The Professional Counselor | Volume 10, Issue 4 483 the impact of those instructional strategies and curriculum on CEDS’ teaching skill development and is recommended as a best practice by Malott et al. (2014). It is common practice to collect student opinions of instruction at the end of the semester, and many instructors collect ongoing data on how students are progressing in the semester. Q methodology could be used in ways similar to this study to help instructors positively influence CEDS’ learning. Additionally, counselor educators could utilize Q methodology to identify factors and use those factors to improve their own performance, to design other teaching-related courses, and to affect CEDS’ classroom experiences and learning outcomes. Counselor educators could also compare their CETI courses with other instructors’ courses to see trends or use Q methodology to identify factors within or between CETI courses over time. Limitations and Future Research Q methodology studies gather and rigorously analyze data to reveal common viewpoints among participants. Factors do not generalize in Q studies the same way as findings from traditional factor analysis (i.e., R methodology; Brown, 1980). Rather, factors are simply collections of opinion, the structure of which may or may not exist in other counselor education settings. However, CETI instructors can test this proposition by having students in other CETI courses complete Q-sorts with the current Q sample or by developing and testing relevant Q samples of their own design. In fact, because the Q sample was used in one class, researchers are encouraged to test propositions with larger samples across programs to see if the factors exist in multiple settings. Finally, because the participants in the current study were a convenience sample from a brick-and-mortar program composed mostly of White females within a single course, participant diversity was lacking. Future studies could examine the views of students of color and international students in larger samples across multiple courses and multiple formats (e.g., online and hybrid programs). Additional conditions of instruction could be added to expand teaching instruction viewpoints using a single-case design approach (Baltrinic et al., 2018). Supporting Q findings with qualitative information from in-depth interviews from student and instructor factor exemplars would add more nuance to the existing factors as well. Finally, following in our footsteps, researchers could develop and administer their own teaching instruction Q-sorts before beginning a CETI course to tailor the development and delivery of the course to the needs of their students. This would allow CETI instructors to develop studies, which may reveal idiosyncratic and shared experiences (Stephenson, 2014) related to programs’ CETI course design, delivery, and evaluation. Conclusion We proposed in this article that doctoral CETI courses offer a starting point for CEDS’ teaching preparation. We elaborated further that despite accreditation guidelines and the anecdotal experiences of counselor educators in various programs, little is known about what specifically to include in a CETI doctoral course. Counselor educators and CEDS alike can honor course variability, anecdotal experiences, and academic freedoms, while providing some structure to their CETI courses. This goal can be achieved by acknowledging that CETI course design, delivery, and evaluation include professional-level, student, and instructor perspectives. The Q factors in the current study revealed one way to include multiple perspectives and to identify preferred and recognizable CETI course components. Conflict of Interest and Funding Disclosure The authors reported no conflict of interest or funding contributions for the development of this manuscript.
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