TPC_Journal_10.4_Full_Issue

The Professional Counselor | Volume 10, Issue 4 575 input issue, which is the importance of building strong relationships with administrators and the legal department in order to offer students the opportunity to gain perspectives on gatekeeping from stakeholders outside the core counseling faculty. The End of the Road: Gatekeeping and Heartbreaking Adversity module could not be implemented without strong relationships with administrators and legal services. The unique contributions of this study for counselor educators include an underscoring of the importance of instructing doctoral students in gatekeeping and the power of using experiential strategies. The interview data showed that students initially had a concrete interpretation of gatekeeping, but through participation in the experiential modules, they reported more comprehensive understandings. The importance of matching the learning experience to the developmental level of the student has been previously well established in developmental theory, but through the study we gained the insight that doctoral instruction in gatekeeping should begin at a concrete developmental level. The doctoral students in our study may have been advanced in terms of clinical and research skills, but their initial understanding of gatekeeping was unidimensional. The study also underscores the importance of helping students reflect and identify their individual belief systems and personal approaches to gatekeeping. Although legal services may recommend that faculty consistently speak in one voice on gatekeeping issues, an essential first step in eventually developing departmental consensus is transparency between individual faculty on their differing perspectives. Beyond the department level, this ongoing conversation is also foundational to growing the profession in our collective understanding of gatekeeping. The study highlights the importance of starting this process at the doctoral student level. Limitations and Future Research One limitation of the study is that qualitative research is not intended to be generalized. Therefore, it is unknown if the findings apply to doctoral students enrolled in other counselor education programs. Although there were advantages in utilizing a participant pool with different levels of engagement in the DEG Modules, a limitation associated with this research team decision was that participants who had only experienced early modules may have reflected different perspectives if they had been interviewed after participation in the final modules. Second interviews were not conducted. Another limitation is that the students, though not enrolled in courses from the lead author at the time of the study, may still have been influenced to offer a positive perspective on their learning experiences. Follow-up post-graduation interviews could be a useful mechanism to address this limitation. A limitation inherent in the design of the DEG Model is that although the design was appropriate for the context of one CES doctoral program, it may not be applicable to the institutional environments of other CES doctoral programs. The context of a high research institution may differ from an institution with a stronger focus on teaching, which could influence student reactions to the DEG Model. A second limitation related to the model itself is that departmental agreement was necessary to infuse gatekeeping material into three courses with different instructors with differing personal values and beliefs on gatekeeping. In addition, agreement to include doctoral students in master’s remediation experiences and admissions interviews was necessary to implement the DEG Model. This level of faculty collaboration may not be possible in all doctoral programs. More research on counselor education doctoral preparation is needed. The dearth of CES research on pedagogy for instructing doctoral students is apparent in content areas well beyond gatekeeping.

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