Basic Counseling Skills

Catalog description

This course provides an introduction to specific counseling and helping skills used by various counseling/psychotherapy models across the major theoretical orientations. During the course, an emphasis will be placed on the skills and techniques that a counselor uses to establish and maintain an effective counseling relationship. In both content and process, the focus is on integration of theory with practice through experiential learning. Students will learn and apply skills that range from basic attending and listening skills to interviewing skills. In order to facilitate learning, a variety of instructional strategies are to be used including: 1) Lectures and demonstration by the instructor, 2) video-taping of students as they are practicing their skills and providing feedback, 3) small group work for the purpose of practicing skills, analyzing other students' performances, and sharing reactions to the counseling process, and 4) completion of exercises/worksheets handed out in class. Upon successfully completing this course, the learner is expected to be able to engage in basic counseling and interviewing, demonstrate ethical counseling principles relevant to the content of the course, describe a model that represents the counseling process, including the stages of counseling, assess the role of nonverbal communication in counseling, identify and demonstrate basic listening skills, probing, interpretation skills, challenging skills, summarizing skills, and informing skills, assess the use of each basic skill in a multicultural environment, evaluate personal and peer mastery of basic skills, and conduct a brief one-session counseling intervention that facilitates client development and change.