Supervisory Ratings of Counselor Trainees in a Simulated Work Setting as Compared with Peer and Instructor Ratings of the Same Trainees in an Academic Setting

Abstract

Evaluation of counselor trainees is a necessary step in the preparation of school counselors. One approach to such evaluation is by means of ratings by people who have had ample opportunity to observe. Instructor and peer ratings fall into this category and have been used (1,2,5,6,7).As Stemre, King, and Leafgren (7) have pointed out, ratings by these groups may be affected by knowledge of the trainee's academic performance and by knowledge of the instructor's perception and evaluation of the trainees. If ratings could be obtained in a non-academic, simulated work setting by persons independent of the academic influence, such ratings might be better indicators of the counselor's counseling activities than ratings affected by knowledge of the counselor's academic activities. Can such ratings be obtained? If so, how well would they agree with ratings made by instructors and peers?A recent study at the University of Minnesota illustrates one approach to this problem. In the counselor training program at that institution (a), each trainee spends one day a week for about twenty weeks in an off-campus junior or senior high school. In this simulated work setting, the trainees work with the full range of guidance and counseling activities under the direct supervision of the school counselor. The number of trainees assigned to each school varies, depending on the number of school counselors qualified to supervise. These supervisors have the opportunity to observe as the trainees perform assigned counseling and guidance tasks.This article presents the results of a study comparing the ratings of the off -campus, work oriented supervisors to the ratings of on-campus peers and instructors at the University of Minnesota. For the purposes of this study, the counselor was considered to be a generalist (4,9), and ratings were made in terms of general effectiveness taking into account Josiah S. Dilley is currently on the counselor education staff in the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin. 70

Research on Training Counselors and Clinicians

“…Acceptable reliability levels were only rarely reported for supervisor ratings (Kingdon, 1975), peer ratings (Martin & Carkhuff, 1968), and self-ratings (Bailey et al, 1977;Carter & Pappas, 1975;Perlman, 1972). Supervisor, peer, and self-ratings have been found to covary significantly, or to yield parallel pre-and postchange patterns in many instances (Berenson et al, 1966;Bishop, 1971;Borman & Ramirez, 1975;Dilley, 1964;Friesen & Dunning, 1973;Martin & Gazda, 1970), especially after extensive training programs (Burck, Jacobs, Saubra, Stone, & Thomson, 1973).…”

Differences among Male A, B, and C Master's Degree Candidates in a Counseling Practicum

“…Others have used ratings by counselor educators as a means for differentiating between the most and least competent counselors (Demos & Zuwaylif, 1966;Jansen, Robb, & Bonk, 1970). Still others have used multiple criteria of counselor effectiveness in their research (Dilley, 1964;Johnson, Shertzer, Linden, & Stone, 1967;Truax, 1970). Data from these and many other investigations have yielded ambiguous and sometimes contradictory results-results that could not be replicated using the same criterion of counseling effectiveness or that did not hold when some other criterion of counseling effectiveness was applied.…”

Affective Sensitivity and Peer Selection of Counseling Potential

“…Based on these peer selections, based on counseling potential, three categories of participants were formed for purposes of analysis: those chosen by half or more of their group (ouerchosen, n=25); those chosen by at least one group member but less than half of the group (chosen, n=36); and those chosen by no one in their group (unchosen, n=22 , 1969). They are highly related to supervisory ratings in both academic and practicum settings (Dilley, 1964;Engle & Betz, 1971) and have been shown to be mildly predictive of later success in counseling and therapy (Goodman, 1972;Kelly & Fiske, 195 1;Rappaport, Chinski, & Cowen, 1971). Affective sensitivity was measured by the KASS-E80, a 28-vignette film of actual interactions.…”