The Application of the Microcounseling Paradigm to the Training of Support Personnel in Counseling

The microcounseling paradigm was utilized in 3 4-hour segments to train paraprofessionals in the skills of attending behavior, expression of feeling, and reflection of feeling. Sixteen female subjects served in the project and followed a modified micro-counseling routine in learning each of the skills. Results showed that all trainees evidenced significant learning of all 3 behavioral skills in a short period of time. Significant pre- to post-treatment differences occurred on all criterion measures. Results are discussed with respect to the training of support personnel in counseling via the microcounseling paradigm.     

Training of Support Personnel in Three Human Relations Skills: A Systematic One-Year Follow-Up

This article reports a systematic, one-year follow-up of trainees taught three human relations skills. Results support the conclusion that response-contingent behavior decreases when supervisor reinforcement is not present. The results and their implications for training support personnel and counselors via the microcounseling paradigm are discussed.     

Basic Skills for Leadership of Counseling Groups

Basic skills training has emerged as an important element in educating counselors and other helping persons. Although the literature on small groups contains numerous schemata for describing and categorizing the behavior of group leaders, none was discovered which was specifically developed as a basis for systematic skill training in the leadership of counseling groups. The author identifies a set of basic group leadership skills to be used in a systematic skills training approach. The skills fall into two broad categories, teaching and group management. Definitions and examples of the skills are provided, and the author discusses adaptation of a microcounseling format for training in group leadership skills.     

Basic Interaction Behaviors: A Microcounseling Approach for Introductory Courses

Three brief instructional programs for beginning counselors are described. Each program is for the purpose of inducing entry-level social skills that support effective counseling interaction. Design of microcounseling activities for a class-size group is detailed. Pilot data and experimental data are presented demonstrating gains in observable learner behaviors. Implications for a competency-based counselor education format are discussed.     

Effectiveness of Short Term Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Training in College Students with Cluster B Personality Disorders

This pilot project investigates the efficacy of an 11-week dialectical behavior therapy skills training class in increasing adaptive skill use and emotion regulation in college students with cluster B personality disorders or traits. Subjects are students (N?=?19, mean age = 21.31, 1 male, 18 female) at a southeastern university counseling center. Students meeting criteria but not interested in attending the group were recruited to serve as control subjects who received treatment as usual. As compared to treatment as usual, dialectical behavior therapy participants had significant improvement in increasing skills use and decreasing maladaptive coping skills; there was a trend for improvement in difficulty regulating emotions.     

A Measure of Counselor Competency

Counselor educators need to be able to demonstrate their effectiveness in training new counselors; however, currently few valid or reliable measures exist for assessing educators' impact. The authors describe the development of such an instrument, the Counseling Skills Scale. They began by revising an existing scale and then they solicited feedback from experts and a focus group. They used the instrument to compare beginning counselors‐in‐training with those who had completed a counseling skills course. Finally, they conducted an item analysis. A paired t test showed significant improvements in counseling skills (t = 4.51, p < .000) from pretest to posttest. Cronbach's alpha showed internal consistency to be .90.     

Wellness Model of Supervision: A Comparative Analysis

This quasi‐experimental study compared the effectiveness of the Wellness Model of Supervision (WELMS; Lenz & Smith, 2010 ) with alternative supervision models for developing wellness constructs, total personal wellness, and helping skills among counselors‐in‐training. Participants were 32 master's‐level counseling students completing their internship requirements in a counseling program accredited by the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs. Results of a split plot analysis of variance indicated that participants in the WELMS condition increased their personal definitions of wellness and total wellness while developing their counseling skills at a similar level when compared with participants receiving other models of supervision.     

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.     

Differential supervision and cognitive structure effects on empathy and counseling effectiveness

The present study investigated the effects of didactic and experiential supervision procedures on the judged counseling effectiveness of high and low cognitive complexity counselor trainees. Subjects in the two supervision groups (N=16) were trained in attending, questioning, and reflection of feeling over three sessions. Training consisted of exposure to videotaped counseling models, discussion of the model's behavior with the supervisor, videotaped role playing of therapy, and discussion of the therapy with the supervisor. Training was exactly the same for both groups except for supervision. A control group (N=8) did not receive any training. All subjects, including controls, were pre- and post-tested for counseling effectiveness as measured by judged tape ratings on the 25-item Counselor Effectiveness Scale and four scales designed to assess affective, exploratory, listening, and honest labeling responses.High complex subjects responsed more favorably to the didactic supervision significantly outperforming both the high complex controls and the low complex didactic subjects on four of the five dependent measures, whereas high and low complex subjects did not respond differentially to the experiential supervision. The results were discussed in terms of fitting the complexity of the students to the supervision approach in selecting students for counseling programs.This paper was presented at the International Round Table for the Advancement of Counselling, Thessaloniki, Greece, April 1980, and was based partly on the senior author's doctoral disser tation (University of Maine, 1978).     

Effects of Tape-Recording & Supervisory Evaluation on Counselor Trainee Anxiety Levels

Fifty-three in-service employment and rehabilitation counselors, enrolled in supervised counseling practica, participated in a study to assess their subjective and physiological anxiety responses to counseling under different stimulus conditions. Participants were randomly assigned to one of four treatment conditions: a counseling session, a counseling session that was tape-recorded, a counseling session that was tape-recorded and evaluated by their supervisor, and a control condition in which participants read an article on counseling. Results of the 4 treatment conditions × 3 period analyses of variance for subjective (p <.001) and conductance data (p <.05) indicated that participants who counseled had higher anxiety levels than those who read the article. There was no treatment effect found for heart rate data. None of the counseling groups experienced significantly more anxiety than any of the others. It was concluded that tape-recording and supervisory evaluation do not increase the anxiety levels of participants over the levels experienced while counseling without recording and/or evaluation.     

Supervisor Training: A Discrimination Model

The delivery of supervision skills to those who direct counselors through practicum is not well defined in the counseling literature. This article addresses that issue by presenting a model for identification and training of those skills, the roles in which the skills are demonstrated, and the types of choices or discriminations that are necessary to make in tutoring trainees through the counseling practicum. This model attempts to pair the training of supervisors with the training of counselors in a systematic fashion.     

Rehabilitation and Non-Rehabilitation Counselor Candidates: Comparison of Interview Behavior and Personality Techniques

This study investigated the hypothesis that conventional role stereotypes of rehabilitation and non-rehabilitation counselors attract counselor candidates who differ in preferred modes of counseling interview behavior and in personality characteristics. Twenty-four rehabilitation counselor candidates and 21 non-rehabilitation counselor candidates enrolled in a beginning counseling course held interviews with a standard client. Candidates' responses were classified employing a content analysis scale. All subjects had taken the 16 PF at the beginning of the course. Results found rehabilitation counselor candidates used informative, questioning, diagnosing, and probing responses more frequently and feeling responses less frequently than did non-rehabilitation candidates. Non-rehabilitation candidates appeared less practical, conservative, and group adherent on the 16 PF than rehabilitation candidates.     

Death Education and Counseling: A Survey

A survey of counselors and counselor educators was conducted to assess information and attitudes with regard to death education, training in death and dying, and the appropriateness of dealing with death in the schools. Results showed that an overwhelming majority of both the responding counselors and the counselor educators felt that school counselors should work in this area (both counseling and death education). Although both these groups recognize the need for training in death and dying, little is presently being done to help counselors acquire the necessary skills and awareness to work in the area of death and grief. Recommendations for changes are included.     

The PEWTER Study: Breaking Bad News Communication Skills Training for Counseling Programs

The efficacy of teaching communication skills for breaking bad news in graduate-level counseling programs was examined. A structured model, PEWTER (Prepare, Evaluate, Warning, Telling, Emotional Response, Regrouping; Keefe-Cooperman and Nardi 2004), provides a method for this difficult task. Prior to training in using the model, students reported not feeling adequately trained or comfortable giving bad news. The PEWTER training undertaken was significantly related to students’ increased feelings of preparedness and comfort. Breaking bad news is a universal experience across cultures and the structured protocol seems to offer value in helping counselors in training be better prepared for such a challenging task.     

Examining the Process and Outcome of Career Counseling for Different Types of Career Counseling Clients

Using cluster analysis, we identified two types of career counseling clients: (a) Clients with moderate levels of career-related distress, discomfort, and uncertainty and (b) clients with high levels of career concerns, personal distress, and stigma about career counseling. The more distressed group expressed lower evaluations of a career counseling session and perceived their counselors as providing fewer action-oriented counseling skills than the less distressed group. No differences emerged in terms of client's perceptions of the therapeutic relationship. The practical implications and limitations of these results are discussed.     

Instrumentation (GSR) and Its Effects On Counselor Responses

This study investigated the feasibility of using client GSR responses to increase counselor sensitivity to clients during the counseling interview. Six counselors counseled 22 clients under experimental conditions in which they observed clients' GSR responses and 22 control clients whose GSR responses were not visible to them. Clients were matched on the variables of age, sex, general diagnosis, counseling session number, and type and effect of medication, if any. Counselor responses, classified according to a modified Porter scale, were compared between experimental and control conditions. A significant difference (p<.01) between experimental conditions was observed with counselors appearing to use more probing and fewer understanding statements while viewing their clients' GSR responses.     

Teaching Feminist Counseling Skills: An Evaluation

Feminist counseling was analyzed into four core skills: social analysis, androgyny encouragement, self-disclosure, and behavior feedback. A 5-week feminist skill-training program was developed for 45 counselors divided into two groups, matched on years of counseling experience and scores on Spence and Helmreich's Attitude Toward Women Scale (AWS). Training of the second group was delayed for 5 weeks to provide a control for the training of the first group. Participants' attitudes and skill levels before, after, and at a 5-week follow-up were monitored. Counseling simulations were used for skill monitoring. Training resulted in significant increases in social analysis and self-disclosure skills as well as increments in AWS scores. Social analysis skill increments were the only changes maintained at follow-up.     

Model Competencies for Attending Behavior

Properties of an effective competency-based training programare considered, and it is suggested that well-written competencies must be measurable, reliable, and valid. If these conditions cannot be met, then competency-based training is inappropri-ate. Eight model competencies for attending behavior are presented. The data which are presented indicate that these competencies can be measured reliably. Although these competencies were developed for use with microcounseling training, they are easily adaptable to other training programs.     

Reading comprehension instruction: summarization and self-monitoring training for students with learning disabilities.

Forty-five middle-school students with learning disabilities were randomly assigned to one of three reading-comprehension training conditions: (a) summarization training, (b) summarization training with a self-monitoring component, or (c) traditional instruction. All students were interviewed before and after training regarding the strategies they typically employ during reading comprehension; during one training session, "think aloud" protocols were collected. Results indicated that students with learning disabilities trained in summarization procedures performed statistically higher on all dependent measures. In addition, on some transfer measures, students who were trained in the monitoring component statistically outperformed those with only the summarization training.     

Counseling after Dark: Evening Students' Perceptions of Counseling Resources

Abstract

Community colleges have traditionally emphasized the role of educational-vocational counseling for students, although in recent times community college counselors seem to desire more involvement in personal-emotional counseling and to be more therapeutically oriented. This study assessed how evening community college students perceive various professional resource personnel and students' likelihood of consulting these professionals for assistance with diverse kinds of problems. Evening students' perceptions were discussed in comparison to perceptions held by day students and by students attending 4-year colleges and universities. Implications for training and the professional identity of community college counselors were also noted.