A Competency‐Based Staff Development Approach for Improving Counselor Education

Abstract

While there is a substantial and in many ways encouraging trend toward competency‐based methods for training counseling personnel today, this movement faces three obstacles: 1) lack of evidence of the effectiveness of this approach; 2) difficulty in identifying desired competencies on which the training should focus; and 3) limited sets of materials useful for developing needed competencies. After discussing these problems, the authors report on the development and field testing of two sets of competency‐based training materials. Brief descriptions of these materials and their field test results are presented.

Counselor competencies and personality traits at secondary schools in Kuwait

“…It was then necessary to identify and determine the tasks required to implement those techniques, in order to develop the necessary counseling competencies. Jones and Dayton (1977) reported that a major goal of the counseling program was the improvement of the pre-and in-service training. The obstacles facing such a goal were the questions of how to develop counselors and the type of training that was to be used.…”