Friday, April 24, 2015 at 12:30 p.m.
Room 200, Graduate Student Centre (6371 Crescent Road), UBC Point Grey Campus
Title: “The Impact of an Experiential Training Program on Group Counsellor Development”
Supervisor: Dr. Marvin Westwood (CNPS)
Supervisory Committee: Dr. Bruno Zumbo (MERM) & Dr. Dan Cox (CNPS)
University Examiners: Dr. John Ogrodniczuk (Psychiatry) & Dr. Bill Borgen (CNPS)
External Examiner: Dr. Daniel Klassen (Lakehead University)
ABSTRACT
To lead effective psychotherapy groups, counsellors must perform a complex array of skills with both confidence and competence. Best practices in training group counsellors advocate an integration of didactic and experiential learning (Barlow, 2012; CACREP, 2009). Experiential training is considered an invaluable training method for group counselling and has been shown to develop skill
usage and understanding of group process in trainees (Stockton, Morran & Krieger, 2004). However, no study to date has experimentally examined the impact of experiential training on counsellor trainee development of confidence and competence. Therefore, this dissertation introduces an experiential training program, called Experiam, that is seated in social cognitive theory and provides a preliminary qualitative group case study and a quantitative evaluation of the impacts of the program on counsellor trainee confidence and competence variables. The primary study evaluated the impact of a peer-led experiential training program on the development of counsellor-trainee competence and confidence as group leaders. The six-session peer-led group simulation training program provided counsellor trainees with practice applying group leading skills to address a range of group process scenarios. A randomized control study was conducted on thirty participants in two graduate-level group-counselling courses, where half the students in each course took the program and half were wait-listed. Participants were measured for self-efficacy, anxiety, and performance. Group leading self-efficacy was reported to increase significantly and to large effect, while anxiety remained unchanged. Observed leading skills were employed significantly more frequently, but with a non-significant decrease in overall skill clarity, as the complexity of the program increased. Implications for researchers, educators, and group practitioners are discussed.