Navigating AI in the practicum: A reflexive thematic analysis of counselling students learning in a digital ecology

Abstract

Background: Artificial intelligence (AI) tools are increasingly available to counselling students during practicum, yet little is known about how trainees experience and integrate AI during this formative period. Aims: This study explores how undergraduate counselling students experience individual counselling practicum, focusing on AI engagement, reflexive learning and professional identity formation. Materials and Methods: Using reflexive thematic analysis, we analysed reflective journals and essays from 35 fourth-year undergraduate counselling students at a private university in Turkey, a context in which Western-influenced counselling intersects with collectivist cultural values, conducting their first individual counselling cases. Analysis was informed by constructivist epistemology and sustained researcher reflexivity. Results: Six themes emerged: stepping into responsibility (the shift from academic to ethical accountability); living with uncertainty (struggles with ambiguity and reassurance-seeking); AI as parallel learning space (private, non-judgemental cognitive support alongside supervision); dependence, resistance and cognitive offloading (concerns about authentic learning, with some deliberately limiting AI use); negotiating supervision, AI and self (triangulating multiple guidance sources); and becoming a counsellor in a digital ecology (AI engagement paradoxically strengthened commitment to human therapeutic capacities). Discussion: Findings reveal that students demonstrated sophisticated critical awareness of AI limitations in empathy, contextual attunement and relational presence, and that AI engagement paradoxically clarified rather than undermined professional identity formation. The widespread but unacknowledged nature of student AI use represents a hidden curriculum placing undue ethical burden on trainees navigating complex decisions without institutional frameworks or collegial support. Conclusion: Counselling education should explicitly address AI integration rather than prohibiting or ignoring it. Training programmes should foster reflexive AI use alongside supervision, develop AI literacy and support ethical decision-making about when AI helps versus hinders learning.