Equipping the Online Counsellors-in-Training: Between Theory and Practice

Objectives Of The Chapter

It is a known fact that the bridge between theory and practice is the practicum experience (Vreugdenhil, 2005; Adeyemo, 2002) and counselling practice in the field in the form of internships and placements. The practicum experience exposes the counsellor-in-training to the a range of issues in relation to real worlds counselling practice, for example, relationship building, difficulties in communication, issues of trust, and other intricacies of the intervention in relation to applying theory to practice. Moreover, studies have shown that practicum training has been found to contribute to an increase in counsellor self-efficacy during practicum and pre-practicum (Melchert, Hays, Wilijnen, & Kolocek, 1996; Sharpley & Ridgway, 1993) for both beginning and advanced counsellor trainees. However, with the convolutions and complexities of the many counselling theories that impugn on the sensitivity of counsellors-in-training the result is sadly a reduction in favourable counselling. Therefore, in order to equip the counsellor-in-training for working in an effective way with clients, it would be useful to reposition potential paradigm transformation in bridging the gap between theory and practice. Therefore, the following concepts would be explored:

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  Understanding online counselling

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  Discovering A personal theory

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  Pivotal skills in online counselling

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  The role of the supervisor

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  Equipment and materials useful for training the online counsellor

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  Ethics of online counselling.

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  Challenges of training the online counsellor