Impact of COVID-19 on Graduate Students’ Counsellor Identity Development

Abstract

With the declaration of a pandemic in March 2020, unprecedented changes occurred to mitigate the effects of COVID-19. This phenomenological study sought to understand the impact of the pandemic on the counsellor identity development of master’s-level counselling students (N = 15) at a Canadian university. As a result of semi-structured interviews, themes emerged around the development of professional self, integration into the profession, and the cohort community of practice, which indicated that the pandemic had unique influences on the participants developing their counsellor identity. The findings of this study have pedagogical and supervisory implications for counsellor education programs in terms of considering counsellor identity development and student wellness.