Guidance and Counseling in the Elementary School: Its Theoretical Base

Although many proponents of elementary counseling and guidance have stressed the preventive, developmental approach, an examination of job practices shows some inconsistency between the approach as stated and its implementation. This discrepancy is traced to the failure of elementary counseling and guidance to develop a theoretical base that relates guidance and counseling processes to the process of child development in the early childhood years. This research-based article attempts to identify the problem further, to examine its origins, and to find a solution to it. The author shows how a communication-theory approach could bridge this gap and offers some suggestions for its implementation and use.     

COUNSELING IN INDUSTRY: A SELECTED REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

This paper reviews the literature on counseling in business and industry. It summarizes what is known about (a) the extent to which personal and career counseling services exist within industry and (b) the effectiveness of various counseling programs in dealing with specific employee problems or concerns. The review is divided into three major sections. The first describes various programs and research involving counseling for personal problems. This is followed by a summary of efforts by industry to provide various forms of career counseling and guidance. Finally, the last section offers several conclusions about the current state of counseling in industry and discusses some implications for future research and evaluation such as the need for more clarity in what is typically referred to as counseling, increased specification of objectives and outcome criteria, comparison of different types of counseling approaches, a broader examination of the extensiveness of counseling in industry, and a higher standard for practitioner-oriented magazines which publish articles about counseling in industry.     

Guidance of the College-Bound

This paper discusses the paradox which exists between counselor education and counselor practice as related to counseling and guidance of the college-bound. Theory and research about higher education, the school counselor mandate concept, and implications for strengthening counselor education are explored. The position is taken that the gap between counselor education and counselor practice in guidance services for the college-bound is too great but that correctives exist which must be examined and implemented.     

College Counseling: Union and Intersection

College counseling can best be understood as the intersection of a professional activity and an environment. The specialty has developed from the merging of several movements: vocational guidance, mental health, and student personnel work. These elements are reflected in the diversity of backgrounds and perspectives represented by college counselors and in differing models of counseling services. College counseling will be affected by trends including health care reform, scarcity of resources in higher education, changing student demographics, and complex societal issues.     

Problems Expressed by Career and Non-Career Help Seekers: A Comparison

Students seeking help at a university counseling center were asked to mark on a problem checklist what type of career, educational, personal, or social problems they experienced at the time. Few differences in endorsement were found between counseling center help seekers with career concerns and counseling center help seekers without career concerns, but both types of help seekers indicated concerns with study habits, emotional distress, and relationships. These issues also significantly correlated with help seekers' degree of clarity and stability of career goals. When compared with non-help-seeking students, significantly more help seekers with career concerns indicated worrying about issues concerning emotional distress, decision making, independence, and eating problems. Suggestions regarding conceptualizations of career problems as well as career guidance are offered.     

A Structural Blueprint for Group Facilitators: Three Group Modalities

This article provides a conceptual model, typology, or blueprint to unify and more clearly understand the spectrum of task-, socio-, and psycho-group processes used by guidance and counseling personnel. The authors provide a structure for group leaders to follow within their various group forms or modalities.     

Collaborative Consultation and Program Evaluation

The article describes how consultants, working with school personnel, can use an action research approach to implement a program of value‐driven needs assessment. The presentation is focused on a collaborative consultation model of program evaluation. A case example illustrates the collaborative development of instruments for assessing the effectiveness of a school guidance and counseling program.     

Paperwork,Pressure, and Discouragement: Student Attitudes Toward Guidance Services and Implications for the Profession

This article goes beyond the traditional survey of student attitudes toward the school guidance service. The student data are used as a springboard to the broader issues affecting the counseling profession. The focus is on counselor discouragement and what all concerned practitioners can do to revitalize the profession.     

Developing a Career Counseling Intervention Program for Foster Youth

Former foster youth often experience difficulty finding and maintaining employment as they emancipate from state care. Research highlights this fact by consistently reporting on the bleak employment outcomes of former foster youth; however, virtually no studies have given practical guidance to practitioners on how to develop interventions. This article addresses this gap in the literature by providing practitioners with a detailed outline of a career counseling group intervention program for foster youth. A brief review of the literature informing this intervention program is also presented.     

Guidance literature: A survey and an evaluation

Conclusions If one contends that there is a wide gap between the principles outlined in these volumes and the practice in the average school, this is certainly true. (There is a wide gap between the principles in the books on pastoral counseling and the work of the average pastor, too.) These books tell us what ought to be more than what often is; nevertheless, they give the pastor an idea of what the authorities in this field are thinking.It is unfortunate that there is so seldom a reference to the pastor or the church in these volumes. Again, we can look at the other side and say it is unfortunate there is so rarely a mention of the school and the teacher in books on pastoral psychology and religious education.A familiarity with this literature on the part of the pastor won't solve the problem, but it is the first step. The problem will be solved in actual cooperation, in working together for the good of specific young people who are the concern of both the church and the school.     

Gone but Not Forgotten: Council Leaders, 1934–1952

The authors summarize the contributions of several leaders of the American Council of Guidance and Personnel Associations, explaining that the counseling profession owes its origin to a coalition of professional organization leaders who were committed to guidance and personnel services. In explaining these leaders' contributions, the authors provide readers with an opportunity to connect a part of the American Counseling Association's past with the present.     

Who killed George Washington?

The issue of standards for professional practice ranks high among the ethical, moral, and legal concerns of guidance and counseling. We are troubled not only about what these standards shall be but also about the problem of deciding by whom and in what manner they are to be developed and enforced. This article presents one perspective on the dilemma, and suggests steps that might lead to its partial resolution.     

Guidance in 1995: the possible dream

The contemplation of utopias seems a fruitful intellectual exercise, especially in the field of counseling, which is expanding and changing so rapidly. Who should counsel? In what setting? With what kind of training? Although it is written in a light style, this article, which proposes institutionalized friendship as the all-encompassing idea in the practice of guidance, is deadly serious. The ultimate goal of most people in this country may very well be friendship with one another, and the article describes a method for achieving such a goal that could be in effect within another generation.     

The Amazing Diversity of Thought: A Qualitative Study on How Human Resource Practitioners Perceive Selection Procedures

Purpose  

In the field of personnel selection, a great deal of evidence shows a gap between what scientists think practitioners should do and which procedures practitioners actually use. To build a basis for an intensified dialog between practitioners and researchers, there is a need for better knowledge about how practitioners think about selection procedures.     

Fu tao: guidance in Taiwan seeks a value orientation

The guidance movement in Taiwan, only 20 years old, has paralleled ours in developing from vocational-educational advisement toward personal counseling. There is a basic conflict between traditional Chinese culture grounded in Confucian ideals and rules of behavior, and the highly individualized value orientation on which the counseling movement is predicated. This conflict leads Chinese guidance workers to search their tradition for a more appropriate balance between individual freedom and social responsibility. This article is a cross-cultural comparison exploring some critical implications for the value orientation of our Western democratic society and the counseling movement.     

Counseling today's veterans: a program and its implications

The need for improved counseling and guidance services has emerged as one of the most crucial aspects in the myriad of problems faced by the Vietnam war era veteran. This article focuses on the interagency overseas counseling thrust launched by the federal government in 1971 and designed to mitigate the debilitating effects of the civilian reentry crisis experienced by veterans. The overseas counseling program of the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, operating in Europe, the Far East, and Vietnam, was organized and formerly administered by the author and is highlighted here because of its implications for counseling and guidance.     

The Place of Counseling in the Preparation of Student Personnel Workers

The nature of preparation of student personnel workers is currently under discussion. Because of the variety of settings within higher education in which student personnel workers function and the specialized nature of their functions, their preparation should be different from counseling psychologists. Consideration is given to the possible conflicting nature of the student personnel worker's commitment to the institution and his commitment to individual students. The inadequacy of a philosophy of counseling based on radical individualism is discussed. An attempt is made to formulate a consistent and integrated rationale for student personnel work. The position is taken that education as a counselor, based upon an adequate philosophy of individual development within lines that will benefit the whole society, is crucial to adequate functioning as an effective student personnel worker.     

Comparative Effectiveness of Student and Professional Counselors

A sample of 160 beginning freshmen, half males and half females, received six and one-half hours of academic adjustment guidance from same-sex professional counselors. Upperclassman student counselors gave equivalent guidance to all other beginning freshmen at Southwest Texas State College. A matching sample of 80 men and 80 women was subsequently drawn from the 316 freshmen receiving student-to-student counseling. Age, sex, measured scholastic ability, measured study orientation, and high school academic achievement were employed as matching variables. The four professional and eight student counselors completed 50 clock hours of identical pre-counseling training, used identical guidance materials, and followed identical counseling activity sequences. Equivalent counseling facilities were provided for all counselors. Test, questionnaire, and scholarship data were employed to evaluate the comparative effectiveness and acceptability of counseling given the professional counseled and the student counseled groups. Student counselors were found to be as effective as professional counselors on all criteria of counseling effectiveness. Furthermore, freshmen counseled by student counselors made significantly greater use of the information received during counseling, as reflected by first-semester grades and residual study problems. It was concluded that carefully selected, trained, and supervised student counselors provide a practical and productive addition to the college's guidance program.     

Career mapping for international students: A critical-constructivist approach

Despite rapidly increasing presence of international students seeking career guidance and opportunities in the United States, existing counseling literature offers limited perspectives on how counselors can support this community using strengths-based and culturally responsive approaches. Addressing this long-standing gap, we offer this conceptual scholarship discussing career mapping as a dialogical and critical-constructivist strategy for career counselors to help international students understand their life story, strengths, and barriers in the context of career development, and plan their actions accordingly. Implications for practice are also offered.