Empowering the Development of Higher Education Counselors Teacher: Innovative Training Strategies to Strengthen Competency in Student Mentoring

The training of counselor teachers requires a comprehensive approach and a collective commitment from the educational community that encompasses both the acquisition of pedagogical skills and the fostering of a supportive and guiding mindset for students. The objective of this study was to design and implement a training program through an educational virtual platform, to strengthen the student accompaniment competence in higher education counselor teachers. It was carried out under a mixed methodology, based on the construction of a diagnostic instrument for the verification of the problem, this instrument was validated guaranteeing the technical, ethical and methodological rigor of the research and was applied to 41 higher education counselor teachers, the data were treated and analyzed statistically, by means of multiple correspondence analysis. The training program was designed in two stages, 1. Instructional design and 2. Content design, in both stages the construct validations were carried out in the criteria of clarity, coherence, relevance and sufficiency. The findings show the need for (a) the training of counselor teachers, (b) integration of training processes based on hybrid methodologies, (c) research with social impact and (d) strengthening student accompaniment strategies. The study is intended to be of value to decision-makers, managers, academics and the community interested in promoting the training of counselor teachers, taking into account key aspects such as student welfare, retention and graduation.