The Effects of Leaderless Encounter Group Experiences on Helping Skills Training

The effects of an audiotaped leaderless encounter group on training in basic helping skills were examined. Trainees undergoing the Danish and Hauer (1973) training program were assigned to a weekly encounter group or to a didactic lecture-discussion group. No changes in trainees' self-actualization, trait or state anxiety, or rated verbal helping behavior were found due to participation in the encounter group. Significant positive changes in verbal helping behavior were found for all trainees. The importance of evaluating training experiences for helpers-in-training is noted.     

Family Background,Individual and Environmental Influences,Aspirations and Young Adults' Educational Attainment: A follow-up study

In this follow-up study of an earlier investigation (Marjoribanks, 2002a), relationships were examined between adolescents' educational aspirations and young adults' educational attainment, after taking into account measures of family background, individual characteristics and proximal learning settings. Data were collected as part of a longitudinal survey of Australian youth (3772 females and 3476 males). The findings from the two analyses suggest that: (a) family background, individual characteristics and proximal learning settings combine to have large associations with adolescents' aspirations, and these aspirations have the largest relationship with young adults' eventual educational attainment; and (b) there are ethnic group differences in the linear and curvilinear nature of relationships involving measures of individual characteristics, adolescents' educational aspirations and young adults' educational attainment. An 'aspiration 2 attainment 2 background' model is proposed to examine the ongoing and different interactions between aspirations and academic outcomes for students from various family backgrounds.     

Pragmatic Standards versus Saturated Phenomenon: Cultivating a Love of Learning

Phenomenologist Jean‐Luc Marion describes our capacity for awe as an ability to recognise that certain phenomena are saturated. More than we constitute them with our categorical frames or organising objectives, the phenomena constitute us; their excess and givenness overwhelms our ability to fully grasp them. It is through this experience of awe and wonder, Marion suggests, that we are drawn into loving something or someone. In tension with this experience is the attempt (omnipresent in educational contexts) to organise and demarcate phenomenon (or fields of study) into a tidy list of coherent standards. This reductive move, while pedagogically pragmatic, risks masking the ‘exuberant splendor’ of saturated phenomenon, obscuring what initially drew teachers into their respective disciplines. What moves teachers (and students) to love a discipline, Marion suggests, is not standards, which are often instrumentally selected, but an experience of saturated phenomenon. More than standards, a teacher's deep and often secret hope is that her students love or at least appreciate her love for her subject. A teacher's love for her discipline, and her hope to impart it to her students, should stand in tension with the standards movement.     

ITEM ANALYSIS FOR TEACHER-MADE MASTERY TESTS1

Various item selection techniques are compared on resultant criterionreferenced reliability and validity. Techniques compared include three nominal criterion-referenced methods, a traditional point biserial selection, teacher selection, and random selection. Eighteen volunteer junior and senior high school teachers supplied behavioral objectives and item pools ranging from 26 to 40 items. Each teacher obtained reponses from four classes. Pairs of tests of various length were developed by each item selection method. Estimates of test reliability and validity were obtained using responses independent of the test construction sample. Resultant reliability and validity estimates were compared across item selection techniques. Two of the criterion-referenced item selection methods resulted in consistently higher observed validity. However, the small magnitude of improvement over teacher or random selection raises a question as to whether the benefit warrants the necessary extra effort on the part of the classroom teacher.     

Using a Popular Film in Counselor Education: Good Will Hunting as a Teaching Tool

The popular film Good Will Hunting, which portrays a counseling relationship, is discussed as an effective tool for facilitating the teaching of counseling theories. This article describes the authors' experience using this movie as a teaching tool, documenting the students' improved comprehension and application of course concepts and the instructor's improved rapport with the class.     

THE USE OF SEPARATE ANSWER SHEETS BY PRIMARY AGE CHILDREN1

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects on test scores of employing a separate answer sheet using the California Test of Mental Maturity with 117 pupils in the primary grades of one through three. The CTMM was administered twice to all students; once employing the usual answer marking format contained in the test booklet and once employing a separate answer sheet. A counterbalanced design was used to control for order effects. The mean raw differences between marking format conditions decreased from 23.67 to 10.79 to 3.32 for students in grades one through three respectively, indicating that the need for the test booklet marking format decreases sharply as the grade level of the Ss increases.     

The Role of Abductive Logic in Understanding and Using Advanced Empathy

Abductive reasoning, which is the basis of hypothesis formation, holds promise for facilitating the development of advanced empathy in counselor trainees.     

Mill, the State, and Local Management of Schooling

Contemporary educational policy is centrally concerned with local management of schooling; a practice apparently supported by and following easily from John Stuart Mill's views on liberty and representative government. This paper argues that contemporary practices of local management of schooling are conservative rather than empowering, and that Mill's actual proposals result in an unresolvable paradox in this area. It is then argued that if the State is conceptualised as a relatively autonomous body seeking to secure conditions conducive to accumulation of capital, and if ‘promoting the general welfare’ is formulated in a manner which would not lead inexorably to a free-market capitalist State, then Mill's ideas can provide guidelines for a radical form of democratisation and devolution of power in relation to local management of schooling.