The Influence of Reflective Practice on the Case Conceptualization Competence of Counselor Trainees

The purpose of this quasi-experimental, longitudinal study was to measure the effects of reflective practice coaching on 35 participants, as compared to participants who did not receive coaching. Data was collected over a period of eight weeks. A secondary purpose was to examine the effects of a standardized case conceptualization training lecture on 84 participants. A third purpose was to examine the relationships between counselor trainee demographic variables, their attitudes towards evidence-based practice, disposition towards reflective reasoning, and competence in writing case conceptualizations. This was the first study to contribute to the reflection in counseling literature. A convenience sample of N = 84 participants participated in two standardized case conceptualization training lectures. An intervention group (N = 35) received an additional three one-on-one reflection coaching sessions. The comparison group (N = 49) received the training lectures and no coaching. Participants from both groups attended two 3-hour training lectures, which taught the integrative case conceptualization model developed by Sperry (2010). Intervention group participants took part in three additional one-on-one reflection coaching sessions. Pre- and post-training lecture case conceptualization skills were assessed using the Case Conceptualization Evaluation Form (CCEF) 2.0. Levels of reflective thinking were measured with pre-, post-, and post-post-administrations of The Reflection in Learning Scale (Sobral, 2005). Variance in case conceptualization competence was analyzed using a MANOVA. Intervention group participants’ mean CCEF 2.0 scores were significantly higher than those of the comparison group (M = 72.64 and M = 46.81, respectively). Reflective thinking was determined not to be a mediating or moderating variable. Mean CCEF 2.0 scores from the first training lecture increased from the pre-test to the post-test (M = 11.20 and M = 24.10, respectively) for all participants. Mean case CCEF 2.0 scores also increased from the pre-test to the post-test in the second training lecture (M = 21.33 and M = 52.29, respectively) for all participants. Additionally, a paired sample t-test showed improvement on the Reflection in Learning Scale (Sobral, 2005) between the post-test and post-post test for the intervention group. Results were significant (|t| = 1.91, df 34, p < .001, one-tailed).