The Effect of Field Practice Course on Respect of Differences Level of Psychological Counselor Candidates

Respect for differences in educational environments is no longer an option and has become a necessity. Therefore, it is important to develop a multicultural understanding in which differences are taken into consideration in educational environments. School counselors play an important role in the creation of a school climate that respects differences. Further, respect of differences level of psychological counselors should be high in order to provide effective psychological counseling services to students with different characteristics and be a role model for their peers. For this reason, it is necessary to improve the level of respect for differences of psychological counselors in the undergraduate education process. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of the practices in Field Practice course which psychological counselor candidates took on final semester of undergraduate education on their respect of difference level and a mixed research model was employed in this study. The one-group pretest-posttest model which is a type of quasi-experimental designs was used in the quantitative dimension of the study and the experimental group was composed of 40 psychological counselor candidates. The Respect of Difference Scale and a Form of Opinions about Field Practice were used to collect the data. A paired sample t-test was used to evaluate the mean difference between the pretest which was applied before taking the Field Practice course and posttest which was applied after taking the Field Practice course mean respect of difference scores of participants. Results indicated that respect of difference levels of psychological counselor candidates significantly increased after taking the course. The qualitative data obtained from the interviews conducted in order to get information about the practices in the Field Practice course were analyzed using descriptive analysis methods. According to the findings obtained from the opinions of the participants, it was found that the number of types of diversity and the number of diversity-oriented activities are limited at schools with no counselor and schools from low socio‐economic areas.