Religion and Spirituality in Variously Accredited Counselor Training Programs: A Comment on Pate and High (1995)

Abstract

Accreditation standards for counselor preparation have the potential for bringingappropriate consideration of religious and spiritualissues into the training of counselors. This article extends Pate and High's (1995) Pate and High's (1995) study of 60 CACREP-accredited counselor training programs suggested that accreditation standards may have the potential for influencing counselor training programs to include a consideration of religion in counselor education. CACREP standards explicitly include religious preference as a social and cultural factor that students are to study for understanding the diversity of client attitudes and behaviors (Council for the Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs [CACREP], 1994). The good news of Pate and High's study is that a majority (60%) of responding CACREP programs include a consideration of religious beliefs and practices in their foundational studies, another 53% do so in other parts of the curriculum (it is not clear how much overlap there is in the two percentages), and fully 84% of responding counselor educators rated counselors' awareness of clients' religious beliefs as at least of some importance.The bad news in the Pate and High study is that despite the explicit accreditation standard regarding religion, a substantial minority of CACREPaccredited programs do not include client religious issues as part of their curriculum, and at least a handful (about 15%) of CACREP-based counselor educators do not think it is important to do so. This is bad news not only because it suggests some neglect of accreditation standards, but more im-

Spiritual and Religious Competencies: A National Survey of CACREP‐Accredited Programs

“…Although only 22% of respondents indicated that their program had a specific course dealing with spirituality, 69% reported that their program addressed these issues within the curriculum. This is an increase in the number of programs that report addressing spirituality and religion compared with previous research (i.e., Kelly, 1997;Pate & High, 1995). Nevertheless, it remains unclear how spirituality and religion are addressed in these programs.…”

“…In recent years, researchers have found that about half of accredited counseling programs reported including spiritual and religious issues as part of training (Kelly, 1997;Pate & High, 1995), which makes the results of this study interesting for several reasons. First, this study provides empirical support for the inclusion of spiritual and religious knowledge competencies in counselors' training because respondents tended to show moderately strong agreement that the competencies under investigation are important for effective preparation of counselors-in-training.…”

“…In Pate and High's (1995) study of CACREP-accredited counselor training programs, 60% of the respondents reported attention given to clients' religious belief and practices in the Social and Cultural Foundations core area. In a study of 48 programs accredited only by CACREP (as opposed to programs with multiple accreditations), Kelly (1997) found that slightly more than half reported that spirituality and religion were included in some aspect of their training programs. However, to date, no research has addressed counselor educators' ability to train students to address spirituality issues.…”

“…The purpose of the present study was to extend the Young et al (1998) study with counselor educators in CACREP-accredited programs. Although previous researchers (Kelly, 1994(Kelly, ,1997Pate & High, 1995) have surveyed counselor education programs regarding the inclusion of spiritual and religious issues in counseling, none have used the competencies established at the Summit on Spirituality as a template for the research. Three research questions were addressed.…”

Integrating Spirituality Into Counselor Preparation: A Developmental, Wellness Approach

“…Furthermore, most individuals expect or consider these values to be an important part of therapy when the need for helping arises (Bergin & Jensen, 1990;Lehman, 1993;Myers & Truluck, 1998;Quakenbos, Privette, & Klentz, 1985). Although "spiritual and religious issues are therapeutically relevant, ethically appropriate, and potentially significant topics in counseling and counselor education" (Burke et al, 1999, p. 251), Kelly (1997) and Pate and High (1995) estimated that only half of all counselor education programs include these issues in counselor preparation curricula. Burke et al (1999) noted that "spirituality, religion, and the counseling profession have had an uneasy relationship" (p. 251).…”