| Scholars repeatedly addressed the importance and challenges of providing practical research training for master’s-level CITs (Jorgensen & Umstead, 2020). However, most articles on counseling research education highlight the training for doctoral students, and most articles on pedagogical practice left out the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP) core area of research and program evaluation (Minton et al., 2018). Counseling students and practitioners reported a lack of readiness and interest in research and program evaluation (Steele & Rawls, 2015), showing the underutilization of research in their practice. To further understand the difficult moments in a research methods classroom, I conducted an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) to explore how pre-tenured, tenure-track counselor educators experienced teaching the master’s-level research course. I conducted two rounds of semi-structured interviews and identified themes through data analysis. The themes demonstrate the essential components of the participants’ teaching experiences, including observing and experiencing emotions, navigating content knowledge, choosing
teaching strategies, reflecting on their purposes of teaching, and navigating the teacher-learner relationship. IPA allowed me to explore how contextual factors, such as program structures and the sociocultural environment, impacted their teaching experiences. Recommendations for counselor educators, counseling programs, and the counseling profession are discussed. Key Words: Master’s-level research course, research education, counseling, counselor education, teaching strategies |