Overview
Complete a worksheet that describes a specific counseling career of interest to you, and include its setting, job requirements, skills, and credentials as well as relationship to your own goals.
INTRODUCTION:
When most people hear the word counseling, they think of a therapy session with a couch and a person in a tweed jacket, helping someone through a mental health issue. In reality, counseling is a broad profession that encompasses many different specializations and serves many different populations. Through this assessment, you will explore specific counseling specializations such as mental health counseling, addictions, school counseling, and marriage and family therapy. This will help you to find the area of counseling that might be a good fit for your interests and goals.
PREPARATION:
For this assessment, you will explore an area of counseling that you find interesting and that you may want to pursue as a career. It is a chance for you to become familiar with the type of job listings and titles associated with the specialization and its educational and skill requirements.
Begin with a search of job postings for a current counseling job of interest to you. It can be in any area of counseling, such as mental health, social work, marriage and family therapy, addictions, school counseling, career counseling, et cetera.
Based on your interest, you may choose to use your Introduction to Counseling text to read one or more of the following chapters to complete your assessment:
- Kottler, J. A., & Shepard, D. S. (2015). Introduction to counseling: Voices from the field (8th ed.). Cengage. Available in the courseroom via the VitalSource Bookshelf.
- Chapter 10, "Family, Couples, and Sex Counseling" (for those interested in marriage, couples, and family counseling).
- Chapter 11, "Career Counseling" (for those interested in incorporating career counseling into a specialization of interest).
- Chapter 12, "Neuroscience, Addictions, and Psychopharmacology" (for those interested in addictions counseling).
INSTRUCIONS:
Complete and submit the Roadmap to a Professional Counseling Career [DOCX]worksheet.
You may use any search engine that lists counseling jobs, such as Indeed, Glassdoor, and CareerBuilder. If you have another search engine you prefer, you can use that for your search. Just be sure to find a recent job posting. It is a good idea to check for jobs in your geographic area so that you can see what types of opportunities there might be for you in the future. If you cannot find one of interest to you in your area, you can use another geographic area.
In your worksheet, complete the following:
- Summarize the key aspects of the counseling specialization you have chosen. Think about how it is different from other specializations.
- Describe the job requirements, including the skills and credentials needed (for example, the type of bachelor's, master's, or doctorate degree). If licensure is required, provide a brief overview of your state's requirements (such as clinical hours, supervision required, licensure exam, et cetera).
- Describe the settings in which the professional in this specialization might work, and the populations they might serve. For example, does this type of professional work in clinics, hospitals, schools, universities, private practice, social service agencies, et cetera, or a combination of settings? Who are their clientele? Do they serve a specific population or a variety of populations?
- Describe how your personal as well as professional goals are aligned with this career choice. Be sure to provide examples. Note: This portion can be written in first person since you are discussing your own personal and professional goals.
- Use professional or scholarly sources to support your findings and descriptions. The sources can help you validate the job requirements, develop your explanation of what specialists in the chosen area of counseling do, what types of settings they may work in, and what populations they may serve.
REQUIREMENTS:
Your assessment should also meet the following requirements:
- Written communication: Written communication is free of errors that detract from the overall message.
- APA formatting: References and in-text citations are formatted according to current APA style and formatting.
- Length: Complete the worksheet, approximately three pages
- References: Use credible sources, such as your textbook and government or state credentialing sites, to support your worksheet.
- Font and font size: Times New Roman, 12 point.
In addition, look through the Roadmap to a Professional Counseling Career Scoring Guide to ensure you have met all of the criteria for the assessment. Work toward the distinguished-level wording on the scoring guide for each criterion.
SOURCES:
Counseling has a rich and unique history. It is rooted in areas of science, philosophy, medicine, education, and psychology. Knowing more about the history of the foundations of counseling can help you in understanding the nature of counselor-client relationships. No matter which counseling specialization one works in, the counselor-client relationship is at the core of that work.
The following chapters in your book tell the history of how the counseling fields got started, familiarize you with the foundations that are important to all areas of counseling, and introduce you to the different types of counseling and the kinds of settings in which counselors practice in their specialized areas of counseling.
- Kottler, J. A., & Shepard, D. S. (2015). Introduction to counseling: Voices from the field (8th ed.). Cengage. Available in the courseroom via the VitalSource Bookshelf.
- Chapter 1, "What Counseling Is and How It Works."
- Chapter 2, "Foundations of Counseling."
- Chapter 3, "Settings for Counselors."
Use the following chapters to give yourself a foundation in understanding various theories and how they contribute to theoretically based approaches to counseling. As you read, think about the approaches that most fit with the way you think about counseling and how you would like to work with those you may counsel in the future.
- Kottler, J. A., & Shepard, D. S. (2015). Introduction to counseling: Voices from the field(8th ed.). Cengage. Available in the courseroom via the VitalSource Bookshelf.
- Chapter 5, "Insight-Oriented Approaches."
- Chapter 6, "Action-Oriented Counseling."
GRADING COMPETENCIES:
By successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the following course competencies and scoring guide criteria:
- Competency 1: Describe psychotherapeutic methods used within counseling professions.
- Describe the settings of a specific counseling specialization and the populations they may serve.
- Competency 2: Explore counseling career options.
- Summarize key aspects of a counseling specialization.
- Describe job requirements, skills, and credentials required for a specific counseling career job listing.
- Explain how personal or professional goals align with a specific counseling career choice.
- Competency 3: Write with clear purpose, organization, tone, and sentence structure.
- Communicate clearly with appropriate purpose, organization, tone, and sentence structure.
- Cite sources using author and year, and provide some reference information required in APA style.