Anxiety and Empathy in a Counseling and Guidance Institute

This article investigates the relationship between anxiety and the development of empathy in counselor trainees during a full-year counseling and guidance institute. Anxiety was assessed three times during the program and empathy twice. It was found that anxiety decreased significantly during the course of the institute. No significant relationship was found between anxiety and empathy changes. It appears that such changes in trainees may be related to length of training. It is suggested that research concerning effects of training be longitudinal and focus on trainee change throughout the training period.     

Equality of Opportunity for Education: One‐off or Lifelong?

Adult education has long been the Cinderella of the education system. This is not helped by the fact that there is currently an impasse between employers, government and individuals over who should finance such training. So what, if anything, can philosophers do to help resolve the normative question of who ought to pay, setting aside for the moment the practical question of how this might be put into effect? An important strand of contemporary egalitarian philosophy argues that equality of opportunity for education should be implemented in such a way that children with the same level of talent and the same willingness to make an effort have the same opportunity to attain skills and qualifications such that they are each able (at the onset of adult life) to compete effectively with others for advantageous positions and rewards in society. But what about children or teenagers who drop out of education or make such little effort that they achieve wholly inadequate exam results? Should they be offered second and third chances for free education as adults funded by the state? A case is made for lifelong as opposed to one‐off equality of opportunity for education on a number of grounds, including efficiency, utility, the value of choice, the social bases of self‐respect and responsibility‐catering prioritarianism. This last view supports lifelong access to education (for reasons of priority) but with the additional (responsibility‐catering) stipulation that adults should contribute at least some of the costs themselves in so far as they are accountable for not making enough effort the first time around.     

Consultation Training in Master's Level Counselor Education Programs

The purpose of this research was to update and extend the survey of training practices conducted by Splete and Bernstein (1981). More counselor education programs are offering individual courses in consultation to their master's students, but the preferred method of delivering consultation coursework still seems to be integrating it into other courses. Little consensus was found among program administrators regarding topics covered in didactic experiences. The majority of the respondents reported offering some fieldwork in consultation, either as a requirement or as an elective.     

All-Inclusive Conceptualization as a Dimension of Trainee Empathic Responding

Investigations into the personality characteristic all-inclusive conceptualization (AIC) indicated that this variable was related to the ability to integrate facilitative interpersonal behaviors. A test of AIC was administered to 28 counseling practicum students who also submitted audiotapes of an initial, middle, and final counseling session. The sessions were rated, using a 5-point Carkhuff scale, as to the level of empathic understanding present. Significant negative correlations were found between scores on the test and rated levels of empathic understanding in each counseling session. The correlations indicated that those trainees who scored higher on the test of AIC offered their clients lower levels of empathic understanding than did their lower scoring colleagues. Implications for this finding are discussed.