Career concerns of master's-level community and school counselor trainees.

The authors examined the career concerns of 152 counselor trainees in 7 master's-level programs accredited by the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs. Results indicate that counselor trainees expressed considerable professional development, adjustment, and academia concerns while reporting minimal job-search concerns. Students reported concerns of significant importance for specific career tasks anticipated during training and general concerns about exploring their career futures and establishing themselves as new professionals. Results of regression analyses indicated that students with high levels of concern for establishment stage tasks reported significantly higher levels of overall career concerns. Implications for counselor education faculty, limitations of the study, and recommendations for further research are delineated.

**********

Graduate counseling students confront a diversity of career-related tasks as they enter and progress through graduate training. Many of these tasks relate to exploring the fit between self and the role of counselor and establishing self as a new professional. Career-related tasks include finding a mentor, balancing life roles, managing stress, narrowing an area of specialization, securing an internship, and preparing for the job search. Often a result of social expectations imposed by faculty, profession, family and peers, the stress of coping with these career-related tasks is sometimes experienced by individuals as career concerns (Luzzo, 1999; Super, Savickas, & Super, 1996). There remains, however, a void in the counselor education literature on the career concerns of master's-level counselor trainees. Because more students enter counselor education programs from diverse occupational and educational backgrounds, and because the average age of students enrolling in counselor education is increasing (Clawson, Henderson, & Schweiger, 2003), the career concerns of counselor trainees should be given more attention. This literature review begins with research that sheds light on the career concerns and issues faced by graduate students, in general, followed by a consideration of the research focusing on graduate-level counseling students, in particular.

Career Development of Graduate Students

Some graduate students have been found to adopt an exploratory posture during their educational experience. This finding has been the result of research comparing the career concerns of nontraditional with those of traditional students and the career concerns of graduate with those of undergraduate students. For example, Haviland and Mahaffy (1985) found that nontraditional students reported the perception of more barriers in reaching an occupational goal, more role conflicts, and a greater need for occupational information than did traditional students. In a study by McCaffrey, Miller, and Winston (1984), graduate students were found to be similar to college seniors in their perceived need to determine career-related skills, learn about career options, and use effective career decision-making techniques. McCaffrey et al. have suggested that a substantial proportion of students enter graduate school with unclear career goals. Career exploration can also be an important task for older students returning to higher education.

Graduate students who return to college after years of working or meeting other obligations often find themselves recycling through exploratory stage tasks. For these nontraditional students, this recycling process emphasizes one's adaptability for transitions and coping with unexpected changes through reexamining one's interests, values, and abilities (Savickas, 2005). For example, in a study of the career decision-making differences between younger and older community college students, Healy and Reilly (1989) discovered that many career decision-making tasks "thought to pose minimal concern if repeated during the adult years were reported as major needs by 25% to 35% of the adults over 30 years of age" (p. 544). Although the literature on graduate student career issues has shown cohort differences, counselor educators have generated only conceptual articles designed to assist master's-level counseling students with their career development.

Career Issues of Counseling Students

There is minimal information about the career development of master's-level counselor trainees. Disciplines such as psychology and education produce generous information on the professional growth and career development of graduate students (e.g., Richmond & Sherman, 1991; Sternberg, 1997). The available career literature in counselor education, however, focuses primarily on professional development during doctoral studies, including seeking faculty positions (Warnke, Bethany, & Hedstrom, 1999), academic hiring policies (Rogers, Gill-Wigal, Harrigan, & Abbey-Hines, 1998), and completing a doctoral program (Boes, Ullery, Millner, & Cobia, 1999). This information appears informative for those students who seek academic positions, yet neglects the developmental tasks and concerns of those who seek entry-level counseling positions.

Counseling students enter training programs from diverse backgrounds and with a range of career-related concerns. Luzzo (2000) stated that graduate students do not all progress through the stages of career development in exactly the same manner or at exactly the same pace. This is likely to be true for counseling students as well. For example, students may enter counseling programs directly out of undergraduate studies to prepare themselves for a new career, or they may transition into a program after several years of working in an occupation that is very different from counseling. Regardless of when and why students enter counselor training programs, the process of self-concept development becomes salient. Therefore, it is important for students to evaluate their personal motives and professional aspirations early in their training (Hazler & Kottler, 2005). In addition, students are advised that when making early decisions related to specialization, they should become more knowledgeable about the options available and how it will affect their personal and professional self.

This literature review indicates that counseling students may experience some degree of career concerns as they enter and progress through graduate training. In addition, students may find themselves coping with tasks at either the latter stages of career exploration or the initial stages of career establishment. Therefore, counselor educators would benefit from a better understanding of what career issues confront counseling students. Clearly, additional research is needed in this area, and descriptive research on the career concerns and career developmental tasks facing counselor trainees at the graduate level may prove viable.

The purpose of our study was to examine the career concerns of counseling students in seven graduate counselor education programs accredited by the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP) at state universities in Ohio. Specifically, this study was initiated by revising an instrument (Busacca & Wester, 2002) designed to assist counseling students with answering the following two research questions: (a) What specific career tasks and career stages are of concern to counselor trainees? (b) Are there differences in career tasks and career stage concerns between community counseling and school counseling master's students? and (c) What personal characteristics or career stages are related to overall career task concerns of counselor trainees?

Method

Participants

The sample for this study consisted of students recruited from CACREP-accredited graduate counseling programs at seven state universities in Ohio. All graduate departments consisted of master's-level community and school counseling programs, while some also offered a doctoral-level counseling program. No other counseling tracks (e.g., student development, rehabilitation, marriage and family) were included in the study because of the lack of responses by students in those tracks or the absence of those counseling tracks at the departments sampled. We contacted a graduate faculty member within the departments to administer the questionnaires to counselor trainees in the respective classrooms.

A total of 203 counselor trainees volunteered to participate in the study. Fifty-one students were deleted from the final database because they indicated both master's and doctoral degrees for their current program of study (n = 12); they reported that their current field of study was "undecided," "postgraduate" or did not report any field of study (n = 25); or they reported that they were currently a doctoral student (n = 14). The final sample consisted of 152 participants, who were evenly dispersed across the seven universities: 1 with 45 respondents, 29% of the sample; 1 with 34 respondents, 22% of the sample; 1 with 23 respondents, 15% of the sample; 1 with 20 respondents, 13% of the sample; and three with 10 respondents, 6.5% of the sample for each.

The majority of the participants were female (82%, n = 124), with 18% male. The mean age was 31.65 years (SD = 9.53, median = 28, mode = 25). Eighty-four percent of the participants self-identified as Caucasian, 13% African American, 2% Hispanic or Latino/a, and 1% as Asian/Pacific Islander. Forty-five percent reported being currently enrolled in a school counseling track (n = 69) and 55% in a community counseling track (n = 83).

Measures