Relevant Training for Relevant Roles: A Model for Educating Inner-City Counselors

The inner-city counselor is expected to enter into his role with an understanding of his students and their culture, as well as with a knowledge of the processes of social change and his own potential contribution. Present programs of counselor education do not tend to provide the basis for development of these wide-ranging skills. It is suggested that counselor education should place potential counselors in public school settings working in teams with practicing counselors, providing relevant experience for future counselors and invigorating contacts for future supervisors. Course work would be inter-disciplinary and provided in the public school milieu.     

Trends in Community Counselor Training

This article reports the major results of a survey of counselor education programs regarding the development of training for community/agency counselors. The data are reported under the headings of Program Demographics, Faculty, Curriculum, and Employability of Graduates. It is concluded that community/agency training programs need considerable attention and development. Also, it is recommended that ACES establish liaisons with other groups that train community/agency counselors.     

Differentiation In Elementary School Counselor Preparation Programs Among ACES Regions

A national survey, reported by ACES regions, examined the differentiation of counselor education programs for the preparation of elementary school counselors. While the study, based on usable questionnaire returns from 225 counselor education programs, provides evidence of many efforts toward program differentiation, there remains a substantial lack of uniformity in preparation background of elementary school counselors graduating from preparation programs across the country.     

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.     

Preparing School Counselors to Work With Students With Disabilities

Recent literature has demonstrated increasing roles for school counselors who work with students with disabilities, but it has also suggested that school counselors are not being adequately prepared to work with these students. In this research study, the authors investigated current courses and experiences focusing on disabilities offered in school counselor education programs. Results from the 137 participants suggest that school counselor education programs are incorporating more disability content into their training programs than they were in the past. Some disability content areas are included significantly more frequently in disability courses than in counseling program courses. Conclusions and implications are discussed.     

Some Curriculum Ideas for Training Public Offender Counselors

Counselor education programs that train counselors for work in corrections need to supplement their curriculum in critical content and issue areas. Correctional counselors need specialized coursework in addition to training in traditional counseling techniques. This article reviews the current curriculum areas of many counselor education master's programs that are relevant to correctional counselors, and also suggests some ideas for additional content that might expand these curriculums to better meet the needs of correctional counselors.     

A Comprehensive Model for Multidimensional Competencies in the Training of Secondary School Counselors

Counselor education programs throughout the country have employed competency-based objectives as part of their training programs. The utilization of behavioral objectives in defining specific counselor skills has produced numerous systems and models for the training of counselors. This article presents a multidimensional model for counselor education that uses a behavioral approach in conjunction with the more globally accepted services and functions of the secondary school counselor. The multidimensional model places the competencies in three distinct domains: (a) 10 identifiable services provided by the secondary counselor; (b) the three functions performed by the counselor; and (c) the three types of program training components commonly used in counselor education programs. The three dimensions of the model are presented in a Guilford-like cube for simplicity.     

Becoming Counselors Through Growth and Learning: The Entry Transition Process

This article explored counselor development within the entry transition into counselor education programs using 4 interviews and interpretive dialogues with 8 beginning counselors. Six categories resulted from the authors' grounded theory analysis: Anticipation, Evolving Identity, Growth and Learning, Coping, Choosing to Trust the Process, and Interacting With Feedback.     

Infusing Human Sexuality Content and Counseling in Counselor Education Curriculum

Human sexuality is a pervasive and universal part of being human and despite this, receives inadequate attention in counselor education curricula. Consequently, counselors may be ill-prepared to assist clients who present with sexuality issues. The authors provide support and recommendations for infusing sexuality content throughout counselor education programs.     

Gender: Issues of Power and Equity in Counselor Education Programs

Education about gender-related issues has been identified as a critical element in the training of counselors. Suggestions are offered for incorporating gender issues into counselor education programs.     

A Collaborative Substance Abuse Model for Counselors in Training: Knowledge and Practicum Experiences

A school-based substance abuse training model for counselors was sponsored by a federal grant and designed by a counselor education department. The program was successful in training counselors to design and implement prevention and intervention programs in the school setting.     

A Long Distance Approach to Evaluating Counselor Communication

This article describes an instrument, Recorded Counselee Narratives, used to collect counselor responses over the telephone and an instrument, Counselor Preference Survey, developed to evaluate such responses. Data is presented to show that nonprofessional, untrained raters can achieve sufficient reliability to make the instruments useful in studying nonprofessional evaluations of counselors. Possible uses of the instruments in evaluation of applicants for graduate counselor education programs, lay counselors, and telephone counselors are described.     

Counselors and Exceptional Students: Preparation Versus Practice

Despite the multiple roles of school counselors related to special education, a national survey of counselor education programs indicated that most programs encourage, but do not require, training to work with exceptional students.     

Consultant Training in Counselor Education Programs

Although the role of consultant has received increasing professional attention recently, little has been reported regarding the emphasis in counselor education programs given to consultation in the preparation of counselors. This study involved a survey of 31% of the existing counselor training programs. Findings indicated that 44% of the programs offered formal courses in consultation; the counselor as consultant was ranked second only to counseling as a major counselor role. Consultant training was reported as mainly focusing toward work with individual consultees and small groups.     

Integrating Social Justice Advocacy With National Standards of Practice: Implications for School Counselor Education

Social justice in the education of all K‐12 students begins with school counselors; preparing school counselors as advocates and leaders who can implement these principles in U.S. schools begins with counselor educators. Suggestions for intentional preparation of school counselors to be social justice advocates in schools by integrating the principles of the National Center for Transforming School Counseling with the American School Counselor Association National Model for School Counseling Programs (2005) and the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs 2009 Standards are described. Ideas for educating school counselors as effective advocates in the context of specific training experiences throughout counselor training programs are provided.     

Promoting Student Cognitive Development in Counselor Preparation: A Proposed Expanded Role for Faculty Advisers

The development of cognitively complex counselors has been identified as an important component of counselor education. However, there are no models to provide direction for programs to systematically promote student cognitive growth over the entire course of their graduate education. In many counseling programs, the faculty adviser is the one professor who has interactions with a student from admission through graduation and, thus, could serve an important role in coordinating efforts to facilitate student cognitive development. Toward that end, the authors propose a structured advising model to assist faculty advisers in facilitating the cognitive growth of their advisees.     

Support Personnel: Attitudes Toward Functions and Training Responsibility

This study was conducted to determine (a) if the heads of counselor education programs agree on what functions are appropriate for support personnel assisting secondary school counselors, and (b) who should take the responsibility for their training. Questionnaire replies were received from 128 (64.0 percent) of the 200 heads of counselor education programs queried. The respondents were asked to examine a list of 17 functions and (a) indicate if they were appropriate, and (b) specify if counselors, counselor educators, or city/state directors should be responsible for training support personnel to perform each appropriate function. There was significant agreement (X², d = .01) among them on both questions. Ten of 17 functions were considered appropriate; the counselor was perceived as having the major responsibility for training. A small segment of the sample (11.7 percent) was engaged in training support personnel.     

An Introduction to Proposed Human Sexuality Counseling Competencies

The presentation of human sexuality information within counselor education programs seems inconsistent, leaving counselors typically underprepared to handle the sexuality-related components of many clients’ distress. Addressing this gap, the present article, using guidance from the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists (AASECT), proposes 10 human sexuality counseling competency domains to aid counselors in working more effectively and comprehensively with clients. These domains are: Ethical/Professional Behavior, History and Systems, Anatomy/Physiology, Sexual Identity, Sexual Development, Intimacy and Interpersonal Relationships, Pleasure and Sexual Lifestyles, Sexual Functioning, Health/Medical Factors, and Sexual Exploitation. Clinical implications are discussed and include improved case conceptualization and developing counselor competence. Opportunities for future research are presented as they relate to counselor education and training.     

Planning and presenting career development seminars

Summary An overview of the seminar planning process that includes needs assessment, program planning, implementation and evaluation has been presented. In addition, necessary platform skills have been identified to help staff members move from the role of planner to that of presentor. With training, either in counselor education programs or as a part of staff development, career counselors can provide a higher quality service to a larger number of students by learning more about the science and art of seminar planning and presentation.     

Training Counselors to Interpret Psychoeducational Evaluations: A Course Model

Evidence from the literature and from reported practice indicates that school counselors are increasingly expected to be competent in the interpretation of individually administered psychoeducational tests and reports. Systematic training in these competencies, however, is often not included as an integral part of counselor education programs. This article describes one counselor education program's response to the need for training in these interdisciplinary skills. The course model presented has been positively received by students and counseling internship supervisors.