No abstract

The Competency Benchmarks document outlines core foundational and functional competencies in professional psychology across three levels of professional development: readiness for practicum, readiness for internship, and readiness for entry to practice. Within each level, the document lists the essential components that comprise the core competencies and behavioral indicators that provide operational descriptions of the essential elements. This document builds on previous initiatives within professional psychology related to defining and assessing competence. It is intended as a resource for those charged with training and assessing for competence.

Extending a previous study (R.L. Hatcher, A. Barends, J. Hansell, & M.J. Gutfreund, 1995), factor analysis of 3 alliance measures completed by 231 patients explored patients' views of the alliance. Two of 6 factors, Confident Collaboration and Idealized Relationship (with the substantial general factor removed), correlated with patients' estimate of improvement (rs = .37 and -.23, respectively; p < .001). Patients view the core of the alliance as a purposive mutual collaboration, or working alliance; patients who acknowledge some hostility do better in therapy. Three other factors--Goals and Tasks, Bond, and Dedicated Patient--resemble established subscales but are unrelated to improvement beyond the general factor. Factor 6 assesses improvement rather than alliance. The collaborative working alliance should be given prominence in alliance theory and measurement.

A "toolkit" for professional psychology to assess student and practitioner competence is presented. This toolkit builds on a growing and long history of competency initiatives in professional psychology, as well as those in other health care disciplines. Each tool is a specific method to assess competence, appropriate to professional psychology. The methods are defined and described; information is presented about their best use, psychometrics, strengths and challenges; and future directions are outlined. Finally, the implications of professional psychology's current shift to a "culture of competency," including the challenges to implementing ongoing competency assessment, are discussed.

Supervision is a domain of professional practice conducted by many psychologists but for which formal training and standards have been largely neglected. In this article, supervision is proposed as a core competency area in psychology for which a number of elements reflecting specific knowledge, skills, and values must be addressed to ensure adequate training and professional development of the trainee. Supra-ordinate factors of supervision viewed as permeating all aspects of professional development are proposed. These include the perspective that professional development is a lifelong, cumulative process requiring attention to diversity in all its forms, as well as legal and ethical issues, personal and professional factors, and self- and peer-assessment. A competencies framework is presented with particular elements representing knowledge (e.g., about psychotherapy, research, etc.), skills (including supervising modalities, relationship skills, etc.), values (e.g., responsibility for the clients and supervisee rests with supervisor, etc.), and meta-knowledge. Social contextual factors and issues of education and training, assessment, and future directions also are addressed, with specific elements listed. Suggestions for future work in this area are addressed, including the need to refine further and operationalize competences, develop clear expectations for accreditation and licensure regarding supervision competencies, and expand the description of developmental levels of supervisors from minimal to optimal competence. This is one of a series of articles published together in this issue of the Journal of Clinical Psychology. Several other articles that resulted from the Competencies Conference: Future Directions in Education and Credentialing in Professional Psychology will appear in Professional Psychology: Research and Practice and The Counseling Psychologist.

This report addresses the strong need for practical applications of the comprehensive Competency Benchmarks document for training in professional psychology. A workgroup extended the efforts of the original Benchmarks Workgroup, creating a condensed, flexible, and practical competencies rating form for use by educators, supervisors, and trainees. The form reorganizes the original Benchmarks to promote clarity, consistency, and functionality in everyday use. Plans for a Web-based version are discussed. These efforts are intended to advance the culture of competence in professional psychology (Belar, 2009).

This report aims to clarify alliance theory and extend its role in psychotherapy research. Bordin's (1979) alliance theory concerns the nature and quality of participants' collaborative, purposive work. Alliance is actualized in therapist techniques, client participation, and the dyad's relational features. Alliance is a property of all components of therapy, a concept superordinate to these components and not a component itself. Viewing technique and alliance as equivalent components of therapy confuses 2 levels of thinking, as does conflating alliance with the overall therapy relationship. Examples from contemporary research reports illustrate these points. The logic of alliance measures is clarified, as are the limits of measures' ability to capture key features of collaborative work. This approach opens new avenues for alliance research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).

The practicum is the first practice-based step toward independent professional competence in psychology. As the practicum becomes a focus of interest in psychology education, there is a strong need to identify the domains and levels of competence that should be the focus of practicum training. To address this need, the current report introduces the Practicum Competencies Outline, a summary of competency domains and expected levels of competence that may be attained during practicum. The relationship between the Outline and other recent work on competencies in psychology is discussed, and its potential uses in education and training are reviewed.