Blundell, P (2018) A qualitative study of students’ experience of psychological change during an introductory counselling course. In: Qual-World Interactive Virtual Conference, 3rd December 2018, Virtual. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

Students report that they experience psychological change during counselling training when they are completing advanced counselling courses (i.e. stage two and three training), such as the Certificate in Counselling Skills, or the Diploma in Counselling. There is little research which examines experiences of students at earlier stages of counsellor training (i.e.stage one) and whether psychological change of students occurs at that level. Therefore, this study explored the experiences of students on a stage one counselling training course (i.e. 12 week introductory course) in the UK, and whether that involved psychological change. Four participants were recruited through purposive sampling and they were all undertaking an introductory counselling course in the UK at the time of the study. Participants were asked to write a statement of their experiences of the course and to identify whether they had experienced any psychological change, and if so, what that change involved. These statements were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Four super-ordinate themes were found: Changes to Self; Self-Development/Awareness, A Process of Change and Control. This study reinforces current evidence of students’ psychological change through counselling training courses, and provides new evidence that this change also occurs on the introductory level courses. It is hoped that findings from this study will encourage further investigation of students’ experiences of counselling courses, as well as contribute to the development and improvement of counsellor training at all levels.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Poster)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Counselling; IPA; Counselling pedagogy
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine > RA0421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine > RA0440 Study and Teaching. Research
Divisions:	Nursing & Allied Health
Date Deposited:	21 May 2019 08:46
Last Modified:	14 Apr 2022 16:05
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/10737

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