A Response to “Counselor Education and the Psychology of More”

Joe Wittmer and Thomas Sweeney, Executive Director and Chairperson, respectively, of the APGA Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs, respond to the article, “Counselor Education and the Psychology of More” (Pipes, Buckhold, & Merrill, 1983), found elsewhere in this issue. The authors agree that Pipes et al. challenged the profession to examine the state of the art in counselor education, but that they seemed unaware of the rapidly moving changes occurring within the profession today.     

“A Liberation of Powers”: Agency and Education for Democracy

In this essay Harry Boyte and Margaret Finders argue that addressing the “shrinkage” of education and democracy requires acting politically to reclaim and augment Deweyan agency‐focused concepts of democracy and education. Looking at agency from the vantage of civic studies, which advances a politics of agency — a citizen politics that is different from ideological politics — and citizens as cocreators of political communities, Boyte and Finders explore the technocratic trends that have eclipsed agency. These disempower educators, students, and communities. Using the case study of the youth empowerment initiative Public Achievement and its translation into the Special Education Program and partnerships of Augsburg College, the authors conclude with an examination of how agentic practices have survived in “shadow spaces” in schools, how such spaces might be turned into “free spaces” for democratic change, and how teacher education needs to prepare “citizen teachers” as well as promoting pedagogies of empowerment. These suggest grounds for a movement of hope and democratic change.     

The “pinpointing effect” vs. the “diffusion effect” of peer influence

Classroom teachers are learning to employ the peer group to “shape up” dissidents. However, singling out a child may produce undesirable side effects such as emotional behavior, resentment, etc. Can the same result be obtained by rewarding the class for ignoring the target behavior of everyone in the room? Twelve subjects were selected from six middle school classes, two from each class. Each entire class was rewarded for increased ignoring of the target behavior (whispering): in the three P (pinpointed) classes, for ignoring the whispering of Designated (target) subjects; in the three D (diffusion) classes, for ignoring whispering by all class members. The results indicate that a peer group can decrease reinforcement of a disruptive behavior and thereby decelerate it in a singled-out child (Pinpointing Effect) or a behavior emitted by any child in class (Diffusion Effect) with equal effectiveness. However, patterns in the data suggest that peers ignored P-Designated subjects most, D subjects next most, and P-Undesignated subjects the least and that this pattern of ignoring was mirrored in the pattern of deceleration of the target behaviors in the three groups. These patterns suggest that the Pinpointing Effect may be stronger than the Diffusion Effect, but further study is needed.