The Effects of Professional Counselor Training on Empathy: Continued Cause for Concern

The evidence reviewed, especially that from the most methodologically sound studies, indicates that professional training in counseling generally fails to increase trainees' empathy. Further, professional status may establish social distance between counselor and client, and posttraining experience in counseling cannot be counted on to have uniformly positive, empathy-enhancing effects. The review points to the needs for: (a) the incorporation into professional programs of brief, effective empathy-skills training, (b) supplementing intellectual program selection methods with more counseling-relevant measures, (c) defining and upgrading of acceptable posttraining empathy levels and retention of training effects, and (d) research into differences between professional programs that do and do not enhance empathy.     

MULTIPLE-CHOICE VERSUS FREE-RESPONSE: A SIMULATION STUDY

Responses to a 40-item test were simulated for 150 examinees under free-response and multiple-choice formats. The simulation was replicated three times for each of 30 variations reflecting format and the extent to which examinees were (a) misinformed, (b) successful in guessing free-response answers, and (c) able to recognize with assurance correct multiple-choice options that they could not produce under free-response testing. Internal consistency reliability (KR20) estimates were consistently higher for the free-response score sets, even when the free-response item difficulty indices were augmented to yield mean scores comparable to those from multiple-choice testing. In addition, all test score sets were correlated with four randomly generated sets of unit-normal measures, whose intercorrelations ranged from moderate to strong. These measures served as criteria because one of them had been used as the basic ability measure in the simulation of the test score sets. Again, the free-response score sets yielded superior results even when tests of equal difficulty were compared. The guessing and recognition factors had little or no effect on reliability estimates or correlations with the criteria. The extent of misinformation affected only multiple-choice score KR20's (more misinformation—higher KR20's). Although free-response tests were found to be generally superior, the extent of their advantage over multiple-choice was judged sufficiently small that other considerations might justifiably dictate format choice.     

SELF-REPORT PREDICTORS: A REMINDER1

How do tests and self-reports compare as predictors of academic performance? Do tests add to the predictability from self-reports? College seniors in eight sections of an evaluation course were administered the Quantitative Evaluative Device, the Cooperative English Test: Reading Comprehension, the Concept Mastery Test, and two questionnaires concerning past academic performance, student-estimated abilities, and reading habits. The criteria were composite test scores and letter grades. The best predictors were two self-reported variables, GPA and grade in an educational psychology course, and a test variable, the QED. Multiple Rs using questionnaire data for the predictors were increased slightly by adding the test scores, but on cross-validation the rs for the two predictor sets were essentially identical. The utility of the tests, then, was not supported either by zero-order correlations or by cross-validated increments. Therefore an investigator is reminded at least to include self-report measures in his set of predictors.     

The Lure of Evil: Exploring Moral Formation on the Dark Side of Literature and the Arts

The moral potential of works of art, for good or ill, has been recognised from philosophical antiquity: on the assumption that the moral effects of art are invariably negative, Plato advised the exclusion of artists from any rationally ordered state. Arguably, however, the problem of the moral status of art has become yet more acute in contexts of post-Romantic and other modern artistic exploration of moral ambiguity, and even of some apparent contemporary celebration of the immoral and amoral. Indeed, some tension between commitment to liberal-democratic openness and freedom, on the one hand, and fear about the potential literary and artistic corruption of the young, on the other, is evident in latter-day moralistic trends in children's literature. However, in the light of some basic exploration of conceptual relationships between the artistic, the aesthetic and the moral, this paper argues that such moralising trends in particular and arguments for artistic censorship in general are mostly wrongheaded and unsustainable.     

The “Community” in Community Counseling: Results of a National Survey

Results are presented of a national survey of a master's level counselor education program (n = 308, 68% return rate) regarding the emphasis that these programs currently place, and would ideally like to place, on a prevention and systematically based community orientation. Results show that this orientation is currently endorsed and seems to represent an ideal direction for counselor education programs. These results reinforce a need to modify ACES standards so they more directly support community counseling curricula.     

Media Policy Goes to Main Street: The Uprising of 2003

In this article, I chronicle the uprising of 2003, when media policy absolutely exploded into the public consciousness as millions of Americans registered their opposition to the relaxation of long-standing media ownership rules. I concentrate on the first half of 2003, when the popular movement moved from the margins to the mainstream and put media reform activism in the public eye for the first time in generations. In some ways this event also provides a textbook case of corrupt policy making as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) majority, following standard operating procedure for that less-than-august body, acted reprehensibly in view of the public feedback it received. The Republican leadership in Congress was no better. I will emphasize the activities and arguments of FCC members Michael Powell and Michael Copps because they came to lead the respective sides and became the leading public faces of the media ownership debate. Important organizing work took place in previous years—centered around groups like Consumers Union, Media Access Project, and Center for Digital Democracy—and made what happened in 2003 possible. Once the struggle reached Congress in the summer of 2003, popular opposition to the relaxation of media ownership rules was already organized, and the outcome remained undetermined even into 2004.     

THE EFFECT OF PHYSICAL CONDITIONS OF THE TEST ROOM ON STANDARDIZED ACHIEVEMENT TEST SCORES

A group of 384 ninth-grade students were given a standardized achievement test, half under relatively poor physical conditions in an auditorium and half in relatively adequate physical conditions in regular classrooms. An analysis of covariance (using I.Q. as the covariate) indicated no significant difference due to the physical conditions.     

Educating Students in Preventive Counseling

In this article, expanded clusters of skills thought to be necessary in learning and conducting preventive counseling are described. Implications for counselor education are provided.     

Lifelong learning policies and discourses: critical reflections from Aotearoa,New Zealand

This article examines New Zealand experiences and understandings of lifelong education and lifelong learning over the past 30 years or so. It investigates the place of lifelong education and lifelong learning discourses in shaping public policy in Aotearoa as well as questions about the similarities and differences between the discourse in New Zealand and in Europe and the UK. The aim of the paper is to throw light on the following questions: what effects, if any, have notions of lifelong education or lifelong learning had on public policy discourses on tertiary education and the education of adults? Is there evidence to suggest that notions of either ‘lifelong education’ or ‘lifelong learning’ have provided a vision or sense of purpose or set of guidelines in developing public policies? Have they served to justify or legitimate new initiatives or funding arrangements? And, if so, what is the nature of this influence? Finally, in the light of this discussion the article also examines the question whether notions of ‘lifelong education’ and ‘lifelong learning’ as they have featured in the academic and policy literature are predominantly located in a Euro‐centred discourse and hence how they might be reconstituted to reflect more adequately discourses of learning and education in other parts of the world.