This research study sought to understand how Canadian counsellors in the province of Ontario negotiated and constructed their professional identity amid unfolding regulatory changes. These changes would bring restrictions to both title use and practice of psychotherapy once the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario was established and legislation was fully enacted. For those who identify with the title of ‘counsellor’ and share overlapping scopes of practice with psychotherapy it is uncertain what they will draw upon to construct, rework or maintain their counsellor professional identity. The intention was to build a descriptive, experiential account of the identity work being done by counsellors as they navigated through the uncertainty accompanying this period of transition. A qualitative single case study design was used to explore the particularity of this contemporary occurrence of professional identity construction employing multiple data collection sources to garner a holistic picture of this phenomenon. Input was gathered from twenty-four Ontario counsellors who were students, novice or experienced practitioners who either participated in two semi-structured interviews (n=10) or an asynchronous virtual focus group hosted in the discussion forum of Blackboard Learn™ (n= 14). Additional data sources included the use of a demographic questionnaire, participant observation, and document analysis. In order to augment more subtle or deeper meaning levels additional data collection instruments were employed and these included the use of participant diagramming, a request for a descriptive metaphor, and graphic elicitation diagram. Using a thematic analysis strategy, a within case and cross analysis of the embedded subunits was undertaken. Findings from the data analysis revealed a number of salient themes that offered insights into how counsellors construct their professional identity during periods of uncertainty. There were five higher order or global themes which emerged: (a) counsellors have a sense of agency around the construction and communication of their professional identity, (b) identity construction is a process of organic, emergent growth that continues throughout professional life; (c) the shaping and negotiation of counsellor professional identity is guided by values; (d) when change contexts arise counsellors safeguard identity integrity by protecting its distinctiveness, definitional parameters and characterization in practice settings; and (e) during transition periods counsellors are willing to execute adaptive shifting as part of their identity work provided this does not infringe upon their professional values. Results indicate that meaning, values and agency galvanize the professional identity work done by counsellors and during transition brought about by a significant exogenous change event, such as the recent moves toward professional regulation, these negotiation strategies prevail. This case study took advantage of a contemporary instance of counsellor professional identity construction during unprecedented change to provide not only a rich description of this phenomenon but also to introduce a thematic diagram to act as a starting point for further discussion. Implications for counsellors, counsellor education and training programs, the profession, and future research are each discussed along with ideas for fostering informal avenues for counsellors across the experience spectrum to nurture their professional identity in a protean, agential manner.

During the past ten years the changing sociopolitical context in South Africa challenged mental health services to re-position themselves in order to stay relevant to specific contextual demands. The field of psychology has also been introduced to the application of postmodern principles in counselling and training practices internationally and nationally, which promised exciting alternative avenues for many practitioners and clients. In reading the literature on the possible opportunities of applying postmodern principles to psychological and educational practices, it became clear that the relationship between counsellors/clients and trainers/students can be a collaborative co-construction of knowledge production. Existing literature on current training practices however reflects a fragmented picture, in which the orientation, content and pedagogy are not consistently aligned with an epistemology and practice. Postmodern literature on the notion of “identity/self” as the narration of a multilevelled construct is used to conceptualise training contexts as contexts that provide students with certain narratives with which they can construct their counsellor identities. The aim of the research is to story the construction of counsellor identity through the application of narrative therapy within a learning model. Text production was imbedded in a referential research context which is defined as a context of the following relational positionings: narrative counsellor, trainer, researcher, students and participants. The contribution of this context towards the construction of counsellor identity is explored through engaging in and narrative analysis of written conversations, journals and visual projects of students who engaged in a training context. Through the narrative analysis process, temporal dimension story grids were developed for the written conversations and training journals and the visual projects were analysed according to denotational and higher signification inventories. Narratives that were co-created in the training context include that of uncertainty, self-awareness, growth, change, hope and respect for individual life narratives, which also contributed to the process of the construction of counsellor identity. These are all familiar narratives that exist in the South African context as we live in a country that is in a continuous process of change and where certainty is an elusive concept. On the basis of the narrative themes that emerged, guidelines were developed for creating training contexts that could facilitate the construction of a counsellor identity that is of relevance within the changing South African context. These guidelines include a repositioning in the trainer/student relationship; using externalising language practices to facilitate the co-construction of knowledge through a critical engagement with the learning material and a conceptualisation of evaluation as a process based activity rather than an outcome based activity. / Thesis (PhD (Psychology))--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Psychology / unrestricted