general knowledge and institution-specific information related to the regulations. Institution-specific material can include university notification of rights; handbook material directly addressing student rights; remediation policy and procedures; and resources and specific location of campus services such as the disability office. Inclusion of general and program-specific information will help future faculty members in possessing a rounded and well-grounded understanding of how legal considerations will apply to students and inform their gatekeeping practices. Lastly, doctoral students should be informed that the regulations detailed below may limit their access of information due to master’s-level student privacy. To begin, doctoral students should intimately understand FERPA and its application to the CITs they often supervise, teach, and evaluate. FERPA. General information may consist of the history and evolution of FERPA in higher education and its purpose in protecting students’ confidentiality in relation to educational records. Doctoral students must be introduced to the protocol for ensuring confidentiality in program files. Program files include communication about CIT performance and may be directly related to gatekeeping issues. Doctoral students must recognize that, as evaluators communicating CIT assessment of fitness, including dispositional competencies, they must abide by FERPA regulations, because dispositional competencies are considered educational records. Educational programs often utilize off-site practicum and internship programs that are independent from the respective university (Gilfoyle, 2008), and this is indeed the case with many CACREP- accredited counselor training programs. Doctoral students must have an understanding of the protocols in place to communicate with site supervisors who are unaffiliated with the university, such as student written-consent forms that are a routine part of paperwork for off-site training placement (Gilfoyle, 2008). Although doctoral students may not be directly corresponding with off-site evaluators, their training should consist of familiarizing them with FERPA regulations that address the disclosure of student records in order to prepare them in serving CITs in a faculty capacity. Understanding how