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Ethical Issues in the Teachingof Group CounselingDonna S. Davenport aa Texas A&M UniversityPublished online: 12 Aug 2010.

To cite this article: Donna S. Davenport (2004) Ethical Issues in the Teaching ofGroup Counseling, The Journal for Specialists in Group Work, 29:1, 43-49, DOI:10.1080/01933920490275376

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RESOLVING ISSUES IN TEACHING GROUP WORK

Ethical Issues in the Teaching of GroupCounseling

Donna S. DavenportTexas A&M University

The practice of having professors or supervised doctoral students leading labora-tory groups for students in masters-level group counseling courses is widespread.There are, however, a number of ethical considerations which render this practiceproblematic, as well as alternative solutions with fewer potential ethical conflicts.

Keywords: ethics; group counseling; training; multiple relationship

A tradition in many counselor training programs is for professors orsupervised doctoral students to lead laboratory training groups forstudents in masters-level programs (Corey, 2000; Forester-Miller &Duncan, 1990; Furr & Barret, 2000; Pierce & Baldwin, 1990). Indeed,the American Counseling Association (ACA, 1995) Code of Ethics F.2and F.3 specifically address this practice; (a) F.2.e (Peer Relationships)provides guidelines for managing the dual relationship issues inherentin having advanced students supervise or lead groups for beginningstudents; and (b) F.3.c (Counseling for Students and Supervisees) isdirected toward avoiding counseling relationships with students un-less it is a brief role associated with a training experience. In referenceto the training of group counselors, these passages seem to imply thatwith reasonable precautionary measures, laboratory groups for stu-dents in a beginning group course could be led by either professorsor advanced students. In the opinion of the faculty in my program,these ACA directives do not go far enough and allow for foreseeabledifficulties that must not be minimized.

Donna S. Davenport is an associate professor of Educational Psychology, Texas A&MUniversity. Correspondence concerning this manuscript should be addressed to DonnaS. Davenport, Department of Educational Psychology, Texas A&M University, 4225TAMU, College Station, TX 77843-4225; phone: (979)845-0285; fax: (979)862-1256;e-mail: donna-davenport@tamu.edu.

THE JOURNAL FOR SPECIALISTS IN GROUP WORK, Vol. 29 No. 1, March 2004, 43�49

DOI: 10.1080=01933920490275376

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SPECIFIC ETHICAL QUESTIONS

Is the requirement of laboratory groups even ethical? There are twosides to this controversy. Welfel (1999) takes a cautious view. She dis-cusses the ethical dilemmas inherent in any involuntary group andpoints out that without completely free consent, an individual maywell agree to group participation as the ‘‘least worst alternative,’’ thusresulting in a loss of autonomy necessary for effective group function-ing. As she says, the failure of ACA guidelines to address this issueimplies that the benefit the person and society can receive from thegroup outweighs the loss of autonomy about the decision. One wondersif we can make the case that the groups our masters students partici-pate in consistently benefit them or society?

Certainly, the groups are intended to be beneficial. Kottler (2001)states the obvious: that it is hypocritical for counselors to ask a groupmember to undergo an experience that they have been unwilling to dothemselves. How, the argument goes, can group leaders understandthe vulnerability and ambivalence in disclosing risky material in agroup setting unless they have been in such situations themselves?Considering both halves of this ethical dilemma, we are thus left withthe unhappy paradox of requiring that all students voluntarily partici-pate as group members.

What are the added ethical issues for faculty-led groups? Suchrequired groups for students have come under increasing criticism(e.g., Merta & Sisson, 1991; Plaut, 1993; Slimp & Burian, 1994) be-cause of the dual relationship inherent in such practices. AlthoughCorey (2000) argues that if students know of the requirement beforethey enter, the practice is ethical, others (e.g., Remley & Herlihy,2000) recommend strongly that some other professional run the group,not the professor. Consider the two extremes: If the process=counsel-counseling group was a fantastic, intense experience, the group leaderwill have taken on, at least to some extent, a therapeutic role. As Pope& Vasquez (1998) note, once a therapist, always a therapist. Transfer-ential feelings can be evoked quickly and without the leader’s (or part-icipant’s) permission. If, at the other extreme, the group was a dismalor even mediocre experience for the student, what kind of learningtook place? What kind of role model, of either group leader or pro-fessor, was depicted? How much was the student’s self-awarenessenhanced?

When doctoral students lead such groups, may we be expectingsome of them to practice beyond their competency, a violationof ACA ethics code C.2 (Professional Competence)? As Corey (2000),Kottler (2001), and Pipes & Davenport (1999) have discussed, leadinga group of required participants can be difficult, at best. If that group

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also is a psychologically sophisticated cohort, then weaving throughtheir resistances, fears of loss of privacy, and ‘‘unfinished business’’can indeed be a challenge. How can we imagine that the doctoral stu-dents who have absolutely no previous experience will consistently of-fer professional quality groups? Can we be very sure that we are notsacrificing the best training for Masters students in order to affordtraining to doctoral students?

STUDENT REPORTS ON LABORATORY GROUPEXPERIENCES

During the last 10 years, I have conducted an informal survey ofdoctoral students at my institution who have received such laboratoryexperiences in their masters programs from other institutions. Manyreported less than positive, even negative, experiences. Most believedthat they simply had not learned anything about dealing with heavyaffective issues in a group situation because no one in their lab groupwas willing to take such risks, either because they feared the profes-sor’s knowing that they were not ‘‘healthy,’’ or because they did nottrust the advanced students serving as leaders to be able to handletheir personal issues competently. Many also believed that none ofthe leaders, faculty, or advanced students were skilled in working withan intact cohort class; they believed that cohort conflicts were ignoredand that participants were subtly encouraged to ‘‘keep things light.’’Others complained that advanced student leaders had their own inter-personal difficulties that professors seemed unaware of. One studenttold of having a doctoral group co-leader who had earlier tried to dateher; in the group, he set up a role play for her to learn to turn down adate.

One student commented that a member of her group reported asituation involving abuse of a child; she was concerned that the stu-dent leader, worried about seeming unsupportive, did not nonethelessfulfill his ethical obligation to behave as a counselor educator should(F.2.c) and report it. She acknowledged that the student leader wasin a very difficult situation, and blamed the department for expectinghim to be able to handle such a conflict.

ETHICAL GUIDELINES FOR GRADUATE TRAINING

Biaggio, Paget, & Chenoweth (1997) offered guidelines for use inevaluating ethical relationships with trainees. They suggested thatthree criteria be considered nonnegotiable: (a) educational standards

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are maintained, (b) educational experiences are provided for thestudent, and (c) exploitative practices are absent. Education, as theysaid, is the raison d’etre of the professor’s role. When training both doc-toral and masters students, this implies that doctoral student trainingshould not supercede that of masters students. One must not exploitthe beginning student by requiring a mediocre group experience inorder to provide an experience for more advanced students. Toavoid such situations, reasonable guaranteesmust be in place to ensurea good experience.

Further, these authors offer a set of guidelines for faculty (and ad-vanced students) to attend to in maintaining ethical relationships withstudents: They suggest that faculty members acknowledge the powerdifferences, develop a frame for evaluating faculty-student relation-ships, and foster and maintain a climate that supports ethical rela-tionships with students. As Kitchener (1992) pointed out, it isimportant that faculty role model appropriate behavior in instillingethical attitudes and behavior in students. She went on to say, ‘‘evenwhen graduate programs have excellent course work in ethics, if fac-ulty model unethical behavior [or, I would add, condone it], it is verypossible that the most influential ethical attitudes that students learnwill not come from explicit ethics education but from the experiencesthat they have in other areas of the curriculum’’ (p. 190).

SUGGESTIONS FOR TRAINING OF GROUP COUNSELORS

At this point, I would like to provide my program’s emerging modelthat includes training for both masters and doctoral students in groupcounseling skills. While far from perfect, the model avoids most ofthe difficulties of dual roles inherent in typical practice, and stillprovides for ethical educational experiences for beginning andadvancedstudents.

Several assumptions underlie our program’s present design:

. Students at all levels benefit from low-risk ‘‘thinking on their feet.’’

. With instruction, students can learn to role-play powerful and variedgroup situations. In some ways, since they can be planned and orche-strated ahead of time, such experiences are ideal for exposing studentsto a variety of group situations they are likely to face. We value thepower of role-plays for both masters and doctoral classes, although thesituations depicted in the two levels of training are different.

. Many masters-level practitioners will be leading structured or psychoe-ducational groups, probably not intensive therapy groups. Accordingly,their obtaining first-hand knowledge of the benefit and power of suchgroups is a valuable, educational experience. To learn and practice basic

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counseling skills for use in unstructured groups, they can benefit fromclass role-plays (where all roles are assigned).

. Doctoral students should be adept at handling more difficult group coun-seling situations than masters students. They should have at their dis-posal specific skills for understanding group dynamics, working withdifficult group clients and critical incidents, and recovering from theirinevitable failures.

Specific elements of this comprehensive model include:

. Psychoeducational groups based on Drum and Knott’s (1977) model, forstudents in the beginning group class, designed and led by doctoral stu-dents. This allows for masters students to have a laboratory experienceand provides doctoral students with an opportunity to lead supervisedgroups. Drum’s approach provides for the sequencing of learning withina small area of psychological focus (e.g., stress management), increas-ingly experiential activities (within which group members can choosetheir own level of affect and self-disclosure), and transfer of awareness=knowledge to one’s outside life. Other aspects of our program’s approachinclude allowing for choice of group=leaders by the masters students, in-dividual and class supervision of the design and leadership of the groupsby the doctoral class professor, and feedback from the participants ontheir leaders, shared with the professor of the doctoral students andused for evaluative purposes. An important advantage of this approachis that it also allows for the masters level group class instructor to pro-cess his or her students’ ongoing learning without having to worry aboutthe level of confidentiality expected with more personal sharing in a pro-cess group.

. In both the masters and doctoral classes, students are from time to timepresented with one-paragraph stimuli (e.g., two group members in the4th session become embroiled in an argument about religion) and askedto write down (a) What are the relevant group dynamics? (b) What, asleader, do you want to make sure you both accomplish and not ac-complish? (c) Specifically, what do you say? All class members then readtheir three-part answers and the class discusses whether the inter-vention would accomplish what it was supposed to, possible unforeseenreactions, and alternative wording of interventions.

. A prerequisite for students taking the advanced class is to be in a sem-ester-long growth group experience, led by a licensed professional. Suchgroups may not be led by an advanced student or a program instructor.At our university, staff members from the Student Counseling Servicehave been willing to provide such a service. Another approach is to‘‘swap’’ group leadership; that is, a staff member from a local mentalhealth institution leads a group for doctoral students, in return forwhich a faculty member offers a needed service at the other site.

. Design of the doctoral group class curriculum allows for experience indealing with affective material typical of nonpsychoeducational groups,as well as critical incidents common in counseling groups (e.g., silentmember,monopolizer, attackon leader, etc.). These classroomexperiencesare provided by means of structured role-plays. With a larger class, aninner=outer circle activity can provide for a leader (or co-leaders) to workwith a group situation while the out group takes notes on process. When

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we do such role-plays, we allow students to ‘‘freeze’’ the action and con-sult with the professor or outer group, then resume leadership. At times,if the leader seems at an impasse, the professor steps in to model an in-tervention. A premium is placed on risk-taking, improvising, and reco-vering from failure.

SUMMARY

Our faculty believes that, while the program lacks some of theingredients we would like our masters and doctoral students’ trainingto include, our model adheres fairly closely to the guidelines suggestedby Biaggio et al. (1997). It drastically reduces the possible damages in-herent in dual relationships, it avoids exploiting one group of studentson behalf of another, and it provides a framework for evaluating whatduality of roles does occur. Further, it allows for intensive experiencesat both levels, with skills appropriate to the level of students’ training.

In a perfect world, all counselor-training programs would have ac-cess to a variety of marvelous group leaders who wanted to work withour students for free. Lacking that, every attempt should be made tomake group classes challenging, educational, experiential, and power-ful. We must work to continue to find approaches that avoid dual rela-tionships, exploitation, and students’ working outside of theircompetency areas.

REFERENCES

American Counseling Association (ACA). (1995). Code of ethics and standards of practice.Alexandria, VA: Author.

Biaggio, M., Paget, T. L., & Chenoweth, M. S. (1997). A model for ethical management offaculty-student dual relationships. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice,28, 184–189.

Corey, G. (2000). Theory and practice of group counseling (5th ed.). Pacific Grove, CA:Brooks=Cole.

Drum, D. J., & Knott, J. E. (1977). Structured groups for facilitating development:Acquiring life skills, resolving life themes, and making life transitions. Oxford, Eng-land: Human Sciences Press.

Forester-Miller, H., & Duncan, J. (1990). The ethics of dual relationships in the trainingof group counselors. Journal for Specialists in Group Work, 15, 83–93.

Furr, S., & Barret, B. (2000). Teaching group counseling skills: Problems and solutions.Counselor Education and Supervision, 40, 94–104.

Kitchener, K. S. (1992). Psychologist as teacher and mentor: Affirming ethical valuesthroughout the curriculum. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 23,190–195.

Kottler, J. (2001). Learning group leadership: An experiential approach. NeedhamHeights, MA: Allyn=Bacon.

Merta, R. J., & Sisson, J. A. (1991). The experiential group: An ethical and professionaldilemma. Journal for Specialists in Group Work, 16, 236–245.

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Pierce, K., & Baldwin, C. (1990). Participation versus privacy in the training of groupcounselors. Journal for Specialists in Group Work, 15, 149–158.

Pipes R. B., & Davenport, D. S. (1999). Introduction to psychotherapy: Common clinicalwisdom. Needham, MA: Allyn=Bacon.

Plaut, S. M. (1993). Boundary issues in teacher-student relationships. Journal of Sexand Marital Therapy, 19, 210–219.

Pope, K. S., & Vasquez, M. J. T. (1998). Ethics in psychotherapy and counseling: A prac-ticalguide (2nd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Remley, T. P., & Herlihy, B. (2000). Ethical, legal and professional issues in counseling.Boston: Prentice-Hall.

Slimp, P. A. O., & Burian, B. K. (1994). Multiple role relationships during internship.Consequences and implications. Professional Psychology: Research & Practice, 25,39–45.

Welfel, E. R. (1999). Ethics in counseling and psychotherapy: Standards, research, andemerging issues. New York: Wadsworth.

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