The Influence of Reflective Practice on the Case
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THE INFLUENCE OF REFLECTIVE PRACTICE ON THE CASE CONCEPTUALIZATION COMPETENCE OF COUNSELOR TRAINEES by Vassilia Binensztok A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of The College of Education in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, Florida May 2019 Copyright 2019 by Vassilia Binensztok ii THE INFLUENCE OF REFLECTIVE PRACTICE ON THE CASE CONCEPTUALIZATION COMPETENCE OF COUNSELOR TRAINEES by V assilia Binensztok This dissertation was prepared under the direction of the candidate's dissertation advisor, Dr. Len Sperry, Department of Counselor Education, and has been approved by all members of the supervisory committee. It was submitted to the faculty of the College of Education and was accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE: Len S~M~(/(;r;?< P~ul Peluso, Ph.D. ~Ad'#M £~ Carman Gill, Ph.D. Paul Peluso, Ph.D. Chair, Department of Counselor Education Apci \ ~. lotq Khaled Sobhan, Ph.D. Date Interim Dean, Graduate College iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone that has helped me on my journey through the doctoral program and seeing this dissertation to its end. First and foremost, I would like to express my appreciation to my advisor and committee chair, Dr. Len Sperry. I feel honored that you chose me to work on important projects with you. During these projects, I have learned not only how to be a scholar but also learned many lessons about myself. The assignments you gave me pushed me to explore the limits of what I could do and showed me I am capable of much more than I once thought I was. You have helped me gain the confidence to set out on my own ventures and attempt things I had not dreamed of before. I will be forever grateful not only for the academic opportunities you have afforded me but also for the opportunity to grow as a person and a thinker. I would like to thank my committee members Dr. Paul Peluso and Dr. Carman Gill. Dr. Peluso, thank you for taking the time to work with me and help me through my dissertation process. You bring a great presence to the Department and help the students feel supported through the program. Dr. Gill, you have inspired me in many ways, and I see you as a role model as both a scholar and a woman. I feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to learn from you and to have participated in so many meaningful class discussions with you. I would like to thank Dr. Jon Sperry for accommodating me in my research and for going to great lengths to help me collect my data. iv I want to acknowledge my family and friends, without whom nothing I have achieved would be possible. Thank you to my grandparents, Nina and David, may they rest in peace, who survived many hardships and eventually lived the American Dream and instilled this value in me. My grandfather, David, gave me his resilience, perseverance, and idealism. Thank you to my cousin, Sara, for always holding it down for me. I am doing my best not to live under the family spell, for all of us. Thank you to my great, great grandmother for watching over me, and thank you to my ancestors for the blessings. Thank you to my cousin, Joe, and my aunt and uncle Aviva and Leon, for supporting me and finally taking my side. Also, I would like to acknowledge my parents, who were right about some things, wrong about a lot of things, but, for better or worse, helped make me who I am. Thank you to my friends Lexie, Allison, and George. You are my fans, my support, and my confidantes. I love you, and I don’t know where I would be if it weren’t for you. I can’t wait to get out and finally see more of you now that I’m done with all this work! Thank you to the most amazing Ph.D. friends anyone could ask for —The Outliers Ali and Tiffany. You have helped me navigate one of the most turbulent times, and I hope that I have done the same for you. I will be forever grateful to you and the thread. The further I got into this dissertation, the more I realized how fitting norepinephrine was. Finally, last but not least, I would like to thank and dedicate my dissertation to all the students I taught at Palm Beach State College from 2012 through 2018. My students changed my life. You believed in me so much that I started believing in myself. You v liked me so much I started liking myself. I might never have pursued this dream of earning a doctorate if it weren’t for you all. vi ABSTRACT Author: Vassilia Binensztok, M.S. Title: The Influence of Reflective Practice on the Case Conceptualization Competence of Counselor Trainees Institution: Florida Atlantic University Dissertation Advisor: Dr. Len T. Sperry Degree: Doctor of Philosophy Year: 2019 The purpose of this quasi-experimental, longitudinal study was to measure the effects of reflective practice coaching on 35 participants, as compared to participants who did not receive coaching. Data was collected over a period of eight weeks. A secondary purpose was to examine the effects of a standardized case conceptualization training lecture on 84 participants. A third purpose was to examine the relationships between counselor trainee demographic variables, their attitudes towards evidence-based practice, disposition towards reflective reasoning, and competence in writing case conceptualizations. This was the first study to contribute to the reflection in counseling literature. A convenience sample of N = 84 participants participated in two standardized case conceptualization training lectures. An intervention group (N = 35) received an additional three one-on-one reflection coaching sessions. The comparison group (N = 49) received the training lectures and no coaching. Participants from both groups attended two 3-hour training lectures, which taught the integrative case conceptualization model vii developed by Sperry (2010). Intervention group participants took part in three additional one-on-one reflection coaching sessions. Pre- and post-training lecture case conceptualization skills were assessed using the Case Conceptualization Evaluation Form (CCEF) 2.0. Levels of reflective thinking were measured with pre-, post-, and post-post- administrations of The Reflection in Learning Scale (Sobral, 2005). Variance in case conceptualization competence was analyzed using a MANOVA. Intervention group participants’ mean CCEF 2.0 scores were significantly higher than those of the comparison group (M = 72.64 and M = 46.81, respectively). Reflective thinking was determined not to be a mediating or moderating variable. Mean CCEF 2.0 scores from the first training lecture increased from the pre-test to the post-test (M = 11.20 and M = 24.10, respectively) for all participants. Mean case CCEF 2.0 scores also increased from the pre-test to the post-test in the second training lecture (M = 21.33 and M = 52.29, respectively) for all participants. Additionally, a paired sample t-test showed improvement on the Reflection in Learning Scale (Sobral, 2005) between the post-test and post-post test for the intervention group. Results were significant (|t| = 1.91, df 34, p < .001, one-tailed). viii THE INFLUENCE OF REFLECTIVE PRACTICE ON THE CASE CONCEPTUALIZATION COMPETENCE OF COUNSELOR TRAINEES List of Tables ................................................................................................................... xiii List of Figures .................................................................................................................. xiv I. Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 1 Statement of the Problem .............................................................................................. 5 Need for standardized training of case conceptualization skills. .......................... 10 Purpose of the Study ................................................................................................... 11 Research Questions and Hypotheses .......................................................................... 11 Definitions of Key Terms ........................................................................................... 13 Study Design ............................................................................................................... 16 Organization of the Dissertation ................................................................................. 17 Summary ..................................................................................................................... 17 II. Literature Review ......................................................................................................... 19 Case Conceptualization ............................................................................................... 19 Significance of Case Conceptualization ..................................................................... 21 Practitioner Expertise .................................................................................................. 23 Case Conceptualization Training ................................................................................ 25 Types of Case Conceptualization Models ................................................................... 27 Context and organizational models. ...................................................................... 27 Research models. .................................................................................................. 27 ix