TPC Journal-Vol 9- Issue 4-FULL ISSUE

364 The Professional Counselor | Volume 9, Issue 4 learning requires the counseling faculty to give up much of their power and trust the learners’ ability to contribute equally to the learning environment. Person-centered counseling faculty might also relinquish power regarding learning objectives for individual learners (Knowles, 1975; Rogers & Freiberg, 1994). The educator can have broad goals for the course, but counseling faculty can engage CITs in developing their own specific learning objectives and in deciding how those objectives will be met. Although it is clearly not possible to meet the needs of every individual in a course, counseling faculty can address the most common learning needs within the structure of the course and provide resources for individuals with unique learning interests (Cornelius-White, 2005; Knowles, 1975; Mearns, 1997). Projects proposed by students exemplify a humanistic-oriented way of helping students meet their learning objectives because self- chosen projects tend to be based on problems that are of relevance to the students (Rogers & Freiberg, 1994). Humanistic counseling faculty give students responsibility for the creation and implementation of projects and act as a resource when assistance or experience is needed. Projects that provide a resource or service to the community can help students reach learning objectives in an experiential way (Burnett, Long, & Horne, 2005; Svinicki & McKeachie, 2011) and meet CACREP standards related to advocacy and diversity. In one classroom, student journal entries indicated that service learning increased the students’ “awareness, knowledge, responsibility, and skills related to cultural, social . . . and civic concerns of diverse communities” (Burnett et al., 2005, p. 166). Educators also may encourage the self-direction of students by engaging students in posing a large-scale problem and giving the students the responsibility to investigate and propose possible reasons for the problem and ways to address the problem (Rogers & Freiberg, 1994). One way that person-centered counseling faculty help CITs develop critical thinking is to place responsibility for learning upon the learners (Combs, 1986; Mearns, 1997). Knowles (1975) described self-directed learning as students taking “the initiative, with or without the help of others, in diagnosing their learning needs, formulating learning goals, identifying human and material resources for learning, choosing and implementing appropriate learning strategies, and evaluating learning outcomes” (p. 18). However, he realized that the typical student was not socialized to learn this way; therefore, he emphasized the importance of using small steps to facilitate self-direction. Although person-centered counseling faculty do not take responsibility for CITs’ learning, they do feel much responsibility to students to provide a facilitative environment by developing meaningful relationships with CITs, serving as resources, providing needed supervision, and making necessary changes to the environment as learners pursue their growth process (Dollarhide & Granello, 2012; Mearns, 1997). Teaching CITs to think for themselves and helping them develop the basic attitudes toward people that are facilitative of change will give beginning counselors the tools to respond to difficult or unique counseling situations and to know how to find the type of supervision or support they need. Ethical and legal issues are another important dimension for CITs (ACA, 2014, F.7.e., F.5.a.; CACREP, 2015, 2.F.1.), and one for which a humanistic approach to learning is particularly appropriate because of the focus on helping learners develop the ability to critically think through problems (Knowles, 1975). One way that person-centered counseling faculty can model ethical principles is by giving their students a full disclosure of what to expect from a humanistic-oriented learning environment. CITs need to be informed of expectations regarding their responsibility for learning, expectations for self-disclosure, and how grades will be assigned (ACA, 2014, F.9.a.; CACREP, 2015, 2.D.; Morrisett & Gadbois, 2006). Although these disclosures are necessary in any classroom, special clarification of the differences between a humanistic learning environment and a typical classroom may be necessary to