Nicola Barry

The focus for my research has emerged from my direct experience of grappling with gatekeeping issues as a professional educator. The monitoring and management of professional competence problems in trainees are key aspects of the gatekeeping responsibility. Professional training courses differ from most undergraduate programmes in that they lead directly to the legitimisation of the student as a practitioner thus charging educators with a weighty responsibility for ensuring the safety of their trainees prospective clients. I am currently employing a qualitative methodology to research the issue of gatekeeping in professional education programmes. I am interested in the integration of the conceptual lenses of emotional labour and virtue ethics to develop a relational construction of the gatekeeping responsibility. My research collaboration with Prof. Eleanor OLeary on therapeutic work with older adults began during my training as a counselling psychologist. Our published work has included two invitations to contribute a chapter to the Sage Handbook of Counselling and Psychotherapy on counselling older adults. We were also invited to contribute a chapter to the Handbook of Professional and Ethical Practice for Psychologists, Counsellors and Psychotherapists which addressed such issues as they pertain to working with older clients.