Physical Dimensions of Counseling: Perspective for the Helping Professions

Fifteen graduate students in the helping professions registered in a course that teaches helpers to use physical fitness as a counseling medium. The enrolled graduate students were matched with controls in four relevant areas, and both groups were pretested on 7 physiological and 11 psychological variables. The experimental students were given a 10-week treatment of physical fitness training, counseling in health habits, a life-style of well-being, and instruction in how to deliver these kinds of treatments to clients. For eight weeks the students used the skills in working with real clients. The experimental and control groups were posttested on the same variables; and multivariate and univariate analyses revealed significantly positive changes made by the experimental group. This article reports implications for graduate programs in the helping professions.     

Personal and Social-Contextual Factors in K–12 Academic Performance: An Integrative Perspective on Student Learning

Our extensive literature review in the fields of educational, social, and cognitive psychology has led us to identify about a dozen variables that demonstrate direct empirical links to academic achievement at the K–12 level. Those variables are grouped into four major categories: student engagement, learning strategies, school climate, and social-familial influences. We then categorize the first two variables as personal factors and the latter two as social-contextual factors. We document empirical findings that have shown particular relationships between the reviewed personal and social-contextual factors and academic achievement, mainly in the areas of reading and mathematics. Based on our conceptualization, we propose an integrated perspective that students’ personal factors in the domains of behavior, affect, attitude, and cognition as well as their social-contextual environment have to work in concert to produce optimal school performance. We conclude with a discussion on educational implications and future research to be addressed.     

Reflections on Trends in Teacher Education in Europe Using the Scenario Perspective

In the preceding papers the scenario model of ATEE-RDC19 is used as a reflecting instrument on trends and development in teacher education in different European countries. In this short contribution, a reflection on those papers is made to see whether common trends arise. In this rough picture, it is possible to see that in all analysed countries there is a tendency towards a more pragmatic and individualistic approach in society, influencing teacher education. But these two trends (toward pragmatism and towards idealism) are not in all case studies strongly connected. However, bearing in mind some critical comments on the scenario model, strong and definitive conclusions are to be avoided.     

Mirrors,Reflections and Refractions: The contribution of microteaching to reflective practice

This paper considers a range of strategies that can be used to promote reflection. We focus on microteaching as a vehicle for enabling students to become aware of their values, attitudes and assumptions about learning as these are enacted within microteaching. The subsequent feedback becomes a dialogue between student, peer, teacher fellow and tutor that provides different refractions of this practice and contributes to the development of reflection which we characterise in terms of pre-critical, internalised and hypothetical thresholds. At the pre-critical threshold a practitioner concentrates on their technical competence, using trial and error or survival strategies to manage time, resources and pupils. Practitioners apply more mentally rehearsed operations to address new situations within the internalised threshold. A practitioner operating on hypothetical issues works within the hypothetical threshold and may not have experiences of events to inform hypothetical situations, but is in a position to manage uncertainty. R´ESUMÉ Cet article prend en conside´ration une gamme de strate´gies qu'on puisse utiliser afin d'e´ncourager la re´flexion chez les e´tudiants. On fixe notre regard sur Microteaching (la pratique où un e´tudiant donne une lec¸on à une petite groupe d'e´lèves dans l'Unive´rsite´) comme moyen de leur permettre de prendre conscience de leurs valeurs, dispositions et suppositions concernant le savoir. Le feedback re´sultant devient un dialogue entre l'e´tudiant, ses semblables, professeurs et directeurs(trices) d'e´tudes qui fournisse de diffe´rentes re´fractions de cette pratique, et contribue au de´veloppement de la re´flexion. Un developpement qu'on caracte´rise en trois seuils: pre´-critique, interne et hypothe´thique. Au seuil pre-critique, le pratitien se concentre sur la compe´tence technique par tatonnements ou en utilisant des strate´gies de survie afin de se de´brouiller à propos de son temps, ses ressources et ses e´le ¤ ves. À travers le seuil interne, le pratitien mets en pratique des ope´rations plus mentalement re´pe´te´es en s'attaquant à desnouvelles situations. Le pratitien qui fonctionne à travers le seuil hypothe´tique n'aura pas ne´cessairement les expe´riences d'e´ve´nements pour informer les situations hypothe´tiques, mais il est en mesure de faire face a ¤ l'incertitude.