Paraprofessional Trainees and Counselor Education Students: A Comparison of Personality and Predicted Counseling Effectiveness

This study compared 55 counselor education students with 34 junior college students being trained as counseling paraprofessionals, regarding their personality and predicted counseling effectiveness. All members of both groups were enrolled in practicums at their respective institutions. The two groups differed significantly on 8 of 16 personality characteristics as measured by the 16 Personality Factor Questionnaire. And a higher percentage of the paraprofessionals received lower ratings as determined by a regression equation used to predict counseling effectiveness.     

Counseling and Counselor Education: A Developmental Approach

The article reviews the need for a developmental conception as the aim of educational intervention. The rationale is presented and compared to the mental health treatment approach. A case is made for the importance of a primary prevention, an ego and moral development focus for the psychological education of pupils and young adults.     

Attitudes Toward Homosexuality among Graduate Counseling Students

The authors surveyed graduate counseling students regarding their attitudes toward homosexuality: its etiology; the mental health of homosexuals; the role of the mental health professional in treating homosexual clients; and myths and fallacies surrounding homosexuality. The results indicate that counseling students feel ill-prepared to deal with homosexual clients, are unsure about the etiology of homosexuality, and that female students respond differently from male students regarding many aspects of homosexuality.     

Attitudes Toward Death Education and Grief Counseling

This article surveyed counselors and counselor educators across the nation regarding their attitudes toward death education and grief counseling. Results were compared to previous research in this area, and it was found that death education and grief training has increased significantly in recent years. Results also indicated that elementary school counselors were more willing than junior or senior high counselors to prepare teachers to help in the area of grief. The primary reasons given by counselors for not attending courses, workshops, or seminars on death education were that training was either not available or not convenient. Counselor educators' reasons for non-attendance varied from time conflict to lack of interest.     

Working With Minority Counselor Education Students

This article addresses three major issues in the training of minority counselor education students: sensitivity to client; cultural differences in counseling; and relationships between the counselor trainee and his or her clients, professors, classmates, and agency–placement supervisors.     

An Epistemology of Counseling: Implications for Counselor Education and Research

Administrators of counselor education programs have identified specific skills and content areas for their students to master. Counselors in training need to make theory applicable to individuals through the use of counseling techniques and assessment. What counselors do is related to the qualitative, quantitative, and performative knowing that Maccia (1973) found present in student-teacher relationships. This epistemology can be applied to what a counselor needs to know to counsel. Such applications of the epistemology described by Maccia (1973) are significant for counseling in two ways. First, they may aid counselor educators and students in making clear distinctions between content and skill areas as well as making strong connections between content and skills. Second, an epistemology of counseling may point to fruitful areas of research.     

Counselor Self-Awareness and Counseling Effectiveness

It has been assumed that counselor self-awareness is important to counseling effectiveness. The purpose of the present study was to determine if there were differences in perceived effectiveness between counselors who said they related self-awareness to their counseling role and counselors who believed self-awareness was unrelated to their role. Those counselors who did not relate self-awareness to counseling received higher client ratings of effectiveness than did counselors who related self-awareness.     

Advising Doctoral Students Seeking Counselor Education Faculty Positions

This article provides suggestions, information, and resources for advisors to use in assisting students to obtain tenure-track counselor education positions. Recommendations for research are also presented.     

Teaching Suicide Risk Assessment to Counselor Education Students

A training strategy designed to teach counseling students basic suicide risk assessment is described.     

Counselor Recall of Specific Details: Implications for Counseling and Counselor Training

This study examined two verbal process variables in counseling: (a) accuracy of counselor recall statements, and (b) relevance of counselor recall statements.     

Multicultural Counseling: Does It Belong in a Counselor Education Program?

Multicultural counseling has the support of various groups, including accreditation bodies. Counselor education programs may, however, be adopting a movement that is not consistent with previously held beliefs about counseling. Is information about a specific subculture helpful in counseling a client who is labeled as being from that subculture? Or are the differences within groups possibly as great as the differences between groups? The author's experience in one multicultural setting suggests that counseling is more effective with clients of another culture when it is unaided by the use of generalized information about that culture.     

A Joint Venture in Counselor Education: The Clovis Family Counseling Center

California State University, Fresno, and a local school district formed a cooperative counseling center that has provided each with substantial benefits.     

Counselor Anxiety During a Counseling Interview

Physiological and subjective measures of counselor anxiety were compared to determine if counselors experienced greater anxiety during a counseling interview than during a conversation, Twenty experienced rehabilitation counselors in a graduate-level practicum course volunteered to participate in a 10-minute conversation and counseling session. Anxiety was assessed by self-report skin conductance and heart-rate measures. Results indicated that there were no significant treatment, period, or interaction effects for heart-rate data; however, there was a significant period effect for conductance data. There were no significant differences for participants' self-report evaluations of the two situations. Baseline autonomic data were highly related to autonomic data during the anticipation and stimulus periods, and preexperimental self-report data were moderately related to postexperimental self-report data. Conclusions were that counselors experience comparable anxiety during counseling and conversing, that expectation accounts for most of the counselors' anxiety, and that baseline physiological and self-report data may prove useful in identifying counselors who would experience anxiety during an interview.     

Help-Seeking Experiences and Attitudes among African American, Asian American, and European American College Students

The study examined African American, Asian American, and European American college students’ previous direct and indirect experiences of seeking professional psychological services and related attitudes. Survey data were collected from 254 European American, 182 African American and 82 Asian American college students. Results revealed that fewer African American and Asian American college students had sought professional psychological services, knew someone who had sought psychological services, and knew a close person who was diagnosed with a psychological disorder, relative to European American students. Furthermore, African American and Asian American participants showed less favorable attitudes on a variety of help-seeking attitudes, compared to the European American group.     

Counselor Candidates and Graduate Students in Education: A Comparison of Characteristics

46 graduate students who had indicated that their major interest was teaching were compared with 47 graduate students who had indicated that their major interest was counseling. All subjects were given five scales as part of their course work in educational tests and measurements. These scales yielded 32 subtests on which comparisons between the groups were made. The groups differed on six of the subtests. Three of the variables on which the groups differed were interest measures. A further comparison was made between the counselor candidates who had a practicum and those who had not. Little difference was found between these groups on the variables investigated.