Technological Innovation and Technical Communications: Their Place in Aerospace Engineering Curricula. A Survey of European,Japanese and US Aerospace Engineers and Scientists

Aerospace engineers and scientists from Western Europe, Japan and the USA were surveyed as part of the NASA/'DoD Aerospace Knowledge Diffusion Research Project. Questionnaires were used to solicit their opinions regarding (1) the importance of technical communications to their profession, (2) the use and production of technical communications, and (3) their views about the appropriate content of an undergraduate course in technical communications. The ability to communicate technical information effectively was very important to the aerospace engineers and scientists who participated in the study. A considerable portion of their working week is devoted to using and producing technical information. The types of technical communications used and produced varied within and among the three groups. The type of technical communications product used and produced appears to be related to respondents' professional duties. Respondents from the three groups made similar recommendations regarding the principles, mechanics, and on-the-job communications to be included in an undergraduate technical communications course for aerospace majors.     

Marriage and Family Therapy Assessment

This article reviews a number of inventories designed to measure dimensions of family systems theory and then provides a discussion of family systems assessment.     

Behavioral Goals in Systematic Counselor Education

The ultimate criterion of counselor competence is generally recognized as the ability to effect adaptive changes in the cognitive, affective, motor, and/or somatic behavior of clients. Counselor preparation programs, therefore, ought to be organized to facilitate and insure the acquisition of this capacity. Systems analysis offers a useful approach for the redirection of counselor education. The formulation of high fidelity training objectives stated in terms of what the counselor candidate will be doing as a result of instruction is an intrinsic part of the systems approach.     

A Conceptual Framework for Evaluating Supervision Effectiveness

The authors attempt to bridge the gap between the research literature on supervision and its application to evaluating individual supervisor effectiveness. A conceptual framework is presented for making decisions about evaluation. In this framework the decision maker is directed to consider three issues—the purpose of evaluation, the developmental stage of the counselor, and the focus of evaluation—in selecting measures of effectiveness. Within this context, some promising measures of supervision effectiveness are discussed, and methods for linking changes in supervisee functioning to supervisor interventions are considered.     

Concerns of Beginning Counselor Trainees

The concerns of beginning counselor trainees were factor analyzed. The analysis yielded five distinct variables about which trainees expressed concerns: whether clients liked the counselor, counselor adequacy, counselor role, counseling techniques, and client needs. The relative importance of the concern variables, the specific items that trainees rated of greatest concern, and the implications of these findings for counselor educators are presented.     

Educational Research as a Form of Democratic Rationality

Educational Research is commonly regarded as a rational pursuit aimed at the production of objective knowledge. Researchers are expected to avoid value bias by detaching themselves from the normative conceptions of education that shape practice in schools and classrooms, and by casting themselves in the role of the impartial spectator. It is assumed that, as a rational pursuit, educational research is not directly concerned with changing practice but simply with discovering facts about it.
This paper claims that it is possible to construct a view of educational research as a form of rational and disciplined inquiry that does not depend on any underpinning spectator theory of knowledge. Nor, the paper claims, does it imply any underpinning foundational principles of rational action and choice. Rather it implies a form of disciplined conversation in which reasons for action are scrutinised, critiqued and modified without resort to foundational principles of rationality. Drawing particularly on the work of John Dewey, Richard Rorty and Amartya Sen, the paper casts educational research as a practical science—a form of action research—that is underpinned by a democratic conception of rationality. In doing so, it contrasts educational research , shaped by a pragmatic theory of knowledge, with research on education that is shaped by a spectator theory.     

A Model for Adapting Counselor Training to Community Agency Needs

Projections of employment opportunities for graduates in traditional educational specialties indicate limited growth, while a demand for community counselors is expected to grow more rapidly. In order to provide training applicable for counseling students anticipating employment in a community setting, there is need for a planned, systematic approach to program development. This article proposes a three-phase model for change that considers departmental resources, student characteristics and agency needs.