Trainee counselling psychologists' experiences and understanding of reflective practice and its impact upon personal and professional development

Abstract

Various definitions describe reflective practice (RP) as encapsulating thought in action, self-involvement and awareness, ethics and values, retrospective thinking and reconsideration of perspectives. These all indicate a purposeful intention, a conscious process. It has been suggested that developing student reflective capacities may be the most significant aspect for preparation of counsellors in order to deal with the complexities of mental health practice. However, while the critical nature of this educational objective is apparent in the literature, there remains a dearth of research on the experiences, processes, practices and prevalence of RP in counsellor education. The aim of this qualitative study was to address this gap in the literature and explore the subjective experience of RP from the perspective of six trainee counselling psychologists nearing the end of their training. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was employed to analyse the data, where three master themes were identified; The challenge of RP, Doing RP and The impact of RP. Overall the findings draw together the participants‘ phenomenological experiences of RP illustrating that RP is a complex and challenging process, which evokes considerable emotion. Participants revealed an arduous journey of coming to know RP, which is mediated by ‘doing’ RP which leads to positive growth and development both on a personal and professional level. The emergent themes are reviewed and discussed in relation to the literature and future directions are proposed.