Effects of Verbal Interaction Analysis Training with Counseling Practicum Students

This article investigates differences in counselor verbal style and type of counselee talk in two groups of counselor trainees. The first group consisted of 15 counselor trainees who received a training program with an Amidon-type Verbal Interaction Analysis System; the second group was a control group of 15 counselor trainees who received no interaction analysis training as part of a semester-long counseling practicum. The results indicated that the counselors receiving interaction analysis training tended to talk less and Use indirect influence techniques more often than the counselor trainees in the control group. Clients of the counselors in the experimental group tended to talk more often and use more self-initiated talk than did the clients of counselors in the control group.     

Finger Blood Volume Responses of Counselors,Counselor Trainees,and Non-Counselors to Stimuli from an Empathy Test

Measures of 4 physiological variables were obtained while 30 counselors, 30 counselor trainees, and 30 graduate science majors were evaluating a series of dramatic dialogs and slides taken from an empathy test. Significantly more vasoconstriction, indicative of arousal, was observed in the counselors and counselor trainees than in the science majors. This finding is consistent with the proposal that empathy is related to physiological responses and serves as contributing evidence for criteria in the selection, training, and evaluation of counselors.     

Solutions for Overconfidence: Evaluation of an Instructional Module for Counselor Trainees

Overconfidence in clinical judgment is a common problem among counselors that undermines the validity of the counselors' assessments and, by implication, the quality of client services. The authors evaluated an instructional module designed to reduce overconfidence among counselor trainees who completed an assessment task that exposed them to some of the complexities and pitfalls of clinical judgment. Although all counselor trainees were generally overconfident at both pretest and posttest, the module led to reductions in overconfidence only for the trainees who were exposed to it. It is suggested that counseling programs need to teach trainees to reflect critically on their inferential processes to improve the quality of their assessments.     

Counselor Trainees' Dependence on Clients: Issues and Implications

Counselor dependency on clients has received little attention compared with the topic of clients' dependency on counselors. This article suggests that many counselors, particularly beginning counselor trainees, may rely on their clients to meet some of their professional and personal needs. Several potential sources of trainee dependence are identified. Methods for recognizing manifestations of counselor dependence are discussed, as are strategies to help trainees become aware of, and minimize their dependency needs. Implications for research are also noted.     

Categories of Nonverbal Behavior: Implications for Supervision

The purpose of this article is twofold, to provide a review of applicable literature, information, and research in nonverbal behavior categories, and to encourage counselor educators and supervisors to consider additional research and investigations on the nonverbal behaviors of counselors and clients, supervisors, and trainees in actual counseling and supervisory sessions and situations. A brief model is provided to illustrate counselor educators' and supervisors' application and use of this information with novice counselors and its implications.     

Communication Between College Counselors and Academic Faculty When Supervising Graduate Student Trainees

College counseling centers play an important role in the training and supervision of counselor trainees. This article addresses the importance of communication between college counselors and academic counseling program faculty when college counselors supervise graduate students from academic counseling programs. As the authors discuss, effective communication contributes to positive and productive training experiences for graduate student trainees. Suggestions are offered for successful communication between counseling center staff and program faculty.     

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.     

Counseling sexually abused girls: the impact of sex of counselor

OBJECTIVE: The present study was conducted to assess the impact of sex of counselor on the therapeutic process for sexually abused girls in individual counseling. METHOD: Raters evaluated videotapes of counseling sessions recorded for 35 sexually abused girls who had been systematically assigned to brief-term psychoeducationally oriented treatment with either a male or female counselor. Clients' in-session behavior was rated using accepted therapeutic process measures, while statistically controlling for the effect of girls' pretreatment comfort level with male and female counselors. RESULTS: Overall, MANCOVA results revealed that girls' participation in counseling was not significantly related to session number, the child's age (i.e., preadolescent vs. adolescent), or the sex of counselor who provided treatment services. However, univariate results and graphic representations of girls' behavior suggest that adolescent clients, when compared with their preadolescent counterparts, seemed to be more reluctant to discuss certain child sexual abuse topics. CONCLUSIONS: The findings suggest that caution is warranted regarding categorical recommendations on the assignment of young female survivors to male counselors. Delimitations and limitations of the study and directions for future research are discussed.     

Further Exploration of the 16-PF and Counselor Effectiveness

This study reexamines the relationship between the Sixteen-Personality Factor (16-PF) Questionnaire and counselor performance ratings. The 16-PF was administered to 30 full-time counselor trainees. Supervisor ratings of counseling effectiveness in practicums were correlated with raw scores of counselors on the 16-PF. Data revealed that the pattern of relationships indicated by significant correlations is not consistent across this and three other studies using the 16-PF. The results of this study and the reanalysis of previous studies indicate that it would not be advisable at this time for counselor educators to identify or predict effective counselors on the basis of the 16-PF.     

Disability and Counselor Education

Mainstreaming legislation is an impetus for social change in relation to treatment of individuals with disabilities. This change requires that counselor educators include content areas related to aspects of disability to prepare counselors to serve clients with disabilities. The author makes recommendations for curricular change for experiential and didactic training to increase a counselor trainee's sensitivity, skills, and knowledge regarding disability. Also, counselor educators are urged to team trainees from school and rehabilitation counseling training programs so that these professionals can work cooperatively for the benefit of the client with a disability.     

Selection and Training for Human Rights Counseling

Human rights counseling is needed today as much as or more than it was in the 1960s. Counselor educators can help meet societal needs for human rights counselors by selecting counselor trainees sensitive to human rights issues and by preparing them to work with problems resulting from oppression. This article examines the shortcomings of traditional selection and training procedures and presents suggestions for improving them vis-á-vis human rights counseling.     

Intercultural studies for counselors

The author presents in his essay the rationale of intercultural studies for counselors and offers practical suggestions on the method and structure of such study experiences both for counselor trainees and for practitioners.While international meetings of counselors are of great importance, in the author's view, the momentum of international interests among counselors cannot be sustained without well designed intercultural studies. They are a prerequisite for meaningful face to face contacts with foreign colleagues, and they are even more important for enhancing counseling effectiveness and therapeutic skills of professionals in their home settings.Intercultural studies should be a part of counselor training curricula. Suggestions about the structure of intercultural courses and about acquisition of resources for such studies are presented along with a detailed methodology for structuring the study experiences. Emphasis is placed on cooperative efforts between instructor and students in researching the foreign culture under study. The direct participation of students in collecting information and samples of cultural products from the country under study maximizes the impact of the foreign milieu. Audiovisual experiences and role-playing are also suggested.The intercultural learning sequence can be adapted to a workshop format for practicing counselors who, in spite of time limitations, may benefit by participating in short, well prepared programs that offer an international perspective on professional issues.     

Counselor Training in a School Center

This article describes the creation of a partnership between a local school district and a university counselor education department to train counselors while providing counseling services using counselor trainees. The partnership resulted in a counseling center located in the school, which serves the school and community and is staffed by the university. The concept of a training center constructed by a school district and staffed by trainees and university faculty to serve students and people in the community is unique. This article explores the rationale for the community school-based, training-service center and the steps leading to its establishment. Also discussed are the physical structure and the operation of the center and the advantages and problems.     

Simulated Consulting Experiences in Counselor Preparation

Simulation, using role-playing and commercially available materials, was used to provide counselor-teacher consultation experience for counselor trainees. Students in a master's level guidance program worked with teachers in a consultative situation on a series of problems. Representative situations in which a teacher might consult with a counselor about possible courses of action in solving a problem were presented via simulation. Experienced teachers rated the adequacy of counselor recommendations concerning the problem situation. The trained counselors' recommendations were rated as superior (p < .01 level) to those of untrained counselors. These results support the use of simulation as a technique for counselor education. Implications for counselor education programs are discussed.     

Moral Development of Professional and Paraprofessional Counselors and Trainees

This article discusses a study that compared the moral development of professional and paraprofessional counselors and trainees; measuring the effects training programs had on their cognitive moral development. The results revealed that the professional group has a higher level of moral development, and counselor training has no effect on moral development.     

Counselor Education Students’ Exposure to Trauma Cases

In the past two decades there has been an increase in the number of studies that have examined the psychological effects on counselors who provide counseling to clients with trauma experiences. However, little is known about the experiences of counselor trainees who provide counseling to their clients seeking counseling because of trauma. This qualitative study explored the experience of eight doctoral students in a counseling program who completed their master’s-level training in the United States. Three themes emerged from the inductive data analysis process, namely: (1) immediate reactions, (2) information processing, and (3) post-exposure development. Implications for counselors, counselor educators, and clinical supervisors are examined and recommendations to enhance counseling and supervision services are offered.     

The Effects of Modeling and Ambiguity Tolerance on Interview Behavior

Ambiguity tolerance is a learner characteristic that can affect the processing of stimuli in a wide range of learning situations, including modeling. It has also been shown to be related to effective counselor interview behavior. This study investigated the influence of differences in ambiguity tolerance and the effects of exposure to a videotape model on the interview behavior of counselor trainees. A two-way analysis of variance gave limited support to the hypothesis that counselor trainees would exhibit significantly more effective interview behaviors as a result of the interaction of high ambiguity tolerance and exposure to a model. It may be that video models can be used to diminish differences in counseling performance among high and low ambiguity tolerant counselors. The potential of creating a variety of learning strategies, such as video modeling, to override the detrimental effects of certain personality characteristics is discussed.     

Effects of Client Race‐Ethnicity on Perceptions of Counselor Trainees: Study 1 and Study 2

The authors investigated the impact that racial stereotypes have on counselor trainees' perceptions of the attributes and behaviors of ethnically diverse male clients. Two studies were conducted in which participants were counselor trainees (Study 1, N = 58; Study 2, N = 75) who received a case study in which a male student sought counseling for problems affecting his school work. No differences were revealed in Study 1. In Study 2, counselor perceptions of client attributes differed across client race–ethnicity. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for training counselors, particularly regarding multicultural courses and workshops.     

The Relationship of Counselor Self-Actualization To Counselor Facilitativeness

After completing the Personal Orientation Inventory, 32 counselors-in-training each conducted a half-hour counseling session with one of 32 volunteer clients. Following the session, clients and counselors filled out the Barrett-Lennard Relationship Inventory, indicating how encouraging the counselor had been. Correlational analyses found that in general, counselor trainees who viewed themselves as more self-actualized were not perceived by clients or by themselves as being more encouraging. Specific elements of self-actualization however (awareness of self, others, and the nature of man) were related to facilitative conditions.     

Trauma‐Informed Response in the Age of Title IX: Considerations for College Counselors Working With Survivors of Power‐Based Personal Violence

Intimate partner violence, sexual violence, and stalking are pervasive in the United States, and college women are disproportionately affected by this power‐based personal violence (PBPV). Title IX mandates that colleges and universities offer support services to trauma survivors, and college counselors should be prepared to meet this need. Therefore, this article serves to explore a diverse assortment of trauma‐informed counseling techniques, based in feminist theory, for college counselors working with PBPV survivors.