As group counseling has been validated as a therapeutic working model, it was considered one of the fundamental abilities of counseling related professionals by the Council for Accreditation of Counselling and Related Educational Programs in 2015 and is also considered a compulsory professional credit to be obtained within the domestic training courses in becoming a counselors in Taiwan. Therefore it is important to focus on the development of counseling profession and teaching supervision during the practical training of master level counselors to guarantee group counseling skills as one of the most important professional abilities for counselors. To better understand the development of leadership competencies of novice group counselors, it is important to consider both the actual practice of group counseling as well as the continuous investigation into the learning process and competencies of novice group counselors. This study utilizes the ‘Group Leadership Competencies Scale’ constructed by Wu and Hsu (2012, 2015) to focus on the exploration of unstructured counseling group leadership competencies. The connotation of eight group leadership competencies include: the competency to change and take action, the competency to facilitate cohesion in the group, the competency to intensify the group, the competency to guide and propel process, the competency to enhance individual, the competency to build the norm of interaction, the competency to breakthrough process obstacles and the competency to intensify learning and acquisition; the changes in competency during the four stages of group process can be observed to provide reference for understanding the leadership competencies of novice group counselors. The four objectives of this study can be summarized as follow: (1) the overview and analysis of novice group counselors’ leadership competencies as a whole: an exploration into the training process and the state of the progress of overall competencies. (2) the analysis of process change of novice group counselors’ various leadership competencies: exploration of the state of progress of various abilities during process. (3) The cluster analysis of novice group counselors’ leadership competencies learning style: investigation of various learning styles and overall performance existing in novice group counselor community through the change in practical leadership abilities. (4) the analysis of process change of various leadership competencies of novice group counselors with different learning styles: exploration of the progress during process of novice group counselors in different groups of learning styles. To answer the objectives of this study, the researchers collected data of 61 unstructured counseling group which ran for 10 sessions over the past five years with a total of 117 master level novice unstructured group leader counselors; the participating novice group counselors have all undergone 18 hours of unstructured group training course and consented to the setting of this study (to be videotaped during group process, writing up group records after each session and receive practical group supervision every week as the group proceeded). Group counselors were invited to fill out the ‘group counseling leadership competencies scale’ after the first session (beginning), fourth session (transformation), eighth session (working) and the tenth session (ending) and the data was used to assess the change in group process leadership competencies; 72 counselors out of 117 completed all required data and were chosen to be the object of this study. The study found that: (1) Novice group counselors show significant improvement in eight competencies and expressed higher than the scale’s norm in sub-item and total score at the ending stage. (2) There are three types of process trend: ‘continuous gradual progress’, ‘mid to end stage gradual progress’ and ‘lower at early stages but gradually increases at mid to end stages’ of the eight group leadership competencies. Only the competency to intensify the group was observed in the ‘continuous gradual progress’ trend category and this type of leadership competencies will grow with the group as it proceeds and show significant improvement during the four stages of group process reaching statistically significant difference. The ‘mid to end stage gradual progress’ trend category showed five different competencies: the competency to facilitate cohesion, the competency to guide and propel process, the competency to enhance individual, the competency to build the norm of interaction and the competency to breakthrough process obstacles; these competencies were higher at the transformation stage than the beginning stage but did not reach statistical difference between the two stages; the significant difference was rather seen after the group entered working stage. The ‘lower at early stages but gradually increases at mid to end stages’ trend category reflects on the competency to change and take action and the competency to end and strengthen change; although both competencies belong to the third stage of group process (but the difference analysis did not reach statistical significance between the beginning and transformation stage). (3) When cluster analysis was carried out on the learning styles of process leadership competencies, the participants could be divided into three self-evaluation groups (SEG): ‘high self-evaluation group’, ‘central-tendency selfevaluation group’ and ‘low self-evaluation group’. Regarding learning effectiveness, the central-tendency self-evaluation group reach significant difference in all eight competencies but the high and low self-evaluation groups did not reach significant difference in the competency to change and take action; the low self-evaluation group did not reach significant difference in both the competency to breakthrough process obstacles and the competency to end and strengthen change. (4) The high selfevaluation group expressed subjective high effectiveness in group leadership competencies in the beginning but dropped during the transformation stage and raised significantly during working stage and showed a smaller amplitude of rise during the ending stage The low self-evaluation group showed low subjective effectiveness in group leadership competencies at the beginning and dropped further during transformation stage; great improvement in the competencies were observed during working stage and continued to improve during the ending stage. The central-tendency self-evaluation group showed median subjective effectiveness in group leadership competencies but showed linear rise in subjective group leadership competencies during the transformation, working and ending stages and showed significant rise after the transformation stage. In addition, by comparing the learning process of individual competencies, in regards to the construction of group, all three SEGs showed either continuous slow growth all the way or leveling at the beginning and rise at middle to later stages. In regards to the advance and intensification of process, the central-tendency and low self-evaluation groups showed continuous slow growth all the way or leveling at the beginning and rise at middle to later stages whereas the high self-evaluation group showed decline at the beginning then rise again after the middle to later stages. On the aspect of individual change intervention, all three SEGs showed leveling or slow decline at the beginning but as the group reaches middle to later stages, the high self-evaluation group’s competency to enhance individual and the low self-evaluation group’s competency to change and take action even showed a reflexed decline.According to the results of this study, the overall leadership competencies and training process of novice group counselors may include aspects such as the outline of leadership competencies development, facilitated teaching and substantial benefits. On the aspects of the process of change and improvement in various leadership competencies, all of the eight competencies showed significant improvement at the ending stage (only the competency to enhance individual did not reach significant difference at the ending and working stages). This finding is a confirmation that the learning of various competencies can be positively predicted in a complete unstructured group process and the leadership of unstructured group can be considered as an effective way of training for group leadership competencies, only that different competencies may express different changing trends at different stages of group process. The examining of leadership competency learning styles and process change of each leadership competency allows for the exploration of the connotation and precautions for groups at the beginning and middle to later stages for novice group counselors of different self-evaluation levels. Finally, the researchers provided relevant suggestions for the learning of novice group counselors, the training of group leaders by counseling agencies, how governmental organizations could help, and the future research possibilities.
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