A Profession in Search of Professionals

By following the criteria that historically have been outlined to define a profession, counseling has now clearly reached that status.     

Early Training Facilitative Level as a Predictor of Practicum Performance

Thirty-two counseling trainees were rated on level of facilitative functioning before and after prepracticum. Evidence is presented that pretraining and early training levels of facilitative functioning are directly related to later performance in practicum.     

A Model to Systematize Competencies in Counselor Education

A domain of 2,186 competency statements was collected from a survey of counseling professionals, liteature, and counselor education programs. An examination of these statements revealed they were written at various levels of specificity and often the areas of knowledge, skills, and personal characteristics were confounded within a single statement. A concept analysis showed that competency statements have not been written for all of the duties performed by counselors. This article presents a model to rewrite existing competency statements in a standardized format; eliminating the problems of nonspecific, confounded, and missing competencies. Examples of the application of the model are given.     

Value System Similarity and the Supervisory Relationship

This study assesses the value systems held by supervisors and supervisees in the counseling practice. The relation between value system similarity and two dependent measures was examined; the level of communication within and the overall satisfaction with the relationship. Participants included 37 student supervisees and seven supervisors in a master's program. Correlation coefficients were computed to establish the relationships between the dependent measures and between value similarity measures and the dependent variables. The results did not indicate a meaningful relation between the similarity of value systems for supervisee and supervisor and either dependent measure. The results, however, did indicate a strong relationship between the supervisee's satisfaction with the supervisory relationship and the level of communication that was developed in supervision.     

Counselor Training in a School Center

This article describes the creation of a partnership between a local school district and a university counselor education department to train counselors while providing counseling services using counselor trainees. The partnership resulted in a counseling center located in the school, which serves the school and community and is staffed by the university. The concept of a training center constructed by a school district and staffed by trainees and university faculty to serve students and people in the community is unique. This article explores the rationale for the community school-based, training-service center and the steps leading to its establishment. Also discussed are the physical structure and the operation of the center and the advantages and problems.     

Big Policies/Small World: An introduction to international perspectives in education policy

In this paper the primary emphasis is upon the general and common elements in contemporary, international education policy, but nonetheless the discussion also considers the processes of translation and recontextualisation involved in the realisation or enactment of policy in specific national and local settings. A set of generic 'problems' which constitute the contemporary social, political and economic conditions for education and social policy making are adumbrated. The emergence of ideological and 'magical' solutions to these problems is identified and the means of the dissemination of these solutions are discussed. A relationship between the global market and the marketisation of education is suggested and explored.     

An Evaluation of Disposable Pens for Permanent Museum Records

Several brands of disposable black ink pens are commercially available, and some are advertised as suitable for archival purposes. The cost and convenience of using disposable pens made it worthwhile to investigate their value for permanent records. Characteristics compared included lightfastness, resistance to fluids, resistance to smearing and flaking, and utility. Results indicate certain types of disposable porous-plastic-tipped pens and roller-ball-tipped pens have qualities that fulfill some museum needs.