The Register Report, Fall 2006: Competencies The New Prominence of Practicum Training in Professional Psychology: A Guide for Practicum Supervisors and Trainers by: Robert Hatcher, Ph.D. Return to Table of Contents

At their February 2006 meeting, the APA Council of Representatives approved the following policy:

The American Psychological Association affirms the doctorate as the minimum educational requirement for entry into professional practice as a psychologist.

The American Psychological Association recommends that for admission to licensure applicants demonstrate that they have completed a sequential, organized, supervised professional experience equivalent to two years of full-time training that can be completed prior or subsequent to the granting of the doctoral degree. For applicants prepared for practice in the health services domain of psychology, one of those two years of supervised professional experience shall be a predoctoral internship.

The American Psychological Association affirms that postdoctoral education and training remains an important part of the continuing professional development and credentialing process for professional psychologists. Postdoctoral education and training is a foundation for practice improvement, advanced competence, and inter-jurisdictional mobility.

In adopting the preceding policy statements, the Council supports further development of competency goals and assessment methods in the professional education and training of psychologists.

The practicum has become an increasingly important step in professional training in psychology. This report offers a view of current thinking and knowledge about the practicum, and gives some suggestions about how supervisors or trainers might further help our young colleagues as they begin their practical training towards becoming a psychologist. This may be particularly helpful to Registrants who serve as supervisors in practicum sites, or are interested in becoming supervisors. This article will acquaint you with the latest developments in defining and assessing competencies at the practicum level.

What is the practicum? “The practicum is the first set of supervised practical training experiences in the sequence of professional training in psychology that extends from initial classroom education to internship and licensure. The practicum is designed to meet the training goals of the graduate program. The practicum comprises all supervised pre-internship training experiences conducted under the auspices of the graduate program in settings providing professional psychological services. The practicum promotes the integration of academic knowledge with practical experience, and prepares the student for future training in professional psychology, particularly for the internship that follows. On practicum, students apply and extend the knowledge, skills and attitudes learned in the program’s didactic and classroom-based experiential components to produce increasingly sophisticated levels of understanding and skill.” This quote is from a draft statement prepared by the Practicum Workgroup of the Council of Chairs of Training Councils (CCTC), and it reflects our field’s increasing need to define and understand the practicum portion of professional training in psychology. The practicum has gained increasing importance in our field more recently for two main reasons. First, the competition for internship placements is strong, and of the 3210 applicants in the Association of Psychology Postdoctoral and Internship Centers (APPIC)-sponsored internship match held in February, 2006, 731 applicants, or 33%, did not match. Under these conditions, students seek whatever advantage they reasonably can, and a widespread but unsubstantiated belief among applicants is that more practicum experience will strengthen their applications. As a result, the number of reported practicum hours has increased greatly over the last decade, from an average of 1500 in 1994 to an average of 2274 reported by applicants for the 2006 match. The average number of hours of practicum training has grown to equal the required number of internship hours.

The second reason for the increased importance of practicum in our field is the revised model licensing act policy adopted by the APA Council of Representatives at its February 2006 meeting. (See below) The previous model licensing act required an internship year and a post-doctoral year of experience to meet the jurisdictions’ training standards for admission to licensing. The 2006 policy statement enacted one of the main recommendations of the 2000 APA Commission on Education and Training Leading to Licensure in Psychology. The 2006 policy changed the suggested supervised training requirement for licensure to the equivalent two years of full-time supervised practice, and stated: “For applicants prepared for practice in the health services domain of psychology, one of those two years of supervised professional experience shall be a predoctoral internship.” Since the most common trajectory towards licensure is practicum training followed by internship training, the equivalent of a year of practicum training, plus an internship, has become the APA Council’s recommended minimum requirement. (However, as one can see by reading the model language, it does not preclude the applicant for licensure submitting a year of postdoctoral experience for the second year of needed experience. That year will be needed for advanced competency, specialization or mobility purposes, anyway.)

These model act changes have brought new attention to the practicum, and new calls for better understanding of the entire sequence of education in professional psychology. In the fall of 2006, the APA Education Directorate (ED) and the APA Board of Educational Affairs (BEA) convened a Competencies Benchmarks Workgroup with the task of beginning a comprehensive mapping of the growth of core competencies in professional psychology through the entire sequence of training, from initial graduate instruction, through practicum, to internship, licensure, to advanced competency and specialization. Practicum training is a key and first element in this sequence, as it bridges graduate students’ program-based didactic experience and the internship that follows, ideally providing the basic skills or competencies needed to make optimal use of the internship experience and beyond. continued

 

Page 1

Page 1 2 3 4