The research is aimed at establishing a training model for bachelor’s-level novice group leaders, followed by measuring its effect on the training. We adopted a one-group pretest-posttest design for 20 bachelor’s novice group leaders. ""Group Counseling Leadership Scale"" was employed to measure participants’ group leadership before and after the course, and again three months later in a follow-up test. The results showed that the participants significantly improve in the group counseling competence in a stable and long-term manner. The performances of the five dimensions in group counseling competence were slightly different. Participants’ preparation skills before group counseling practicum showed significant growth (p < .001) and exhibited extended effects. Participants also showed significant growth in group process leading skills and professional code of ethics in group counseling (p < .05). However, participants showed no significant growth in leaders’ psychology, behavioral traits, and theoretical basis. This training course is indeed a significant help for the participants’ group leadership competence. In addition, the improvement of pre-group preparation skills had a long-term effect, and the total score of leadership competence did not drop in the tracking test.
The suggestions are made in the study for the follow-up research: (1) For teaching the course, the group supervision hours may be extended or the group supervision can be combined with individual supervision; (2) for research, a mixed-methods research can be adopted. In addition to quantitative evaluation, qualitative research methods can be carried out for systematic analysis. As such we can clearly see the factors that promote the training effect of group counseling practice courses on novice leaders.