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(Dept. of Family Welfare, Sangmyung University)
Objectives: This study is designed to explore and understand what professional identity and professional development are like in family counselors. Method: This study to achieve its purpose, collected data through in-depth interview with fifteen(15) family counselors through grounded theory approach. Results: Major research findings can be summarized as follows. 176 concepts were drawn through open coding, again classified into 47 categories and finally into 18 subcategories. Through selective coding, 'growing as an expert in family counseling through continuous exertions for growth' appeared as core category. Through this process, the types of professional development in family counselors were classified into job pursuing type, self achieving type, self understanding type, and volunteering type. Through process analysis, family counselors' professional development could be divided into three steps with the course of time: step of immersion, self-understanding and acceptance, and integration. Based on this, the hypothetical relations in four areas: personal area, family area, interpersonal area, and vocational area were summarized in statements. Conclusion: This study is significant in that it attempted to establish a theory to explain the professional identity, development and influence factors shown in family counselors. It also provides those who hope to grow as expert in family counseling with long-term visions and implications for family counselor training and supervision. In this study, the suggestions on the tasks to check and solve the factors for improving and supporting the foundations of family counselors' professional identities by highlighting the family counselors own identify that is different from other counselors are expected to be used as primary data for preparing laws and regulations related to family counseling in the future.