The Regulation of Technology‐Assisted Distance Counseling and Supervision in the United States: An Analysis of Current Extent,Trends, and Implications

Counseling licensure boards report emerging needs to regulate technology‐assisted distance counseling and supervision. An analysis of published regulations and telephone interviews with board administrators nationwide suggests that boards agree generally on 7 aspects of technology‐assisted distance practice that need to be regulated. Nevertheless, boards are disparate and often polarized in their views regarding the extent and type of regulation needed for each aspect. Current trends may have important implications for counselor education, supervision, and practice.     

Social‐Cognitive Development,Ethical and Legal Knowledge,and Ethical Decision Making of Counselor Education Students

Counselors are required to have high levels of social‐cognitive development, significant knowledge regarding ethical and legal practice, and sound ethical decision‐making processes to provide effective and ethical services to their clients. This study investigated the effect of two counseling ethics courses on 64 master's‐level counselor education students' levels of social‐cognitive development, ethical and legal knowledge, and ethical decision making. Students' ethical and legal knowledge scores increased significantly, and precourse social‐cognitive maturity predicted postcourse ethical and legal knowledge scores. Implications for counselor education and development are discussed.     

Assessing the Impact of Counselor Licensure in Ohio as Perceived by Counselors,Counselor Educators,and Legislators

This study investigates the perceptions of counselors, counselor educators, and legislators regarding the impact of counselor licensure in Ohio.     

AN ETHICAL DECISION-MAKING MODEL: A NECESSARY TOOL FOR COMMUNITY COLLEGE PRESIDENTS AND BOARDS OF TRUSTEES

How can community college presidents and boards of trustees safely manage the ethical dilemmas they face as they lead their institutions into the future and important resources continue to diminish? And what happens when a board member violates the board's code of conduct or the president either fails to consult a professional ethics code or ignores it? This article considers such a scenario. Recognizing that ethical dilemmas are complex and involve emotional responses, this article presents a nonlinear, multidimensional ethical decision-making model that can help presidents and boards maneuver through difficult situations in an ethical manner. This decision-making model consists of six steps to guide presidents and boards as they consider the most ethical course of action for their college and the community. These steps include (a) identifying the ethical dilemma; (b) gathering facts, self-monitoring, and consulting; (c) asking important questions; (d) creating alternate courses of action; (e) evaluating alternatives by the ethics code, law, and moral motivation; and (f) implementing a course of action by moral follow-through and virtue ethics.     

Supervision Regulations in Counselor Licensure Legislation

Legislation regarding supervisor criteria and the conduct of supervision for counselor licensure applicants in 34 states is summarized and compared with ACES and AACD standards.     

A National Survey of the Program and Enrollment Characteristics of Counselor Education Programs

ACES sponsored a national survey of state supervisors of guidance and counselor education institutions and of nontraditional institutions offering graduate degrees in guidance and counseling in order to secure information regarding (a) the licensure of guidance counselors, (b) the use of a competency-based approach to the certification of counselors, (c) the manpower needs for persons in guidance and personnel work, and (d) the program characteristics of counselor education institutions. Only a relatively small number of states anticipate becoming involved in the licensure of conselors in the foreseeable future; 53.6 percent of the states expect their certification of counselors to be competency-based within 2 to 5 years, and 76.1 percent of counselor education institutions have decided to make their programs competency-based but progress is slow. There is an oversupply of BA-level guidance persons, school counselors, and doctoral-level persons seeking faculty positions; there is a strong preference for ethnic minorities and women to fill counselor education positions; and abnormally high faculty/graduate ratios were reported for many institutions.     

Advocating for Educational Standards in Counselor Licensure Laws

As the counseling profession evolves, educational standards for counselor licensure must be standardized from state to state. In this article, the authors discuss historical and current influences and present an advocacy model that has been used to standardize educational requirements in state counselor licensure laws.     

A Spectrum of Supervision

The ever-broadening range of counselor work settings, issues related to accountability and quality control, and the implications of recent progress in program accreditation, professional certification, and counselor licensure are among the forces contributing to awareness of the need for new attention to counseling supervision by the professional community. (ACES Task Force on Supervision, May, 1982)     

Captain America, Tuskegee, Belmont, and Righteous Guinea Pigs: Considering Scientific Ethics through Official and Subaltern Perspectives

With an eye towards a potential scientific ethics curriculum, this paper examines four contrasting discourses regarding the ethics of using human subjects in science. The first two represent official statements regarding ethics. These include the U.S.’s National Science Education Standards, that identify ethics with a professional code, and the Belmont Report, that conceptualizes ethics in three principles to guide research oversight boards. Contrasting this view of ethics as decorum and practice in line with a priori principles is the conception of ethics from unofficial sources representing populations who have been human subjects. The first counter-discourse examined comes from Guinea Pig Zero, an underground magazine for professional human subjects. Here ethics emerges as a question of politics over principle. The good behavior of the doctors and researchers is an effect of the politics and agency of the communities that supply science with subjects. The second counter-discourse is a comic book called Truth, which tells the story of Black soldiers who were used as guinea pigs in World War II. Ethics is both more political and more uncertain in this narrative. Science is portrayed as complicit with the racism of NAZI Germany; at the same time, and in contrast to the professional guinea pigs, neither agency nor politics are presented as effective tools for forcing the ethical conduct of the scientific establishment. The conclusion examines the value of presenting all of these views of scientific ethics in science education.     

Psychological Climate,Stress, and Research Integrity Among Research Counselor Educators: A Preliminary Study

In this quantitative study, 187 counselor educators at research institutions reported engaging in responsible conduct of research (RCR), with a few individuals reporting deviations from ethical behavior. Tenure‐seeking faculty members indicated a greater likelihood of deviating from acceptable research practices than did tenured faculty members. The psychological meaningfulness of one's department and research ethics training positively related to engagement in RCR, explaining 18% of the variance. Implications for training of research ethics are discussed, along with suggestions for environmental needs within counseling departments to potentially increase psychological meaningfulness for faculty members.     

Ethical Practices of Licensed Professional Counselors: An Updated Survey of State Licensing Boards

This article presents a survey of ethical complaints reported to state boards, discusses ameliorating problem areas, and makes suggestions regarding collecting data about ethical complaints.     

Computer‐Based Counselor‐in‐Training Supervision: Ethical and Practical Implications for Counselor Educators and Supervisors

Computer‐based clinical supervision of counselors‐in‐training is becoming more prevalent (M. Reisch & L. Jarman‐Rohde, 2000); however, its use is still in its infancy, and ethical standards have not been established regarding its practice. There exists a dearth of literature focusing on the ethical practice and development of supervisees when using computer‐based supervision. This article (a) explores ethical practice when using technology to facilitate counselor supervision, (b) reviews specific types of computer‐based applications, (c) presents potential advantages and disadvantages of computer‐based supervision, and (d) offers implications for counselor educators and supervisors.     

Ethical Complaints Made Against Credentialed Counselors: An Updated Survey of State Licensing Boards

The authors present the results of a survey of ethical complaints reported to state licensing boards, raise concerns about specific areas of ethical complaints and violations, and make suggestions regarding ameliorating problem areas.     

A Systems Approach Model for Counselor Education Program Development and Redefinition

Many counselor education programs are faced with the need for program revision due to the adoption of ACES Standards of Preparation, the demands of certification, licensure, and accreditation, and recent trends in the profession and society in general. This article presents a systems approach model for counselor education program development, evaluation, and redefinition in a practical, step-by-step manner to help meet this need.     

Let right be done: trying to put ethical standards into practice

The development of ethical standards by professional associations, boards, councils and colleges of teachers, responds in part to a moral imperative that teachers and school leaders be accountable to the wider community, and in part to a desire to enhance the overall professionalism of educators' behaviour. This article explores the conceptual and practical complexities inherent in defining ethical standards for the teaching profession with a particular focus on their questionable capacity for implementation. In combining empirical evidence from previously reported research studies with newly fabricated first person narrative responses to the evidence, the article seeks to illustrate the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of applying ethical standards to actual situations in any professionally and ethically satisfying way. It argues further that moral dilemmas facing teachers are potentially resolvable only by communities of educators internalizing and applying principles of ethics, not formalized codes or standards.     

The Perfect Storm—Genetic Engineering,Science, and Ethics

Uncertainty about ethics has been a major factor in societal rejection of biotechnology. Six factors help create a societal “perfect storm” regarding ethics and biotechnology: Social demand for ethical discussion; societal scientific illiteracy; poor social understanding of ethics; a “Gresham’s Law for Ethics;” Scientific Ideology; vested interests dominating ethical discussion. How this can be remedied is discussed.     

The Case for ACES Program Accreditation

This article traces the historical development of professional standards and highlights some of the issues that have surfaced in the development process. Traditional and existing accreditation procedures are described as well as recent trends in national accreditation that may be conducive to ACES-sponsored accreditation of preparation programs. State models of program accreditation by California ACES and Wisconsin ACES are described. The relationship between program accreditation and counselor licensure is discussed, and the implication is drawn that licensure may be the catalyst for professional-program accreditation. It is concluded that ACES is the most appropriate professional association to assume leadership in the area of accreditation, and a series of recommendations is made for implementing accreditation.     

Ethically challenging situations reported by school psychologists: Implications for training

Practitioner‐members of the National Association of School Psychologists (N = 208) completed questionnaires regarding their ethics training, preparedness, the types of ethical transgressions and dilemmas encountered in the previous year, and the strategies used to solve problems. Respondents who received multilevel training in ethics (ethics coursework, ethics instruction in multiple classes, ethics addressed in practicum/internship) perceived themselves to be better prepared to tackle difficult challenges and were more likely to use a systematic problem‐solving strategy when faced with an ethical dilemma than respondents who did not receive multilevel training. Assessment‐related ethical transgressions and failure to follow up on interventions were the two most commonly witnessed types of ethics code violations; troublesome dilemmas included whether to suspect child abuse, whether to tell parents about their child's risky behavior, and how to handle administrative pressure to engage in unethical actions. Implications for ethics training are discussed. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Supervision of Counselor Licensure Applicants: A Comparative Study

A survey of supervisors of counselor licensure applicants in two states indicated that a state board's supervision regulations do have some impact on the practice of supervision.