Collaborative research among faculty and students continues to expand in academic settings, (Swank et al., 2020). Despite ethical guidelines, ambiguity persists in authorship determination, reflecting power differentials and inclusion concerns (Swank et al., 2019, 2020; Smith & Williams-Jones, 2012). Participants will examine current practices, analyze equity considerations, and develop a responsive, equity-informed framework with practical strategies for ethical decision-making in authorship.
The aim of this presentation is to build researchers’ confidence and competence in managing or participating in large research teams. Presenters will shaThis session introduces collaborative autoethnography (CAE) as a social justice research methodology and demonstrates its application through a study examining East Asian women international doctoral students’ academic job search experiences. Attendees will learn CAE procedures, trustworthiness strategies, and its strengths for centering marginalized voices. Five themes reveal intersecting systemic barriers. Implications for equitable hiring practices in counselor education will be discussed.re perspectives as project leads, faculty mentors, and student coders in a content analysis project. Topics include team structure, collaboration, mentorship, strengths, challenges, and lessons learned, offering strategies to enhance teamwork and avoid common research pitfalls.
Explore how the Critical Incident Technique (CIT) and Enhanced Critical Incident Technique (ECIT) can strengthen qualitative research in education and counseling. This session highlights key differences, credibility strategies, and practical applications through case examples, helping participants determine when and how to use each method in their own research.
Students engaging in internship report an increase efficacy in assessment skills and implementing crisis intervention (Fields et al., 2023). This study (a) explores emerging themes of students’ experiences one-year post-graduation following their enrollment in a trauma-informed professional pipeline, (b) identifies key challenges and opportunities experienced when working with CAYs who have experienced trauma, and (c) delineates areas for future research and implications for counselor educators.
Assistant Professor, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Jennifer D. Deaton, PhD, LCMHC (she/her) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Counseling and Educational Development at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
This session explores how Practice-Based Research and Participatory Action Research build a data-to-action pipeline to address systemic inequities and bridge research and counseling practice. Using school counselor training examples, we share outcomes (e.g., fewer discipline referrals, higher student belonging), co-designed interventions, and tools that turn data into sustainable, equity-focused change. Implications for adapting this model across counselor preparation context will be discussed.
The presenter is an Associate Professor at Clemson University. She is a licensed professional counselor, certified school counselor, and nationally certified counselor. She has been involved in AARC since 2013, including being a past emerging leader, and is currently the Treasurer... Read More →
Students’ mentorship experiences are pivotal in developing research competence and efficacy. Yet, much of the current research focuses on doctoral students, ignoring opportunities to support trainees across the academic lifespan. Our educational session presents a multitiered model of student research mentorship to provide targeted engagement activities and meaningful scaffolding. This model helps students develop research confidence while supporting sustainability within counselor education.
Delphi methodology is widely used in counseling research to develop competencies, standards, and professional guidance, yet methodological practices vary considerably across studies. This session presents findings from a systematic scoping review of Delphi studies in counseling research and introduces a framework to support transparent, defensible methodological decisions when designing, reviewing, or interpreting Delphi research.
Research and program evaluation are essential components of the counseling curricula. However, master’s-level counselors-in-training (CITs) often report anxiety and self-doubt in their abilities to engage with research. This presentation will explore the role of interactive and experiential learning on CITs’ research anxiety and experiences in research courses. The presenters will review creative strategies that may empower CITs’ learning and promote their growth as practitioner-scholars.
The Forgiveness Reconciliation Inventory (FRI, Author, 2021)) is a counseling tool to measure an individual's process through forgiveness and conflict. The FRI may be used to assess emotional safety, manage conflict, and address trauma, often distinguishing between and individual’s need for forgiveness versus the safety of reconciliation. In this session, attendees will earn how to integrate the FRI into assessment, practice, and research.
This session shares results from the largest open journal systematic review of school counseling interventions to date, analyzing 25 years of peer-reviewed studies (2001–2025) to help identify what works, what’s missing, whose needs are being centered, methodological strengths and weaknesses, and how the field is moving forward. Participants will gain a clear overview of trends (and gaps) from this expansive body of work, as well as gain access to a clearinghouse of 200+ intervention articles.
This session presents a reflexive thematic analysis of counselor educators’ beliefs about Universal Design for Learning (UDL) using post-sort interview data from a Q methodology study. Attendees will examine themes such as systemic limitations, overwhelming demands, and vulnerability, and learn how RTA deepens interpretation of perspectives in counselor education research.
ACES conference presentations are a central way counselor educators and supervisors engage with research, especially for those in positions that do not require publication in scholarly journals. Yet, no researchers have examined trends in research-focused ACES presentations. We will present the findings from our content analysis study of ACES conference presentation descriptions from 1992 to 2025 to identify patterns and gaps in how counselor educators frame and discuss research.
This session focuses on advancing career counseling research for first-generation college students (FGCSs) through multidimensional approaches. We will examine FGCS research examples integrating methodologies, such as latent profile analysis, meta-analysis, and longitudinal SEM. Attendees will learn how these projects capture FGCSs’ dynamic career trajectories and subgroup heterogeneity, thereby providing a rigorous empirical foundation for future research and evidence-based practice for FGCSs.
