2011

This study's purpose was to investigate (a) how participation in a group integrating spirituality and religion with professional counseling affected personal and professional development of master’s and doctoral level students in a counseling graduate program and (b) what effect, if any, participating in the group had on their ability to integrate religion and spirituality into their counseling practice. In addition, we were interested in examining how taking part in this two-semester spirituality interest group had changed participants' multicultural awareness and sensitivity in regard to working with clients with different belief systems. We speculated that multicultural awareness and sensitivity would also increase as a result of counselors-in-training honing their own spiritual development in order to help clients do so as well. Our goal was to investigate whether a group format could impact counselors' personal and professional development, ability to explore inner personal belief systems, grow in their own spiritual development, and, as a result, facilitate client exploration of these same issues.