Special Issue of Teaching and Supervision in Counseling Supporting a Research-Informed Future for Our Profession:Doctoral-level Research Training in Counselor Education and Supervision

This special issue focuses exclusively on the research training of doctoral-level students in counselor education and supervision programs. Counselor education and supervision programs train doctoral students to be prepared for professional identities such as educator, researcher, counselor, clinical supervisor, clinic director, and consultant (Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs [CACREP], 2024). Within each of those roles, doctoral students are bound by ethical and professional standards to continuously engage with research through various activities (e.g., consuming scholarly literature, gathering and making meaning of data, disseminating data) as part of monitoring effectiveness, promoting their own and others competence and growth, and advancing the field (American Counseling Association [ACA], 2014; Wester & Borders, 2014). Given that research is embedded within all professional identities and practices, it is critical for doctoral training programs to create a research training environment (Gelso, 1999) in which students are developed as researchers. Relatedly, scholars explored the phenomenon of researcher identity and have found it to be a developmental process in which students come to know themselves as researchers, and it is largely facilitated by intentional program design and faculty behaviors such as mentorship and modeling (Jorgensen & Duncan, 2015; Lamar & Helm, 2017; Limberg et al., 2020). Scholars also have found that research self-efficacy, interest, productivity, and perceived competence are impacted by those same program ingredients (Borders et al., 2020; Sunal & Kemer, 2022). To further emphasize the importance of program elements and design, Moore and colleagues (2024) found the research training environment accounted for more variance in doctoral students’ research self-efficacy than other variables such as intrapersonal, interpersonal, and experiential.  

That said, researchers have provided ongoing evidence for the need to address systemic issues and improve doctoral research training (Balkin, 2020; Barrio Minton et al., 2008; Borders et al., 2014; Borders et al., 2020; Moore et al., 2024; Wester et al., 2019), and recent changes in accreditations standards indicate the importance of continuing to advocate for rigorous training. For example, Balkin (2020) suggested it is difficult to develop a signature pedagogy in doctoral research training because research courses are often taught by faculty outside of counseling disciplines and do not meet the needs of counselor education and supervision doctoral students. Moore and colleagues (2024) found doctoral students often did not experience direct application of research to practice and were negatively impacted by a lack of research mentorship and modeling. Also, researchers found that counselor education doctoral students frequently report low research self-efficacy, imposter phenomenon related to researcher identity, and difficulties with understanding statistics (Borders et al., 2014; Borders et al., 2020; Limberg et al., 2020; Wester et al., 2020). To further compound those findings, CACREP 2024 accreditation standards allow greater flexibility within doctoral programs regarding research, which could result in even more challenges in research training and rigor in the development of doctoral-level scholars. Given this information, it is timely for the field of counselor education and supervision to come together and build upon existing literature about doctoral research training (e.g., Balkin, 2020; Borders et al., 2014; Borders et al., 2020; Lamar & Helm, 2017; Limberg et al., 2020; Moore et al, 2024; Wester et al., 2020) to understand challenges to research training, as well as solutions and strategies for supporting a research-informed future for our profession.  

In this special issue, we invite both conceptual and empirical manuscripts that relate to doctoral research training in counselor education and supervision. Given the role evidence-informed literature plays in advancing our field, we will aim to accept more data-driven manuscripts for this special issue. Furthermore, the topic of this special issue indicates the importance of mentoring and involving doctoral students in research and thus, we encourage collaboration between faculty and doctoral students. Potential topics for this special issue may include, but are not limited to, the following: 

• Impact of professional standards and/or institutional, College/School, and Departmental practices and norms related to doctoral research training environments

• Researcher development of doctoral students (e.g., researcher identity, research self-efficacy, research interest)

• Innovative teaching strategies for doctoral research courses

• Guidelines for doctoral programs to develop rigorous research training/models for infusion of research

• Models of training, research questions, and methodologies that promote research that has high social validity

• Culturally inclusive and responsive research training practices

• Research mentorship models and practices within doctoral programs

• The dissertation process and its connection to researcher development

• Imposter phenomenon amongst doctoral-level researchers

• Evaluation of research teaching or training effectiveness

• Integration of artificial intelligence or other technologies/software into doctoral research training

• Research ethics and doctoral research training 

• Grant writing development and training in doctoral programs 

We are inviting authors to provide a proposal for a manuscript that they would like to submit for consideration to tscjournal@saces.org by April 15, 2025. 

The proposal needs to include: 

• Working title 

• Authors (use a * to indicate doctoral student author)

• Indication if this is an empirical or conceptual manuscript 

• A description of the rationale, research question(s) and method (if applicable), and call for action/challenge/solutions for research training and education this manuscript hopes to provide. 

The proposal should not exceed 3-pages (the title page and references are not included in the 3-page limit)and should be double spaced, 12-point font, and 1- inch margins. Please also note the proposals do not have to be de-identified.

TSC will be publishing this special issue in the summer of 2026, so the timeline is noted below. The proposal should indicate that you are aware of the timeline and will be able to finalize a manuscript for submission within the time frame if invited. 

Tentative timeline:

• Submission of 3-page proposal to tscjournal@saces.org by April 15, 2025 

• Invitation to submit will be provided to authors by the guest editors by May 31, 2025

• Submission of invited manuscripts through https://trace.tennessee.edu/tsc by January 5, 2026 and all submissions should follow author guidelines and submission requirements listed on the website) 

• Peer review received approximately February 15, 2026 

• Final manuscript revisions need to be received by April 30, 2026 

• Potential issue will be published in July 1, 2026

Guest Editors 

The editors of this special issue are Dr. Maribeth F. Jorgensen at Sam Houston State University and Dr. Dodie Limberg at University of South Carolina. If you have questions related to the special issue, please contact Dr. Maribeth F. Jorgensen at mxj040@shsu.edu. If you have any questions about TSC, please contact Dr. Bradley McKibben, the TSC Editor, at wmckibb@ju.edu or Dr. Christian Chan, TSC Associate Editor, at cdchan@uncg.edu or tscjournal@saces.org, or Dr. Erin Mason, TSC Assistant Editor, at emason15@gsu.edu.