Reflecting Teams and Microcounseling in Beginning Counselor Training: Practice in Collaboration.

This study examined the integration of the Reflecting Team Method (T. Andersen, 1991) and the Microcounseling Model (A. E. Ivey & M. B. Ivey, 2003) as a collaborative counselor training option. Reflecting team reflections, client-counselor role plays, and feedback from master's-level students were transcribed and analyzed for themes; 10 themes were identified. ********** The purpose of this article is to explore a collaborative approach in counselor skill training. As counselors, the ability to develop relationships with clients and to generate a wide variety of alternatives is important to therapeutic effectiveness. Modeling both of these therapeutic factors in counselor training is important to counselor development. The current study explores the integration of the Reflecting Team (RT) Method (Anderson, 1991) with the Microcounseling (MC) Model (Ivey & Ivey, 2003) to enhance relationship skills through awareness and to develop the ability to generate a wide variety of responses in a collaborative atmosphere. Social constructionism is the philosophical belief that individuals make meaning of events through coconstructing experiences in conversations that relate the current reality of an experience or situation with previous similar or dissimilar experiences, values, feelings, and events (Andersen, 1991; Freedman & Combs, 1996). In this way, people form subjective perspectives of current realities. The social constructionist framework has had a significant impact on supervision and clinical applications, especially family therapy (Freedman & Combs, 1996; Prest, Darden, & Keller, 1990). This study examined the application of social-constructionist-based training methods in a less familiar curriculum area: skills training integrating the MC Model (Ivey & Ivey, 2003) and the RT Method (Andersen, 1991) to promote skill development of students in a master's-level counseling program. The Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (2001) requires skill development throughout a counselor training curriculum. One of the most common training methods for learning basic counselor communication skills is Allen Ivey's MC Model. The MC Model provides a structure in which helping professionals are trained in 13 skill sets: (a) ethics and multicultural competence; (b) attending behaviors; (c) open and closed questions; (d) client observation; (e) encouraging, paraphrasing, and summarization; (f) reflection of feeling; (g) clinical interview structure; (h) confrontation; (i) focusing; (j) reflection of meaning; (k) influencing skills; (1) skill integration; and (m) determining personal style (Ivey & Ivey, 2003). The structure combines didactic learning and experiential exercises to develop student knowledge and implementation of basic counseling skills. MC training has a large research base with more than 450 studies conducted (Ivey & Ivey, 2003). Baker, Daniels, and Greeley (1990) found that there was "strong general support" for the MC Model when compared with training groups and didactic teaching. Concerns addressed in the literature are the lack of cross-cultural considerations and the behavioristic nature of the approach (Nwachuku & Ivey, 1991; Weinrach, 1987). Reflecting teams grew out of the work of Tom Andersen and colleagues at an outpatient clinic in Norway. The group has acknowledged the influences of Haley, Minuchin, Watzlawick, and the Milan group (Andersen, 1991). Historically, beginning in the mid-1980s, the RT Method was used with families in therapeutic sessions (Andersen, 1991). According to Andersen (1992), the format of the RT Method involves the client or clients working with a counselor behind a one-way mirror and a group of professionals (the team) listening on the other side. At an agreed-on time, the team comes into the therapy room and offers reflections and ideas about the counseling interaction. Then the client or clients and the therapist have time to discuss the team's comments. …