PEER GROUP COUNSELING FOR OLDER PEOPLE

>For a variety of reasons, psychological services are largely unavailable for older people who want help in coping with their interpersonal problems. Group counseling, when it is used, proves to be an effective and efficient method for meeting their needs. It also addresses the reality of the limited numbers of gerontologically trained professionals currently available in the field. A readily attainable, and largely untapped, resource for working with this population is older people themselves. The Continuum Center of Oakland University selects, trains, and supervises older men and women, who serve as paraprofessional group leaders in a self‐exploration program offered in a variety of community centers in the Detroit metropolitan area. The service and training programs, and some of the outcomes for clients and group leaders, are briefly described.     

Making a Difference: Women in management in Australian and Canadian faculties of education

This article reports a study of Australian and Canadian women in management positions in university faculties of education. It provides a perspective on the contradictory and multilayered experiences of the first cohort of academic women to reach management positions in any significant numbers in education. The article explores the way in which women are positioned as different but at the same time negotiate their place by using marginality and difference as strengths. Many of the women continue to hold to feminist agendas that were forged in relation to the university of a quarter of a century ago. They have strong commitments to 'making a difference'. The authors raise the question of how these agendas will operate in the years to come and whether we can anticipate a new feminist politics of leadership.     

“Undocumented and unafraid”? Challenging the bureaucratic paradigm

Among immigrant rights activists, journalists, and scholars the term “undocumented” has gained support as an alternative to the criminalizing and dehumanizing “illegal.” By contrast, this essay critiques so-called DREAMers' articulation of an “undocumented” subjectivity, arguing that the term, invoking a Weberian bureaucracy, undermines activists' cooptive intent and subversive agenda. To be undocumented in what Robert Hariman calls “a polity of offices,” which privileges the written text, is to be both unintelligible and powerless. These constraints, however, may be circumvented by the use of web-text for mobilization, recruitment, and networking. Informed by Gregory Ulmer's notion of “electracy,” I posit web-text as transitional, potentially capable of contesting the authority of the bureaucracy.     

Engagement: rhetoric’s tale from the field

‘Engagement’ has since the mid-1990s led to a series of initiatives and campus centers wherein many universities attempt strategies that are primarily administrative and programmatic. By contrast, our tale from the field points to an inherent and original connection between rhetoric and engagement; we propose that the fundamental principles of rhetoric and communication equip scholars to work effectively toward the goal of engaged research and teaching. Our stories from the University of Texas Intellectual Entrepreneurship Consortium and from the University of Pittsburgh’s Honors College indicate that there is significant value and power in taking to heart the lessons of the discipline for our own actions and lives as educators. Acting on what we know directs us toward such concepts as invention, discovery, argument, deliberation, advocacy, and intervention – the rhetorical instruments needed to change the academic culture and create environments for engaged learning.     

Aspired Convergence,Cherished Diversity: Dealing with the contradictions of Bologna

This article addresses the inherent tension in the Bologna process between the aim of convergence and the will to maintain the diversity of national higher education (HE) systems, as well as the decentralised and autonomous nature of national policy formulation on Bologna reforms. Starting from an analytical discussion of the concepts of convergence versus diversity in the Bologna documents, it assesses empirically the degree of convergence achieved so far between the HE systems of Germany, the Netherlands, France, and England. The result is that convergence in several dimensions was only modest between 1998 and 2004. The article concludes by reflecting upon this finding and discusses the implications. The policy proposals put forward are (1) to acknowledge and stress the merits of the Bologna process other than convergence, (2) to engage in a second round of reforms more clearly targeted at convergence, and (3) to address mobility and recognition issues independent from convergence of degree structures.

     

Researching in school – creating a meaningful school/university alliance: a reflection

This paper reflects upon the experience of carrying out a piece of action research as a university academic, in partnership with a primary school. It considers roles and responsibilities, agendas, dynamics, ethical dilemmas and issues of voice. It contextualises the research within a field where educational research continues to be conceptualised as the ‘poor relation.’ In light of this, it explores the richness and value to be found in rejecting positivist tradition and re-imagining the research process as one of uniqueness and ‘dissensus’ whereby learning happens through collaborative shared-learning encounters. It concludes that research relationships such as these can illuminate new understandings in ways that are not only rich and enduring but often unforeseen.     

Understanding allyhood as a developmental process

Rhian Waters challenges us to move beyond the concept of allyhood as identity and applies student development theory to the development of social justice allies.