A Phenomenological Investigation of Doctoral Students’ Gatekeeping Experiences

There is a clear need for further investigations of professional impairment and gatekeeping practices of counselor education programs. A vast majority (92%) of counselor educators report having at least one student with a professional impairment, and training programs dismissed 20% of these students (Crawford & Gilroy, 2013). Gatekeeping is an ethical responsibility of counselors, entailing ongoing monitoring of suitability for professional practice (American Counseling Association (ACA), 2014). At its core, gatekeeping is a mechanism to provide intervention, including facilitating exit from the profession, on behaviors that could threaten client welfare (Foster & McAdams, 2009). The Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP, 2016) lists gatekeeping as a national accreditation requirement for both master’s and doctoral-level programs. For the purpose of this study, gatekeeping is viewed within the university setting and involves preand post-admission evaluation and remediation to monitor students’ ongoing fitness for the program and professional field (Ziomek-Daigle & Christensen, 2010). Gatekeeping requires counselor educators and supervisors to make developmentally appropriate assessments of student counselors’ progress. Faculty evaluations of counselors-in-training occur in academic (e.g., course grades) and interpersonal contexts; including interactions during supervision in practicum and internships, and interactions in and outside of class (Ziomek-Daigle & Christensen, 2010). As counselor educators-in-training, doctoral students have opportunities to serve in evaluative roles as teaching assistants and supervisors of master’s level students (Scarborough, Bernard, & Morse, 2006; Fernando, 2013). As part of these roles, doctoral students hold gatekeeping responsibilities (CACREP, 2016; Limberg et al., 2013). However, the literature has yet to thoroughly explore doctoral students’ experiences as gatekeepers (Rapp, Moody, & Stewart, 2018).