Ethics are very important in today’s society as they help in shaping people’s lives and behavior. All organizations are run by following ethics and this applies to the roles played by counseling educators and supervisors. One major ethical issue presented in this case study is discrimination in supervising students. This is because Dr. Jones in a way is biased towards Miriam; the only ethnic minority student in the class. This is shown by the way he has assigned her to work with all the Spanish speaking clients. On top of this, Dr.
Jones spends extensive time with the other students in the group reviewing recorded sessions and providing valuable feedback while Miriam, gets only minimum feedback on her assignments. The reason being that Dr. Jones does not Understand or speak Spanish. Miriam speaks English therefore; she is supposed to be given assignments like the rest of the class. The work Miriam seems to be strenuous because one cannot easily tell the number of clients who can come in a day. Since she is supposed to see all the Spanish speaking clients, it means that if they are many she will be obliged to see them.
Another ethical issue is that Dr. Jones is not a good advisor, guide or role model for Miriam. This is because instead of helping her being skilled in counseling, he is saying that she Miriam is spending too much time on diversity issues with her clients and feels that this attention is a block to getting the client to face his or her real issues. If he feels that way, then it is appropriate if he assigns her another class as the other students so that she is able to concentrate more on her work and in the process acquire skills that are necessary in the counseling profession. Role of the counselor educator in this case
Counselor educators are skilled professionals who guide their students in the right directions that they can be able to counsel others in the community. The responsibility of the counselor educator in this case is to offer proper guidance and collaboration to ensure that the student acquires the necessary knowledge and skills in the field through continual practice (Koocher & Spiegel, 1998). To do this, the counsel educator is supposed to make sure that the students are able to interact with people from all works of life because this career entails dealing with people from all walks of life.
By Dr. Jones letting Miriam to deal with only one group of people is only limiting her capabilities as she will not learn a lot from the field. Under guidance and collaboration, the counselor educator is supposed to gather and evaluate data so that he/she is supposed to determine how effective the students are acquiring skills through their experience and in case of any difficulties, to assist them be better counselors. They achieve this by providing direct or indirect educationally based guidance assistance to their students. The counselor educator in engaged in field placements.
This is because they design policies that can be used within training programs. In addition, they define the roles that are played by both students and supervisors (Boylan & Scott, 2008). In this case, there is a great need for proper placement on the field because Miriam is definitely not pleased with her area of work and this contributes to her lack of concentration in her work. A counselor educator also has a responsibility of ensuring that follow ups are done and proper feedback is given to the students by implementing a thorough developmental counseling teaching guide to assist the students.
In this case, to help the student be the best at what they do, effort has to be shown by the Counselor educator as a means of assisting them. Miriam’s recorded sessions in Spanish can be translated into English so that the supervisor is able to know the areas that need to be improved on. A counselor educator has a responsibility of acting as a proper role model to the students because they will treat their clients based on how they are treated.
All students need to be treated equally as this initiates acceptance of diversity in society in general. If students do not get enough attention as they expect, they will do their tasks half heartedly. This can be used to explain why Miriam talks so much about diversity issues with her clients. On top of this, the counselor educator has a role of ensuring that counseling students as well as their supervisors aware of the ethical codes that govern the profession (Boylan & Scott, 2008).