LITERATURE REVIEW

Literature Review

Literature Review

Personal and professional growth and development are areas of concern for practicing professional counselors and educators.  These areas of concern include activities related to self-awareness, understanding and overcoming biases, being open-minded, and being an effective counselor (Nugent & Jones, 2005).  These are areas of concern, also, for graduate students as they prepare to enter the world of professional counseling in their fields of interest.  Counselors-in-training at the master's level of graduate school have unique occasions to take advantage of personal and professional growth and development opportunities.  The purpose of this article is to outline some of the unique opportunities that exist for master's level graduate students and to point readers to resources, whether for themselves as graduate students or for the graduate students they are mentoring.  Graduate counseling programs require research papers, research critiques, presentations on counseling issues, and projects in a number of courses. 

Graduate students can use these required assignments as an opportunity to explore areas of interest, populations they desire to work with once they are practicing counselors, or issues related to groups they intend to work with in internships and post-graduation. 

Students can also use these assignments to strengthen any areas of bias or weakness. It is important, in order to be a competent and effective counselor, to understand one's biases and to understand the issues and populations about which a counselor lacks knowledge (Egan, 2002 & Nugent & Jones, 2005).  Using course assignments in this way will allow graduate students the opportunity to turn weaknesses into strengths and will assist them in their personal and professional growth and development.  Mentoring relationships can exist within academics as well as in professional arenas.  Graduate students can also have a mentor in both the academic and professional worlds. 

Since mentoring relationships are beneficial to both the mentor and mentee or protégé, graduate students can also serve as mentors to other graduate students who are new to the counseling program or even to undergraduate students in counseling related disciples.  This provides an additional opportunity for role modeling and growth.  Mentoring is another unique opportunity available to graduate students to shape their personal and professional growth and development. Taking advantage of the unique opportunities within each of these venues at an early point in their counseling career will allow the master's level graduate student to build a solid foundation for further growth and development in both personal and professional areas once he or she is practicing and serving within in the discipline of counseling. Graduate students are encouraged to take advantage of the opportunities available to them and mentors are challenged to promote and model personal and professional growth and development to graduate students through the unique avenues that exist for them.

Mentoring has come a long way since the Trojan Wars. The practice has been gaining ground steadily in recent years and, according to Clutterbuck, has become the subject of intense academic study and widespread experimentation, especially in the USA. In many organizations, both private and public sector, mentoring ...