Counselor educator ego development and ethical decision-making post graduation

Counselor Educators are interested in assessing and promoting the professional and personal development of those in the counseling profession, including their ego and ethical development. While there has been much research concerning such development, there is insufficient research concerning the level of personal development of Counselor Educators themselves, and how such development progresses over the course of their tenure as professors. Thus, this dissertation assessed the ethical decision-making and ego development of Counselor Educators who earned their doctorates from institutions accredited by the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP) and who are currently working as Counselor Educators at a CACREP-accredited program. In particular, the following questions had sought to be answered: (a) What is the level of ego development of Counselor Educators and how do they develop over their tenure as professors? (b) What is the ethical decision-making level of Counselor Educators and how do they develop over their tenure as professors? (c) What is the relationship between ego development and ethical decision-making as Counselor Educators develop both of these over their tenure? and (d) How do the varying environments, qualities, and responsibilities of Counselor Educators relate to ego development and level of ethical decision-making?

Essentially, the Researcher categorized Counselor Educators into two groups, according to their level of tenure: untenured (assistant professors) and tenured (associate professors and full professors). The Researcher then measured ego development, using the Washington University Sentence Completion Test (WUSCT; Hy & Loevinger, 1996), and ethical decision-making, using the Ethical Decision-Making Scale—Revised (EDMS-R; Dufrene, 2000). The Researcher then compared WUSCT stages and EDMS-R P indexes for each of the two group-mean scores through a one-way analysis of variance ANOVA), in order to ascertain if there were developmental differences between the two groups. It was anticipated that tenured professors, on the whole, would be more developed than untenured professors.

The results from the present study tentatively indicate that Counselor Educators are well-developed, in terms of ego development and ethical decision-making. Of the four research questions, there was one finding of significance: participants who stated that they were not very challenged by their department had higher EDMS-R P indexes than those who were challenged.