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Objectives The purpose of this study is, on the one hand, to examine the experiences of individuals who are full-time employees and enrolled in the process of learning in counselor education, and on the other hand, to phenomenologically reveal the meaning behind their experiences. Methods Interviews were conducted on seven full-time employees who are in counseling graduate school for more than 3 semesters or within 1 year of graduation, and analyzed by Colaizzi's phenomenological research method. Participants consisted of those in their late 30s to early 50s who had more than 10 years of work experience and experienced vocational activities in different occupations from the counseling field. The data collection period was from September to December 2021, and after an in-depth interview of 90 to 120 minutes, additional interviews were conducted by phone or text message if necessary. Results As a result, 5 categories, 19 topic bundles, and 81 topics were derived. The five categories are as follows. ‘studying counseling to break away from current instability’, ‘making good changes during the counseling course of study’, ‘facing psychological difficulties arising from both occupation and academic affairs’, ‘maturing the mind through learning in counselor education’, and ‘running a life as an employee also doing in counseling job’. In conclusion, participants, with over 10 years of full-time work experience and a stable career will go to counseling, a new field, and the world of experience can be summarized as “growth through counseling studies upgrades professionalism in the current workplace and running a life as an employee also doing counseling job.” Conclusions The research results confirmed the experiences and meanings experienced in the course of learning in counselor education, and based on this, provided basic data for future related education and information provision.
Oh et al. (Thu,) studied this question.