Chinese student teachers’ experiences of learning to counsel: a qualitative investigation

This qualitative study aims to understand Chinese student teachers’ counselling learning experiences. Participants were 46 Chinese undergraduates in Primary Education who conducted role-play counselling and wrote post-session journals. Principles of thematic analysis were used to analyse the data. Five themes were identified describing the participants’ counselling learning: challenges and growth, a three-stage counselling procedure emphasising comprehensiveness, being authoritative for correction, the appreciation of humanism, and prospective teacher identity in reconstruction. Based on the findings and existing knowledge, we developed a model for fostering student teachers’ counselling competence that progresses through three training stages: information collection, counselling implementation, as well as change and improvement. We discussed the training focuses of each of these stages and how the model could be used by other educators when designing and implementing counselling training programmes.