Priorities for professional training in the 90s: Perspectives of directors of psychology training programs.

Abstract

Priorities for Professional Training in the 90s: Perspectives of Directors of Psychology Training ProgramsLYNN ALDEN, KERRY MOTHERSILL, RICHARD STEFFY, ROBERT MCILWRAITH, RHONA STEINBERG, LINDA MCMULLEN, AND GEORGE TASCA Canadian Council of Professional Psychology ProgramsAbstractThe directors of professional training programs in psychology offer a unique perspective on the challenges facing psychology. On one hand, these directors are members of programs that are struggling to maintain standards in the face of funding cuts and program reorganization; on the other hand, they bear primary responsibility for ensuring students are prepared for careers in psychology in the 21st century. This paper presents a systematic examination of the opinions of these directors about the issues of primary importance facing their training programs today. Training directors whose programs are members of the Canadian Council of Professional Psychology Programs (CCPPP) completed a survey questionnaire and then participated in a day - long discussion as part of a CCPPP workshop. There was good agreement between the directors of doctoral programs and internship settings regarding the issues of greatest importance to their programs. Directors saw their priorities as honing the clinical training that they offered to students and ensuring that their programs survived. Program expansions and revisions were clearly of lower priority. Issues identified at the recent Mississauga Conference received mixed support.The 90s have seen significant changes in Canadian federal and provincial government policies for funding education and social services. These changes have direct impact on psychology training programs. Both academic graduate programs and predoctoral internship programs are faced with reductions in funding and, particularly in the case of predoctoral internships, with program reorganizations that increasingly force training faculty and staff to do more with less. At the same time, changes in the marketplace for psychological services, as well as changes in training models and treatment techniques, increasingly require training staff to reformulate their programs to prepare students for careers in 21st century psychology.Given the number of challenges facing psychology today, training program directors are feeling the need to define their priorities so that program modifications will be proactive and systematic. It is particularly useful at this point for the Canadian training community to exchange ideas so that programs can work together to establish and meet national training priorities. The first steps in this task are to understand how training faculty and staff across Canada view the challenges facing their programs and to identify the issues they judge to be most important.The Canadian Council of Professional Psychology Programs (CCPPP) is an independent organization developed in 1977 by Park Davidson to serve as the interface between academic programs and internship training sites and to create an arena for program directors to exchange ideas about professional training. The CCPPP, with its 69 member programs, reflects a good cross - section of Canadian academic and internship training programs in clinical psychology and includes some counselling psychology programs as well. One part of the CCPPP mandate is to target member concerns and develop services that meet those concerns. Over the past year, the executive of the CCPPP have been working to identify the priorities of Canadian training programs as they face the challenges of the 90s. This paper describes the results of our efforts to identify those issues considered highest priority by Canadian training programs today.The information presented here was collected through a two - step process. First, directors of CCPPP member programs were surveyed and asked to rate which of a variety of issues were of greatest concern to their training programs. …