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Article Excerpt
Teaching's importance has increased for faculty members and is reflected in the selection criteria for new faculty, particularly those in counselor education. Thus, graduate programs need to provide students with opportunities to obtain teaching experience and enhance their pedagogical training. The collaborative teaching teams model is intended to assist counselor educators in preparing doctoral-level counseling students for careers in academia. Recommendations for model implementation are provided and specific examples are presented to demonstrate the use of this model in a counselor education and supervision doctoral program accredited by the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs.
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The job responsibilities of faculty members have been changing steadily since World War II (Austin, 2002; Boyer, 1990; Ramsey, Cavallaro, Kiselica, & Zila, 2002; Rice, 1996). For faculty members at both research and liberal arts institutions, teaching increasingly has become more important (Meacham, 2002). Teaching's enhanced importance has resulted in an expanded definition of scholarship (Boyer, 1990), which in turn has altered the definition of faculty productivity. Specifically, the mission of institutions and the criteria used to determine faculty promotion and tenure have shifted in emphasis from solely focusing on research productivity to increasingly focusing on teaching and service activities that integrate scholarship (Finkelstein, 2003; Lucas, 1996; Meacham, 2002).
To be successful then, faculty members in any discipline, including counselor education, must master the core competencies of teaching, service, and scholarship (Adams, 2002; Austin, 2002; Boyer, 1990; Niles, Akos, & Cutler, 2001; Ramsey et al., 2002). Programs preparing doctoral students for careers in academia would reasonably be expected to embrace these same principles. In fact, the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP; 2001) requires that doctoral programs in counselor education and supervision provide students with the opportunities to "develop collaborative relationships with program faculty in teaching, supervision, research, professional writing, and service to the profession and the public" (Doctoral Standards Counselor Education and Supervision, Section II, D.2). The collaborative teaching teams (CTT) model was created by the first and third authors in 2004 to meet the CACREP standards for developing collaborative relationships between doctoral students and faculty through teaching.
The purpose of this article is threefold. First, we discuss the importance of teaching in counselor education and the increasing need for teaching competence among counselor education graduates. Second, we introduce a model intended to enhance the pedagogical training of doctoral students in counselor education. Finally, we present the benefits and challenges of implementing such a model.
Teaching Is Important to Counselor Education
Greater emphasis on teaching for faculty members equates to greater need of teaching experience for job candidates. Graduates entering the job market, particularly those in counselor education, should be prepared to demonstrate greater knowledge and experience in teaching. In interviews conducted at community colleges, 4-year liberal arts colleges, master's institutions, and research institutions, Meacham (2002) found that administrators most valued a balanced combination of teaching, research, and service in new faculty. Rogers, Gill-Wigal, Harrigan, and Abbey-Hines (1998) examined faculty selection criteria and found that counselor education programs ranked teaching experience higher than publication activity, indicating the need for teaching experience in doctoral preparation.
Warnke, Bethany, and Hedstrom (1999) described the job search process in counselor education and concluded that doctoral students, early in their study programs, need to identify what experiences they require to increase their marketability for and knowledge about potential careers in academia. Obtaining teaching experience is most often recommended as a way for graduate students to increase their marketability in securing counselor education faculty positions (Rogers et al., 1998; Warnke et al., 1999).
Beyond obtaining positions, doctoral students need teaching experience to prepare them for performing their jobs as faculty members. In a recent survey of CACREP program liaisons conducted by Davis, Levitt, McGlothlin, and Hill (2006), participants indicated that they perceived a greater amount of time is spent in teaching-related activities than is spent in either scholarship or service activities. The perception of more time spent in teaching was consistent across the academic ranks of assistant, associate, and full professor. In Zimpfer and DeTrude's (1990) study of counselor education doctoral graduates surveyed 5 years after graduation, respondents ranked teaching and training as the third most frequent work activity, after direct service to clients and consultation, in terms of relative prominence in the total job.
Teaching experience also prepares doctoral students to participate in the counselor education profession. Similar to CACREP's (2001) doctoral program standards, the profession's standards and literature specifically include teaching. The American Counseling Association's (ACA; 2005) ACA Code of Ethics outlines teaching responsibilities of counselor educators (Section F.6), and the Association for Counselor Education and Supervision (ACES; n.d.) has identified teaching as a central component of its vision statement. The value placed on teaching and related tasks for counselor educators also is tied to traditional perspectives in counselor education. Counseling programs typically are housed in colleges of education, and the counseling profession traces its roots to the profession of education (Gladding, 2004).
Preparing Doctoral Students to Become Teachers
Despite the relationship between counseling and education, little is known about the process of becoming a teacher in counselor education. As Nelson and Neufeldt (1998) observed, many articles in Counselor Education and Supervision address how to teach specific content (e.g., multicultural competencies, counseling skills, group work); however, virtually no information is presented on how to become a teacher. Sorcinelli (2002) suggested that institutions hiring new faculty offer new faculty orientations, junior faculty mentoring programs, and teaching and research competency development programs to address stressors, such as inadequate preparation for teaching and course development, that she identified in her review of the literature related to the experiences of new faculty members.
Meacham (2002) observed a lack of connection between doctoral preparation and the qualities sought in new faculty. He explained that this disparity is the result of the inability of faculty members at research institutions to instill a passion for teaching in their doctoral students. According to Meacham, because faculty members at research institutions are engaged primarily in research, they tend to emphasize research over all other faculty tasks in their preparation of doctoral students for the professoriate. However, the increased emphasis on teaching has shifted the focus of certain programs in higher education (Austin, 2003). Whereas doctoral programs may effectively continue to prepare future researchers, many institutions also are attempting to move toward a more student-focused orientation that emphasizes teaching over research (Austin, 2002; Meacham, 2002).
Within higher education in general, doctoral preparation for teaching has received much attention (Valentine et al., 1998). Whereas many faculty members agree that mentoring relationships and teaching assistantships are preferable to courses in pedagogy (Silverman, 2003), doctoral graduates have noted the limitations of and improvements needed to those traditional types of preparation for teaching in higher education. From their studies of doctoral student teaching, Heppner (1994) and Austin (2002) concluded that the experiences of assisting with teaching or teaching as primary instructors were not enough to increase the competence of doctoral students. Both studies found that doctoral students' sense of pedagogical competency did not increase when opportunities were missing to systematically reflect on and receive feedback about their teaching and to discuss questions regarding their experiences as instructors. Overall, supervising seems to increase graduate teaching assistants' development of ownership and autonomy in teaching and prepare them for futures in academia (Anderson & Swazey, 1998; Prieto, Scheel, & Meyers, 2001).
Development of the CTT Model in Counselor Education
The CTT model was developed to provide pedagogical training to doctoral students in counselor...
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