Intentional Work Group Experiences: A Pedagogical Tool for Counselor Educators

Abstract

Work groups “promote efficient and effective accomplishment of group tasks among people who are gathered to accomplish group goals” (ASGW, 2000, p. 3). Due to the prevalence of use in actual counseling settings, counselor educators frequently use work groups as a pedagogical tool in educating counselors-in-training. This article introduces a classroom intervention designed to help counseling students develop self-awareness and skills pertaining to participating in work groups. Using constructivist pedagogy as our theoretical basis we will describe the intervention and the qualitative approach we incorporated to evaluate the intervention’s impact in the classroom. Results and discussion including contextualization, limitations, implications, and suggestions for future research will follow in the remainder of this article. Author's Notes Correspondence concerning this article should be sent to Brian Hutchison at hutchisonbr@umsl.edu