Story crafting: strategies for facilitating narrative career counselling

Narrative career counselling is a growing force in career guidance and counselling that offers a direction for the field to respond to the needs of increasingly diverse client groups. In this article, we review established and emerging approaches to narrative career counselling, then focus on the emerging story telling approach. We offer examples of how career counsellors may facilitate narrative career counselling through three levels of story crafting questions, as well as mapping and scaffolding, which are illustrated by a case example.     

Consumer attitudes towards mobile marketing in the smart phone era

This exploratory online questionnaire-based study confirms the findings from earlier studies in the pre-smart phone era regarding consumers’ negative attitudes towards mobile marketing communications. This study shows that these attitudes persist despite increasing frequency of use and increased functionality of mobile phones in the smart phone era. Consumers perceive their mobile device to be for personal communication, and prefer to be able to exercise control over their interaction with organisations. Findings suggest that acceptance can be enhanced by permission marketing, trust-building, creating a sense of being in control, and useful and entertaining website content. Accordingly, pull technologies seem to hold particular promise for mobile marketing communications. This study, therefore, proceeds to explore use of and attitudes towards an important pull technology, QR codes. QR codes, two-dimensional bar codes, can be scanned to provide access to websites, information and applications. Despite their potential, uptake is low. Users in this study who had scanned a QR code had used them to access a variety of different content on different types of items and in different locations. The most frequently accessed type of content was information on a web site, the two most common locations for a scanned QR code were a newspaper or magazine advert, or outdoor advert or poster, and the two most common locations at which scanning was performed were in the street and at home. Ease of use, utility and incentives are drivers to continued use whilst lack of knowledge about how-to scan or of the benefits of QR codes may hinder adoption. Recommendations are offered for practice and for further research.     

Inferential reasoning and the influence of cognitive conflict

This study follows two earlier studies of school students' abilities to draw inferences when comparing two datasets presented in graphical form (Watson and Moritz, 1999; Watson, 2001). Using the same interview protocol with a new sample of 60 students, 20 from each of grades 3,6 and 9, cognitive conflict was introduced in the form of video clips of reasoning expressed by students in the earlier studies. This methodology was intended to mimic the type of argumentation that might take place in the classroom but in a controlled setting where identical arguments could be presented to different students. Interviews were videotaped and analysed in a similar fashion to the earlier studies in order to document change associated with the presentation of cognitive conflict. Change was documented with respect to the levels of observed response for two parts of the protocol and for the use of displayed variation in the graphs. Implications of the methodology for future research and teaching are discussed. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Difficulties and support at school for children following renal transplantation: a case study

In an interesting example of inter-agency collaboration, researchers from Nottingham Trent University and Nottingham City Hospital here use a case study to shed light on some of the peer relationship issues and the support needs of young people with medical conditions. They consider that the concerns raised by the case study suggest schools need to address these proactively rather than reactively.     

Reference, or advisory, groups involving disabled people: reflections from three contrasting research projects

Increasingly in recent years, the involvement of disabled people as co-researchers has been regarded as 'good practice'. This has been informed by growing participatory and emancipatory research paradigms as well as user-focused policy imperatives. The benefits of these shifts apply to the research itself (improved definition, direction, applicability and impact), to non-disabled researchers (personal growth and enhanced understanding of the reflexive research process), to people with disabilities involved as researchers or collaborators (personal growth and enhanced opportunities), and (if externally funded) to the funder whose ways of operating are likely to be challenged profoundly. In this paper, Ann Lewis, Sarah Parsons and Christopher Robertson (based at the University of Birmingham), Anthony Feiler, Beth Tarleton and Debby Watson (based at the University of Bristol) and Richard Byers, Jill Davies, Ann Fergusson and Claire Marvin (based at the University of Cambridge) discuss the work of three independent research teams carrying out concurrent projects. The authors share their experiences of trying to take seriously the participation of disabled people in research. All three projects were informed, to a significant degree, by their respective reference groups of disabled people. The work of these groups in each of the three projects is outlined and then discussed in relation to five common themes: formal contracts with members of reference groups; considerations concerning drawing on an established reference group; planning for reference group involvement; style of reference group involvement; and building on good practice.     

The Role of a Caring-Based Intervention in a Physical Activity Setting

This preliminary study examined the effect of a caring-based versus a traditionally-focused physical activity intervention on underserved adolescents’ perceptions of the caring climate, the motivational climate, empathetic concern, enjoyment, and future anticipated participation. Multiethnic youth (N = 353) aged 9 to 17 involved in two National Youth Sports Program (NYSP) sites participated in the study. The Caring Group (n = 90) participated in a program infused with themes of caring while the Traditional Group (n = 263) followed prototypical NYSP training, practices, and procedures. Self report assessments were gathered after 5 weeks in either setting. After accounting for demographic differences findings revealed that the Caring Group perceived significantly higher levels of a caring climate, empathetic concern, future expected participation, and lower levels of perceptions of an ego-involving motivational climate. The relevance of these findings with respect to the optimal development of youth is discussed. Dr. Maria Newton is a faculty member in the Department of Exercise and Sport Science at the University of Utah. She is interested in optimizing the impact of physical activity on the psychosocial and social-emotional development of underserved youth. She teaches courses in sport psychology, motivation, and character development. Dr. Doris Watson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sports Education Leadership at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. Dr. Lori Gano-Overway is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health and Exercise Science at Bridgewater College. Dr. May Fry is affiliated with Department of Health, Sport and Exercise Sciences, The University of Kansas, Lawrence. Dr. Mi-Sook Kim is an Associate Professor in the Department of Kinesiology at San Francisco State University and Dr. Michelle Magyar is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Kinesiology at CSU-Long Beach. Bio and teaching/research interests available upon request.