Standards and Competencies

Standards and competencies in counseling represent attempts to articulate tacit knowledge into criteria and to regulate professional behavior. They are also important as the foundation of efforts in personnel certification and program accreditation. Standards are ubiquitous across modern society. Transnational bodies regulate standards through a representation process. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) creates and manages standards development through technical committees and a six-step process for achieving consensus. The International Accreditation Forum then oversees implementation and conformity across the world through a system of conformity audits managed by disinterested third parties. The American National Standards Institute is the American representative to ISO. Standards, which govern many aspects of technology, exist for quality (ISO-9000 since 1987), for environmental management (ISO-14000 since 1996), and for personnel certification (ISO-17024 since 2003). The ISO/ANSI 17024 standard has implications because certification providers may wish to seek accreditation to document the quality of their programs. An inherent danger of standards and competencies is that they become checklists honored in letter rather than in spirit and replace innovation with adherence.

Nearly a decade ago, standards for career counseling were discussed using a three-C framework of colleagues, competencies, and credentials. Colleagues are often located within professional associations, whereas competencies specify clusters of personal attributes (knowledge, skills, abilities, and attitudes) related to effective performance of counseling duties and tasks. Credentials cover the traditional domains of government licensing and voluntary certification. Brooke Collison, writing in 2001, used a similar framework of professional associations, accreditation standards, and credentialing

Viewed from this perspective, standards and competencies are ways to develop agreements (and occasionally disagreements) about quality products, processes, programs, and personnel within the counseling profession. Standards are statements to which individuals and organizations can compare their actions, for example, in such key areas of professional performance as testing and assessment, ethics, and graduate education and training. Competencies are behavioral clusters reflecting application of knowledge and skill to achieve superior performance. The key assumption involved in creating and using standards and competencies that achieve quality in counseling products, processes, programs, and personnel will translate into improved counseling outcomes. Standards and competencies in counseling are developed by professional associations and groups, such as the American Counseling Association, the National Career Development Association, and the Council on Accreditation in Counseling and Related Educational Professions (CACREP). They are often the foundation of licensing and certification systems for individual counselors and accreditation systems for counselor education and training programs. The personnel credentialing function is fulfilled by the National Board for Certified Counselors together with its partner, the American Association for State Counseling Boards. The accreditation function is undertaken by CACREP.

Equally pivotal for the counseling profession are general standards in ethics and in testing. In ethics, the American Counseling Association issued its latest Ethical Code in 2005 as a set of eight standards. The American Psychological Association released its most recent set of standards in 2002. In testing, the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing were developed jointly by the American Educational Research Association, American Psychological Association, and the National Council on Measurement in Education and released in 1999 (and are currently under revision). There are 264 testing standards presented with respect to test construction, subgroup bias, and applications of testing. A typical competency system is one developed and validated for Microsoft (by Lominger International), then modified and released free-of-charge to the education sector in six categories of results, courage, organizational skills, individual excellence, operating skills, and strategic skills.

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