Courses

This seminar-style course provides training in quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods and program evaluation designs for conducting empirical research in counselling psychology. It is an advanced level course that assumes basic undergraduate competence in statistics and social scientific research. Students will be exposed to the methods and stages of basic research, applied research, and program evaluation. An emphasis is placed on training students to reflect critically on the methods themselves - their philosophical underpinnings, promises, and limitations. Ethical and cultural considerations in research are also addressed. This course is designed to be interactive and dialogical, and entails a mix of lectures, discussion and classroom activities.

Prepares students to evaluate and critique statistics and research methods in counselling psychology, including learning about the use and misuse of basic quantitative and qualitative analytical techniques in counselling-related research and in program evaluation. The course also provides an introduction to ethical issues in research, and conducting critical reviews of literature.

Critical evaluation of major theories of counselling and psychotherapy in terms of their assumptions, research support, and applications. Such issues as cultural diversity, gender differences, and human development are discussed. Students are introduced to the process of integrating theories as they develop their own framework for counselling practice.

This course provides a theoretical and applied introduction to systems theory with a focus on illustrating interventions targeting the wellbeing of children and youth. This course will provide an overview of family systems theory and therapy with an emphasis on clinical skill building and conceptualization within a family life cycle and lifespan human development focus. Attention will be paid to person-environment interactions within families and communities, including ways in which societal issues impact functioning of the individual, family, and community. This course will highlight distinctions between traditional 1:1 intervention paradigms and those of family and community psychology with the aim of expanding the repertoire of skills and approaches available to future professionals.Consideration of issues related to diversity, power, and privilege as they relate to age, gender, sexual orientation, health/ability, culture and ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and spirituality and religion will be encouraged throughout the course.

An overview of meta-theory and skill applications necessary for leadership of effective group processes. Participants develop and demonstrate introductory group facilitation skills. In addition to an overview of group dynamics, the course includes an introduction to the major models of group counselling and therapy, and a laboratory section to facilitate the development of group counselling skills and competencies. Ethics and cultural differences are also addressed.

An overview of some of the most useful major career development theories and resources. A wide range of issues such as gender, culture, socio-economic status, age, and mental health concerns are also addressed, as these issues impinge upon career. Students are introduced to a variety of career counselling and implementation strategies within the current labour market. In addition, each student completes a set of career assessment instruments, and interprets them for a class partner.

The course covers advanced quantitative and qualitative data analysis strategies, such as: multiple regression, different models of analysis of variance, factor analysis, content analysis and coding across several qualitative methods (e.g., grounded theory, phenomenology, ECIT, etc.). An additional focus of the course will be on integrating quantitative and qualitative data analysis methods (mixed methods research).

Helps to orient students to several significant research areas in counselling and psychology as well as issues critical to the successful completion of thesis research. Students present their research ideas in class and develop a research proposal.