Counseling Students' Level of Ego Development and Perceptions of Clients

Several current models of counseling supervision provide an outline of the developmental stages of counseling students' growth in conceptual and behavioral skills. Research based on these models, however, has grouped students by experience level rather than by developmental level. In this study the authors investigated the relationship of 63 counseling students' level of ego development and level of experience with their perceptions of clients. Analysis of structural complexity and content of students' perceptions of eight actual clients and their level of ego development revealed no significant main effects or interaction of either ego level or experience level on the structural complexity of client perceptions. Students at high ego levels described their clients more frequently in interactional terms than did those at low ego levels.     

Children's participation in school grounds developments: creating a place for education that promotes children's social inclusion

This paper advances the idea that ‘education for the social inclusion of children’ is similar but different to ‘inclusive education’ as it has come to be understood and used by some authors and UK government documents. ‘Inclusive education’ tends to carry an inward emphasis on the participation of children in the education system (with discussions on school culture, transitions, truancy, exclusion rates, underachievement, and school leaving age). In contrast, education for the promotion of children's social inclusion requires an outward emphasis on children's participation in ‘mainstream’ society while they are still children. The latter emphasis is seen to be lacking in educational policy discourse in Scotland though a recent shift in policy towards education for active citizenship is noted. Examples are provided to show how many policy statements enact a limitation on the scope for education to promote children's social inclusion by emphasizing children's deficits as social actors and focussing on the ‘condition’ of social exclusion. The paper draws on an empirical study of children's participation in changing school grounds in Scotland. The analysis shows how the enclosure of learning in books, classrooms and normative curricula was challenged. Learning from school grounds developments was constructed relationally and spatially, but the scope of what was to be learned was often delineated by adults. The paper closes with a discussion of how education that promotes the social inclusion of children will benefit from seeing both children and adults as current though partial citizens and using socio-spatial opportunities for the generation of uncertain curricula through their shared and/or differentiated participation.     

Exploring the Content and Structure of Cross-Cultural Attitudes

This article describes an instrument designed to assess the content and structure of cultural attitudes. Derived from Kelly's (1955) Role Construct Repertory Test, the technique elicits the personal meaning and organizational properties of the individual's cultural value system. Methods of administration are described and analyses are illustrated by a case example of one counseling student before and after an introductory course in cross-cultural counseling. Applications of the instrument to issues in research, counseling, and cross-cultural training are also discussed.