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The Game of I Am| Enhancing Empathy and Improving Attitudes toward Older Adults in First-Year Master's Students Training to Become Counselors and Student Support Professionals

<p> In the United States, adults 65 and older represent a significant and growing cultural minority (Cohn &amp; Taylor, 2011). Ageist stereotypes, whether directed at older adults or internalized by elders themselves, can cause real harm to elders&rsquo; mental and physical health (Nelson, 2016a). Mezirow&rsquo;s transformative learning theory (TLT; 1991) directly addresses the essential nature of challenging personal prejudices and cultivating empathy as critical to development within the adult learner, and transformative empathy-enhancing interventions have been used successfully to improve attitudes toward older adults in helping professionals and professionals-in-training (e.g., Friedman &amp; Goldbaum, 2016; Henry &amp; Ozier, 2011). Even though older adults receive mental health services at a lower rate than any other age demographic (Karel, Gatz, &amp; Smyer, 2012), and greater numbers of older adults are entering postsecondary education (Chen, 2017; DiSilvestro, 2013; Kasworm, 2010), there has been limited focus in counseling and higher education research on meeting the needs of this expanding demographic. Intervening early in students&rsquo; training to address age-related biases and to foster empathetic awareness (Andersson, King, &amp; Lalande, 2010) aligns with the counseling profession&rsquo;s commitment to purposeful counselor preparation (Kaplan, Tarvydas, &amp; Gladding, 2014) and professional competency standards for student support professionals (ACPA &amp; NCPA, 2015). </p><p> Using Bartholomew&rsquo;s (1998) Intervention Mapping model (IM), I developed a three-part empathy-enhancing transformative learning intervention, &ldquo;The Game of <i>I am</i>&rdquo; (Bailey, 2016c). Using a pre-post quasi-experimental design, the purpose of the current feasibility study was to test the preliminary effectiveness of the intervention at enhancing self-reported empathy and improving self-reported attitudes toward older adults with first-year master&rsquo;s students training to be counselors (<i>N</i> = 14) and student support professionals (<i>N</i> = 13). Although preliminary qualitative themes emerged that supported its utility, quantitatively there were no statistically significant changes in mean empathy and attitude scores for the participants following participation in &ldquo;The Game of <i>I am</i>&rdquo; (Bailey, 2016c). Additional plans for the analysis of collected qualitative data are described and implications for integrating &ldquo;The Game of <i> I am</i>&rdquo; (Bailey, 2016c) into existing master&rsquo;s level coursework are discussed.</p><p>

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:PROQUEST/oai:pqdtoai.proquest.com:10747965
Date03 July 2018
CreatorsBailey, Sara W.
PublisherThe University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Source SetsProQuest.com
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typethesis

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