Doctor of Philosophy in Educational Psychology - Counselling Psychology

University of Alberta

Counselling Psychology is a helping profession devoted to preventing, remediating and ameliorating emotional, cognitive, behavioural, and interpersonal difficulties as well as enhancing human potential and quality of life. These aims are achieved through the integration of science with practice and the development of awareness and skills to work with diverse populations from individual, social and organizational perspectives.The Doctoral Program in Counselling Psychology is based on the scientist-practitioner model and is dedicated to training leaders of the profession through pursuing disciplined inquiry, understanding and respecting human diversity, and developing, using and evaluating effective counselling practices. Scientist-practitioners engage in research-informed practice and practice-informed research while routinely monitoring their own counselling effectiveness. The objectives of the Doctoral program are: (1) the scientific development of knowledge in counselling psychology (2) the scientific application of psychological knowledge to counselling practice (3) the promotion of ethical behavior and (4) the understanding of and respect for human diversity. These objectives are accomplished via research, coursework, and supervised practice. The program operates from an integrative theoretical orientation whereby students are exposed to a wide variety of counselling approaches.