572 The Professional Counselor | Volume 10, Issue 4 P4’s comment on learning to give direct feedback in the clinical supervision unit reflects a conflicted voice: But with a supervisee, it was different because you’re also in this evaluative role. . . . I wanted to like, be really supportive, you know . . . [but] I also had to evaluate their work. I wanted to be direct, but I also don’t want to give them a bad evaluation. It was just very difficult. In this statement regarding the Level 1 module, P8 spoke through a counselor educator perspective: I’m thinking about potentially becoming a faculty member . . . in interviewing at universities, I’d like to really try to understand their philosophy of gatekeeping and remediation to see if it could, like, be a good fit for me. If I went to a school and found out they didn’t do gatekeeping, I would have a really hard time being there . . . it’s just kind of like, “Well, what are we doing to ensure that the people we’re serving are protected?” Uneven Responses to Experiential Learning Across all nine interviews, participants indicated a strong, positive response to experiential learning. However, some experiential elements were more powerful than others. Reflecting on the experience of participating in the PDCA-RA training video and the master’s admissions interviews, P7 stated: “I think it was just really, really fun to be a part of the training . . . and then to actually get the chance to do it again during admissions.” Teaching gatekeeping was described as a positive experience by P4: Being forced to teach anyone anything is a good learning experience . . . a lot of pressure is on me. Like, oh, I really, really need to know this stuff so I can teach it pretty well. So, I definitely knew my presentation . . . so that was a good learning experience. In relation to the mock hearing, P5 reflected: “I learned a lot. I was actually the student in the mock hearing and so I learned . . . from their perspective what they might experience, but I also learned from the other side of it too, from the institution side.” Not all experiential activities were considered impactful. Three participants reflected that the remediation experiential module was confusing. The confusion may reflect on the module but could also be related to the concept that remediation is not a science and requires judgment, experience, and consultation with others. Stated by P8: “It was hard for me to tell [if the student made improvements] because I didn’t have like a clear baseline.” P1 reported: “I mostly ended up just having confusing conversations with the student.” The ecological gatekeeping map also appeared to be lacking in experiential power. Although the group experience of working together on the module was deemed valuable, three participants could not recall what they learned from the experience. A word count showed participants gave shorter descriptions on the ecological map than on any of the other experiential units. It is possible that a deeper level of preparation in the ecological model would enhance the experiential learning. Understanding the system elements of higher education and how they overlap with gatekeeping is fraught with complexity, even for junior faculty.
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