How students use deliberate practice during the first stage of counsellor training

Abstract

Deliberate practice, in the form of ongoing commitment to skill development outside of direct clinical work, has been proposed as a means of enhancing therapist competence and expertise. In this study, a deliberate practice orientation was introduced into the first phase of a counsellor training programme. Students’ experiences of learning and using deliberate practice in relation to the acquisition of counselling skills were investigated using a mixed‐method design. It took time for students to internalise principles of deliberate practice. They reported a wide range of deliberate practice learning activities, both within and beyond the classroom, and regarded these tasks as having made a significant positive contribution to their learning. The findings of the study underscore the value of viewing deliberate practice as an approach to learning that can be articulated in multiple ways. It is important for future research to identify the forms of deliberate practice that are most relevant to enhancing competence within the specific context of therapeutic work.

Deliberate practice for immediacy: Skill use and client outcome.

“…Qualitative interviews with the trainees revealed several themes related to the usefulness of DP, including learning how to learn, deciding what to work on, engaging in practice, and being guided by results. Overall, the findings of this study suggest that beginning counseling trainees utilized a variety of DP activities both within and outside of the classroom, and they perceived DP to have contributed to their learning as therapist trainees (McLeod, 2022). We note, however, that trainees did not receive formal DP training.…”

“…As seen above, researchers have examined trainees' experiences of DP (Hill et al, 2020;McLeod, 2022), the effect of DP on trainee and therapist skill development (Di Hill et al, 2020;Shukla et al, 2021;Westra et al, 2021), and the relationship between DP and therapists' clinical outcomes (Chow et al, 2015;Goldberg et al, 2016), with the only experimental studies examining the effect of DP training on psychotherapy trainees' development being Hill et al (2020) and Westra et al (2021). We argue that it is important to experimentally examine both changes in therapist skills and changes in client outcome because in DP theory (Rousmaniere, 2016(Rousmaniere, , 2019, repetition and successive individualized skills practice lead to greater skill acquisition and better client outcome.…”

“…With these limitations in mind, we can speculate about broader implications for DP training. First, several studies suggest that trainees are receptive to and find DP to be a helpful approach for their learning (Hill et al, 2020;McLeod, 2022). Trainees in Hill et al's (2020) study reported gaining a better understanding of DP, as well as a desire for more DP training.…”

Automatic rating of therapist facilitative interpersonal skills in text: A natural language processing application

“…Considered without automated scoring algorithms, behavioral tasks are prohibitively costly to regularly administer and score in most practice settings. Yet if algorithms can reliably stand in for human raters, these tasks can be more feasibly integrated into provider training and evaluation, as well as self-guided deliberate practice ( 34 , 35 ).…”

Clinical Reasoning: A Missing Piece for Improving Evidence-Based Assessment in Psychology

“…It was more influential than other psychologist demographic variables, including experience, education, race, gender, and theoretical orientation. It is important to note that in DP, solitary practice is informed by feedback and coaching ( Ericsson 2018 ; McLeod 2021 ; Miller et al 2020 ). This was the only psychologist activity that predicted client outcomes and demonstrates both the importance of DP and the difference between experience and expertise.…”