Editorial

I have a dream. Today, when I ask young people what they are studying, they tell me they are studying mathematics, law, economics, music—or languages. Languages— foreign languages—are offered as one of the alternatives. My dream is that languages, as an alternative, will vanish. Students, in this dream, will be using English because they are studying law, German because they are studying engineering, Italian or French because they wish to to be doctors or architects. In this dream the use of other languages would be a means of study, and not a goal, and the use of a second and third language would be as natural as the use of books and data bases, as essential as library and computer skills.

We are a long way from this goal—but it is a goal towards which Europe's teacher educators must strive. Communication is the essence of education, and communication between Europe's language groups is essential if we are to promote the mutual learning to which the ATEE is committed. I therefore welcomed Gerard Willems's offer to guest‐edit an issue of the Journal and am delighted to introduce an issue which has more than lived up to expectations.

It is appropriate that the guest Editor of an issue devoted to the teaching of languages comes from The Netherlands. Situated at a communications crossroads, the Dutch have long realised more vividly that many other European peoples the need for skill in languages: and as one of Europe's smaller linguistic groups, they have been more prepared than larger linguistic communities to undertake the serious business of language learning. As any visitor to the country can testify, the Dutch are a model and a living reproof to any who, speaking a more widely used language, believe that the serious study of language can be left to a minority of specialists.

But Gerard Willems and his team of writers have much more to offer us than good practice. Working at the leading‐edge of their field, they have drawn on the resources of one of the ATEE's most active working groups—a working group which this year produced a book of readings, Foreign Language Learning and Teaching in Europe (edited by Gerard M. Willems & P. Riley). Here they write for a wider readership, offering us analysis, theory, help—and vision.

Mouvet's article contrasts sharply with the work of Willems and his team. Where they focus on a curriculum area, and on learning and teaching in it, she turns our attention to teacher behaviour and provides insights from the ecology of the classroom to suggest ways in which teachers’ behaviour can be modified—and the modifications maintained. She, too, stresses the professionality of the teacher and his/her autonomy in dealing constantly with the unpredictable, the spontaneous, the personal.

At the time of writing, I have just confirmed plans for a meeting of the Editorial     

Mentoring Women Doctoral Students: What Counselor Educators and Supervisors Can Do

Based on the experiences of two women completing their university doctoral programs, these case studies offer information about the components of mentoring relationships that facilitate women's performance in higher education.     

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.     

GSR Feedback as an Aid in Developing Counselor Empathy

The authors evaluated the effectiveness of Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) feedback as an aid in developing empathy in novice counselors. Counseling psychology graduate students were matched and randomly assigned to either an experimental group that received a display of client skin conductance level during counseling sessions or a control group that did not receive physiological feedback. The communicative aspect of empathy was measured by the Counselor Verbal Response Scale (CVRS), and the perceptual aspect was measured by the Affective Sensitivity Scale (ASS). An analysis of gain scores suggested that training with biofeedback is associated with more affective responding by the counselor. This procedure did not facilitate counselor communication of understanding of the clients' specific concerns, nor was a pervasive increase in perceptual sensitivity observed. Qualitative evidence gathered from a postexperimental inquiry augmented the statistical findings.     

The Effect of Touch on Perception of Counselors

The authors examine observers' perceptions of counselors using touch as part of the client-counselor interaction. Results indicate that touch conveys a sense of caring but does not encourage understanding or client self-disclosure.     

Learning from Their Mistakes: Glimpses of symbolic functioning in two-and-a-half to three-year-old children

In this cross-sectional study done in the United States, 19 female and 17 male children ( N =36) ranging in age from 30- to 36-months ( M =33 months, 8 days) were presented with two different search and retrieval type problems to solve. Examination of the data revealed clear age-related differences between children who fluidly and efficiently problem solve using symbolically mediated knowledge and those who do not. Younger children tended to rely on a trial and error, motor-based strategy for solving the problems presented, whereas older children consistently used symbolic strategies. This conclusion supports findings from other similar studies. Further analyses of the data, however, revealed an interesting phenomenon in the form of a patterned, non-random error. This error pattern, a perseverative-type error, and the other problem-solving strategies used by the two-year-olds and young threes in this study offer insight into how young children become efficient users of symbols. Facilitating the development of symbolic problem solving in young children is discussed.     

APGA Members' Ethical Discriminatory Ability

APGA members' ethical discriminatory ability was investigated to determine if it were related to certain demographic variables. A critical-incident questionnaire was sent to 1,238 APGA members, and 729 (58.9 percent) usable questionnaires were returned. Single-classification analysis of variance and Scheffé post hoc analysis were used to determine significance. Religious preferences, the amount of education, and the method of academic exposure to professional ethics were found to be related to ethical discriminatory ability.