Ethical dilemmas that student counsellors face during work integrated learning

M.Ed. (Educational Psychology)Abstract: This study was aimed at exploring the incident reports that student counsellors write during their six-month work integrated learning. The incident reports were written as reflections of an incident that had taken place. The intention of the study was to determine if ethical dilemmas had occurred and what these ethical dilemmas were. The participants were randomly selected student counsellors completing their six-month work integrated learning as part of the course requirement for their Honours Course in Educational Psychology. The incident reports were written over the past five years and collected by the practicum co-ordinator. In this research a qualitative, contextual, descriptive explorative approach and design was used. Data was collected by analysing the incident reports which contained the reflections and an action plan as a conclusion. The ethical dilemmas that arose out of the incident reports were extrapolated and used as data. Ethical guidelines for protecting the research subjects were observed by their identity being concealed before the researcher received the incident reports. The results showed that the ethical dilemmas of competency, confidentiality, dual relationships and disclosure of confidential information were amongst the most frequently committed transgressions. The findings of this research is that student counsellors need to constantly be aware of how easy it is to breach the ethical code and how difficult it is to recognise ethical dilemmas in practice