Sustainability and Education: To Sink—or to Swim?

In the 1960s, the role of engineering education was clear, whereas in the 1990s there is a search for a new rationale. These changes have been wrought by social concerns for the environment at both local and global levels. This trend will accelerate further, and both the rate of development of the trend and its implications have been underestimated. There is now a hope and expectation that technology, until now a contributor to environmental problems, can in the future play a large part in the reduction of these problems. While professional engineering organizations have addressed the problem at a policy level, implementation is a major difficulty. This is also true in education, despite efforts by some schools of engineering to adapt existing courses in an environmental direction. It is now clear that the changes needed are too fundamental and the rate of change too great to be dealt with adequately by adaptation. Basic questions of philosophy and capacity will have to be addressed by academia, engineering practice and major business.     

Understanding Clients and Their Environments: A Simulation

Counselors must be made fully aware of the impact of environmental and societal forces on their clients. Counselor education students need knowledge and skill to attend to the pressures and problems of minority groups. The simulation method described in this article encourages students to experience powerlessness, isolation, and few if any options in order to develop a clearer understanding of their clients and environments. The authors discuss applicability of the simulation beyond counselor education programs.     

An Attributional Approach to Counselor Supervision

The supervision process is examined from an attributional perspective. Counselor supervision is conceptualized as an interactional process in which trainees learn to describe and manage cause-effect relationships. Attribution theory from the social psychological literature is reviewed, and common biases and errors in the attribution process are discussed in terms of their relationship to supervision. Finally, several interventions are proposed to help supervisors minimize the influence of these attributional biases on their own and their trainees' perceptions and behaviors.     

The Acquisition of Conceptual Skills: An Exploratory Study

It was hypothesized that explicit instruction in the use of a conceptual framework would be more effective than feedback about behavior in teaching the conceptual skills of problem definition and goal formulation to beginning practicum students. Counseling trainees received one of two kinds of supervision, instruction or feedback, in written form following an interview with a role-play client. They subsequently interviewed two more role-play clients. After each interview, trainees formulated problem definitions, short-term goals, and outcome goals for the case. At the end of the experiment, they rated the supervision they received and their own counseling performance in the three interviews. Results did not support the hypothesis, but rather the reverse. Feedback was found to be more effective in teaching goal formulation and was perceived by trainees to be more effective.     

The Use of Portfolios in the Clinical and Comprehensive Evaluation of Counselors-in-Training

This article discusses the use of portfolios in the clinical and comprehensive evaluation of counselors-in-training. Issues related to the development, implementation, and evaluation of portfolios are presented.