Ethical Complaints Made Against Credentialed Counselors: An Updated Survey of State Licensing Boards

The authors present the results of a survey of ethical complaints reported to state licensing boards, raise concerns about specific areas of ethical complaints and violations, and make suggestions regarding ameliorating problem areas.     

Deliberative Communication in Elementary Classroom Meetings: Ground Rules,Pupils’ Concerns,and Democratic Participation

Previous research has identified numerous obstacles that counteract attempts to involve pupils in democratic processes in schools. Drawing from deliberative democratic theory and sociolinguistic research on dialogic teaching we discuss an intervention grounded on the ideas of deliberative communication and decision-making in an elementary classroom in Finland. We show that deliberative communication can provide pupils with opportunities for democratic participation. This process involves altering conventional classroom interactional patterns and the power processes they uphold. The possibilities of expanding deliberative communication from isolated democratic meetings to everyday schooling are considered.     

Comprehensive reading instruction for students with intellectual disabilities: Findings from the first three years of a longitudinal study

This longitudinal experimental study investigated the reading progress of students with IQs ranging from 40 to 69 (i.e., range for students with mild or moderate mental retardation or intellectual disabilities [ID]) across at least two academic years, as well as the effectiveness of a comprehensive reading intervention for these students across the same period of time. Participants were 59 elementary students who were randomly placed into treatment and contrast groups. Students in the treatment condition received daily, comprehensive reading instruction in small groups of 1–4 students for 40–50 minutes per session across two or three academic years. Measures of phonemic awareness, phonics, word recognition, comprehension, and oral language were included. Findings indicate that students with IQs in the ID range made significant progress on multiple standardized measures of reading. Furthermore, significant differences between the treatment group and contrast group were found on several measures, including progress‐monitoring measures of phoneme segmentation, phonics, and oral reading fluency. Results demonstrate that, on average, students with ID, even those with IQs in the moderate range, learn basic reading skills given consistent, explicit, and comprehensive reading instruction across an extended period of time. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The competitive funding of university research: the case of Finnish science universities

The present European higher education policy and research policy can be characterized as emphasizing external financing of universities, competition between and within universities, and the need for a more practical and economically profitable output from research and education. A theoretical framework of analysing the impacts of this new rationale can be constructed on the following two premises. First, the funding structure of universities and university research is a main factor that influences the situations in which universities and their members make their decisions on teaching, research and administering. Second, universities consist of various groups of personnel each having and developing objectives and preferences of their own. This theoretical framework is applied to the Finnish science university system. On the basis of the analysis it can be seen that although the new policy probably has clarified the division of labour between universities, there have emerged some negative unintended consequences of the new funding structure. Indications of weakening performance in research and education can be identified in the empirical analysis.

Purposeful Tensions: Lessons Learned from Metaphors in Teacher Candidates' Digital Stories

This collective case study examines how two teacher candidates' digital story projects created in literacy methods courses made visible their negotiated and evolving visions of teaching and learning. The digital stories were created to show and describe their future literacy classrooms. Using metaphoric analysis, the researchers uncovered the implicit metaphors of teachers and students present in each of the teacher candidates' digital stories. Looking across these metaphors, tensions and alignments between how the teacher candidates envisioned the role of teacher and the role of student and how these relate to prominent models of education including Industrial and Inquiry models are apparent. Implications for practice include modifications made to literacy methods courses to support teacher candidates to begin the negotiation of their professional identities as they explore multiple experiences of teaching and learning. These modifications include: (a) prompting teacher candidates to see themselves as readers, writers, and inquirers; (b) modeling and experiencing inquiry in teacher education coursework; and (c) providing opportunities for teacher candidates to experience purposeful tensions within their teacher education classes.     

A Delphi Study and Initial Validation of Counselor Supervision Competencies

The authors addressed the lack of supervision training standards for doctoral counseling graduates by developing and validating an initial list of supervision competencies. They used content analysis, Delphi polling, and content validity methods to generate a list, vetted by 2 different panels of supervision experts, of 33 competencies grouped into 5 categories.     

Implementing Conjoint Behavioral Consultation for African American Children from a Low-SES,Urban Setting

This study investigated the effectiveness of conjoint behavioral consultation (CBC) for addressing externalizing behavior concerns in African American children at home and school in a low-socioeconomic status (SES), urban setting. A small-n, multiple-baseline design was employed across participants. Three of the six caregivers were unable to follow through with the consultation process, constituting a 50% completion rate. The three remaining caregivers implemented the empirically supported interventions with moderate integrity. Caregiver and teacher ratings showed that the procedural acceptability of CBC was high throughout the consultation process. The classroom teachers consistently found the behavioral interventions highly acceptable; however, the caregivers' perceptions of the interventions initially were less favorable and improved as the interventions progressed. Clinically significant gains were observed across settings for all children. Consultants should be prepared to modify consultation and intervention procedures to enhance social validity, integrity, and effectiveness with caregivers of low-SES.     

A confirmatory factor analysis of the hendrick‐hendrick love attitudes scale: We may not yet have an acceptable model

Loving is a fundamental aspect of being human. Freud himself argued that the inability to love leads to illness, and some empirical research appears to support his view. Yet our knowledge of the nature of love remains primitive, because until recently it was not considered scientifically respectable to investigate love phenomena. This study used confirmatory factor analytic methods to test the fit of various models to data provided by 499 subjects on the 1990 version of the Hendrick and Hendrick Love Attitudes Scale. The results suggest that counselors and researchers should not treat the love styles delineated by Lee as discrete or uncorrelated entities. The results also suggest that the traditional model regarding this measure, positing (a) six factors (b) that are uncorrelated, may not provide a very good fit to data from the Love Attitudes Scale.     

Practices Regarding Reporting of Reliability Coefficients: A Review of Three Journals

Practices regarding the reporting of reliability coefficients in 3 journals from 1990 to 1997 were examined. Given that scores, not tests, are reliable or unreliable, particular attention was paid to the provision of reliability coefficients computed for the data actually being analyzed in substantive studies. One third of the articles reviewed made no mention of reliability. Almost 36% of the articles provided reliability coefficients for the data being analyzed. Examples of good reporting practices are provided. In 2 of the 3 journals reviewed, there was little change in the frequency and style of reliability reporting in the period covered. The authors suggest a modification in editorial journal policies to bring about a change in reliability-coefficient reporting practices.