574 The Professional Counselor | Volume 10, Issue 4 The behind the curtain theme illuminated the lack of transparency in gatekeeping, in that students were surprised by the gatekeeping processes. The finding is puzzling because remediation and gatekeeping literature encourages transparency in identification of dispositions, remediation processes, and reasons students might be dismissed from any given academic program. Perhaps for legal or other reasons counselor education programs are somewhat opaque in their explanations of gatekeeping. The results provide support for delivering content in gatekeeping through developmental and experiential approaches. Consistent with developmental theory (Piaget, 1977) and findings in doctoral instruction in clinical supervision instruction (Baker et al., 2002; Granello & Hazler, 1998), students began the process with concrete understandings and moved toward more complex interpretations. Also, mirroring other studies in doctoral pedagogy (Dollarhide et al., 2013; Granello & Hazler, 1998), students attributed learning to engagement in experiential activities, rarely referencing lectures or reading assignments except as sources of foundational knowledge. Aligned with developmental theory (Piaget, 1977), we learned that experiential learning must be carefully cross-walked to parallel to the developmental level of the participants. Two of the six modules (Mentoring Students Through Monitoring Remediation and Gatekeeping Through a Systems Lens: Designing an Ecological Gatekeeping Map) contained experiential elements that in retrospect the authors believe were not well aligned with the developmental levels of the students. Regarding the remediation module, at the time of the study, the doctoral students were working to embrace the new roles of teacher, researcher, and clinical supervisor. Adding the difficult-to-define role of remediation mentor was perhaps experienced as role overload. On the ecological map, the authors hypothesized that the task was too complex, requiring more didactic instruction and experience with systems in organizations. The finding that two experiential elements were perhaps not targeted at the designated developmental level was less critical than the underscoring of the importance of conducting research on pedagogy in doctoral-level courses. Until conducting the study, we were unaware that the two experiential units were problematic and would have argued that the ecological gatekeeping map was one of the strongest experiential components in the DEG Model. Implications for Counselor Education The findings of the study led to insights that inform program development and pedagogy for counselor educators. The values branch of program evaluation (Abma &Widdershoven, 2008) advocates the use of qualitative analysis to develop deeper understandings of how knowledge is constructed. The finding that doctoral students expressed more emotion in the immediate aftermath of experiential activities reinforces the importance of prompt attention to emotional processing after experiential components. The emotional–motivational theory on learning posits that anxiety negatively impacts concentration and desired outcome as well as reduces interest in engaging in future learning experiences in the content area. This relationship is well documented in research on math anxiety (Passolunghi et al., 2019). Anxiety was expressed in some student reflections, but not unexpectedly, as gatekeeping can be laden with conflict. The results point to several practical pedagogical issues referred to in program evaluation theory by Stufflebeam (2003) as input factors. One such factor is that experiential pedagogy requires more instructional time than didactic instruction. The authors concluded that the importance of gatekeeping and the overall positive results justified the time investment but recognize the difficulties involved in implementing time-intensive experiential activities. The findings reflect another counselor education
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