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.     

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.     

The Counselor Educator Crunch Revisited: A Status Report

This article is the 3rd in a series of investigations into the supply and demand of qualified counselor educators for the oncoming millennium.