Developing a research tradition consistent with the practices and values of counselling and psychotherapy: Why Counselling and Psychotherapy Research is necessary

Despite the general acknowledgement that it is important for counselling and psychotherapy practice to be informed by research, it is clear that in recent years a widening gap has emerged between research and practice. This paper briefly reviews some of the factors responsible for the current crisis in therapy research and offers a number of reasons why a healthy relationship between research and practice is necessary. It is suggested that, at present, there exists within psychology and social science a level of acceptance of pluralistic and innovative approaches to research, which may facilitate the emergence of a new genre of practitioner‐oriented inquiry in the field of counselling and psychotherapy. Some of the ways in which Counselling and Psychotherapy Research intends to contribute to this movement are described, for example the promotion of new forms of writing, use of information technology, and the creation of knowledge communities. Readers are invited to participate in this endeavour.     

The Theory-Practice Gap in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: Reflections and a Modest Proposal to Bridge the Gap

This paper examines the issues related to the gap between theory and practice in the area of cognitive-behavioral therapy. The article begins with a review of the evidence for such a gap, and having demonstrated that the gap exists, provides a discussion of some of the factors that are likely important in its genesis and maintenance. The article then focuses on potential strategies to reduce the theory-practice gap that go beyond the common recommendation for both efficacy and effectiveness research. In particular, we provide recommendations for protocol planning and design, training and competency maintenance, dissemination research, and implementation and policy change. We conclude with the proposition that theory and research should not only inform practice, but that practice should have a reciprocal benefit on theory and research.     

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.     

Methodological naturalism and epistemic internalism

Epistemic naturalism holds that the results or methodologies from the cognitive sciences are relevant to epistemology, and some have maintained that scientific methods are more compatible with externalist theories of justification than with internalist theories. But practically all discussions about naturalized epistemology are framed exclusively in terms of cognitive psychology, which is only one of the cognitive sciences. The question addressed in this essay is whether a commitment to naturalism really does favor externalism over internalism, and we offer reasons for thinking that naturalism in epistemology is compatible with both internalist and externalist conceptions of justification. We also argue that there are some distinctively internalist aims that are currently being studied scientifically and these notions, and others, should be studied by scientific methods. This essay is dedicated to Deborah Mayo, who has long advocated using error statistical techniques to analyze and resolve epistemological puzzles in the philosophy of science. This essay follows the same spirit by advocating that computational concepts and techniques be applied within the heart of traditional, analytic epistemology.     

Challenging epistemology: Interactive proofs and zero knowledge

This essay explores what (if anything) research on interactive zero knowledge proofs has to teach philosophers about the epistemology of mathematics and theoretical computer science. Though such proof systems initially appear ‘revolutionary’ and are a nonstandard conception of ‘proof’, I will argue that they do not have much philosophical import. Possible lessons from this work for the epistemology of mathematics—our models of mathematical proof should incorporate interaction, our theories of mathematical evidence must account for probabilistic evidence, our valuation of a mathematical proof should solely focus on its persuasive power—are either misguided or old hat. And while the differences between interactive and mathematical proofs suggest the need to develop a separate epistemology of theoretical computer science (or at least complexity theory) that differs from our theory of mathematical knowledge, a casual look at the actual practice of complexity theory indicates that such a distinct epistemology may not be necessary.     

Relating to knowledge: challenges in generating and using theory for practice in family therapy*

This paper explores knowledge and how family therapy relates to its own knowledge. It begins with the identification of particular puzzles that have emerged through the author's involvement in family therapy, and ends with a reflection on these same puzzles following the main theoretical exploration. The exploration first considers the issue of the generation of knowledge in the context of practice disciplines, and then discusses disciplinarity and the dynamics of competitiveness and oppositionality that go alongside this social structuring of knowledge. This discussion paves the way for an exploration of these dynamics in family therapy, including the competitiveness in relation to different models within family therapy, and the tendency for theory development to be represented in terms of discontinuity rather than continuity. The relationship between theory and practice is recast through this investigation, and an argument is made for using a layered epistemology to inform our relationship to knowledge.     

Why are therapists indifferent to research?

In counselling and psychotherapy there is a serious research—practice gap. Why should research on the therapeutic process have such little impact? Five related factors are considered: (i) epistemology—reliance on experiential/personal knowledge; (ii) preciousness—reliance on nonaxiomatic truths; (iii) lack of theoretical rigour—looseness with which constructs are construed; (iv) non-Popperian logic—tendency to work within a theory and defend it; and (v) personalisation of theory—evaluation seen as criticism. The result is a proliferation of therapies rather than a refinement of therapy.     

Historical Epistemology or History of Epistemology? The Case of the Relation Between Perception and Judgment Dedicated to Günther Patzig on his 85th birthday

This essay aims to sharpen debates on the pros and cons of historical epistemology, which is now understood as a novel approach to the study of knowledge, by comparing it with the history of epistemology as traditionally pursued by philosophers. The many versions of both approaches are not always easily discernable. Yet, a reasoned comparison of certain versions can and should be made. In the first section of this article, I argue that the most interesting difference involves neither the subject matter nor goal, but the methods used by the two approaches. In the second section, I ask which of the two approaches or methods is more promising given that both historical epistemologists and historians of epistemology claim to contribute to epistemology simpliciter. Using traditional problems concerning the epistemic role of perception, I argue that the historical epistemologies of Wartofsky and Daston and Galison fail to show that studying practices of perception is philosophically significant. Standard methods from the history of epistemology are more promising, as I show by means of reconstructing arguments in a debate about the relation between perception and judgment in psychological research on the famous moon illusion.     

Expertise,Argumentation, and the End of Inquiry

This paper argues that the problem of expertise calls for a rapprochement between social epistemology and argumentation theory. Social epistemology has tended to emphasise the role of expert testimony, neglecting the argumentative function of appeals to expert opinion by non-experts. The first half of the paper discusses parallels and contrasts between the two cases of direct expert testimony and appeals to expert opinion by our epistemic peers, respectively. Importantly, appeals to expert opinion need to be advertised as such, if they are to sway an epistemic peer. The second half of the paper sketches a theoretical framework for thinking about assessments of expertise in a unified way, via a ‘default and challenge’ model that emphasises the need for a version of conversational scorekeeping. It is through such scorekeeping that interlocutors can track and coordinate their differences in epistemic outlook. The paper concludes with a genealogical perspective on the function of (attributions of) expertise: acceptance of another’s appeal to expert opinion may be construed as tacit agreement that inquiry, for now, has been taken far enough.     

Dialoguing Height Psychology into a life of interconnectedness: Response to commentaries by Hwang,Bhawuk, King & Hodgetts,Kashima, and Xie,Su, & Zhong

Liu (Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 000, 000) attempts to articulate an epistemology for the aspirational practice of Height Psychology as a human science informed by Kantian epistemology in dialogue with other philosophies, especially Confucianism and Taoism. Height Psychology is a framework or metatheory for the practice of teaching, research, and service rooted in Kantian epistemology, in dialogue with other philosophies. It provides a holistic philosophy for social scientists responding to wicked problems unfolding over long periods of time. In responding to commentaries, I suggest a corollary to Shweder's (Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 3, p. 207) ‘One mind, many mentalities’: ‘Many indigenous psychologies, interconnected by one epistemology’. Height Psychology is about holding to an invisible moral centre. The practical postulates are foundational to the moral and ethical practices of human societies: they are for doing, their value is ontological. Human agency, proscribed by natural science epistemologies takes centre stage in Height Psychology by facilitating social scientists to act reflexively from multiple positions (from basic to action research) to benefit society. Height Psychology is dedicated to articulating and actioning the moral and ethical basis of a human science that can assist present and future generations of social scientists to meet the grave situational futures facing us in different parts of the world.     

Assessment of Historical Analysis and Argumentation (AHAA): A New Measure of Document-Based Historical Thinking

Abstract

A troubling gap exists between the current state of history assessment and the knowledge and skills deemed essential for students to thrive in the 21st century. We propose a new assessment of historical thinking that represents a promising alignment with extant cognitive research, as well as with the practices that undergird the discipline. In this article, we discuss the design of the Assessment of Historical Analysis and Argumentation (AHAA), as well as the accompanying scoring rubric, and report findings from our administration of multiple forms of the exam with secondary students (N?=?618). Evidence indicates that the exam captured student historical thinking about documents and that the items prompted students to construct a cognitive representation of intertextual reasoning. Given the dearth of assessments that capture student historical thinking about documents and their understanding of content, we believe the AHAA has the potential to be an important instructional resource.     

Better Preparing Sports Psychologists for the Demands of Applied Practice: The Emotional Labor Training Gap

The aim of this article was to investigate the emotional educational–training–practice gap in the professional formation of sport and exercise psychologists in the United Kingdom through the theoretical lens of emotional labor. Twenty semistructured interviews were conducted with 4 participant groups: master’s students (n?=?5), trainees (n?=?5), neophytes (n?=?5), and experienced sport and exercise psychologists (n?=?5). Adopting an interpretive epistemology, an abductive thematic analysis was conducted in relation to the participant groups recruited. Several overarching themes were identified in each participant group: (a) master’s students (emotional labor as theory, practice), (b) trainees (emotional labor to survive, a professional development tool), (c) neophytes (emotional labor as a new professional, self-care), and (d) experienced sport and exercise psychologists (emotional labor as a professional resource, lifelong learning). A synthesized list of applied recommendations to improve the professional formation of sport and exercise psychologists was developed based on the analysis. The themes extend sport and exercise psychology professional development literature, and we make recommendations for educators, professional associations, and regulatory bodies with regard to (a) bridging the emotional labor and experiential gap when transitioning between development phases via collaborative and innovative educational provision, (b) supporting the development of skills relating to the enactment of emotional labor, and (c) considering support mechanisms for student/trainee/neophyte safeguarding and welfare issues as a result of the emotion-laden transactions in professional practice. The implications for future pedagogy, andragogy, and research are discussed.

Lay Summary

Sports psychologists need to manage their emotions when working with athletes and coaches, but this is not often taught during education or training. This study aimed to understand whether sports psychologists were aware of or prepared to manage their emotions and to identify activities that could develop education and training courses.     

RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN EXPERIMENTAL AND CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY: THE CASE OF BEHAVIOR THERAPY

Behavior therapy is the outstanding example of the beneficial influence of experimental research on clinical practice. Initial applications of laboratory research to clinical disorders consisted primarily of the principles and procedures of operant and classical conditioning. The development and evaluation of the token economy and biofeedback methods are used to illustrate the contribution of operant conditioning, whereas the derivation and efficacy of exposure-based treatments for phobic and obsessive-compulsive disorders exemplify the utility of classical and avoidance conditioning concepts. As behavior therapy has matured and grown more clinically sophisticated, its theoretical and research bases have broadened to include areas such as vicarious learning and self-regulatory processes. Most recently, concepts from modern cognitive and social psychology (e.g., information processing, attribution theory) have begun to guide clinical applications. In turn, different therapeutic approaches have influenced the nature of laboratory research in some areas. Nonetheless, a gap still exists between experimental research and clinical practice. The solution to this perennial problem is not to make scientists of practitioners, but to recognize the unique contributions of basic researchers, clinical investigators, and practitioners, within a consistent framework that specifies the complex interrelationships among the different levels of analysis along the continuum of basic research to clinical practice. Such a framework is sketched-out together with some comments on the reasons for relative paucity of controlled clinical research in the U.S.A. and suggestions for bringing the influence of research findings to bear on practice.     

Toward a Hermeneutic Turn in Chinese Philosophy: Western Theory,Confucian Tradition,and C<Emphasis Type="SmallCaps">HENG</Emphasis> Chung-ying’s Onto-hermeneutics

The present essay thinks along the comparative, philosophical lines that Cheng Chung-ying’s project of “onto-hermeneutics” draws in order to shed light on the relations between ontology and epistemology in the hermeneutic act. In the process, not only will we be thinking with Cheng and some Western hermeneutic theorists, but we will also be thinking through history by examining the Confucian act of reading. To the extent that any hermeneutic exercise, in accordance with Cheng’s construal, cannot merely be a disembodied act of theoretical knowing but is also moral effort that entails personal cultivation—or, in Heidegger’s and Gadamer’s terms, Bildung—its espousal and its practice necessarily embody a larger conception of culture. In fact, precisely in terms of the intimate engagement with culture, Confucian insights, filtered through Cheng’s onto-hermeneutic lenses, may have much to offer contemporary hermeneutics.     

The epistemological status of a naturalized epistemology

Philosophically inclined psychologists and psychologically inclined philosophers often hold that the substantive discoveries of psychology can provide an empirical foundation for epistemology. In this paper it is argued that the ambition to found epistemology empirically faces certain unnoticed difficulties. Empirical theories concerned with knowledge‐gaining abilities have been historically associated with specific epistemological views such that the epistemology gives preferential support to the substantive theory, while the theory empirically supports the epistemology. Theories attribute to the subject just those epistemic abilities which associated epistemologies attribute to the scientist. The concept of epistemological significance is introduced as the significance a psychological theory can have for modifying the epistemological suppositions with which the theory was originally associated. Substantive psychological theories are strongly constrained by the epistemologies used in their development; the endorsement an epistemology receives from its associated theory should carry no weight. The alliance between psychology and epistemology is not progressive to the development of either field. Alternative sources of progress in epistemology and psychology are suggested.     

Conceiving, Experiencing, and Conceiving Experiencing: Neo-Kantianism and the History of the Concept of Experience

It is often claimed that epistemological thought divides around the issue of the place of experience in knowledge: While empiricists argue that experience is the only legitimate source of knowledge, rationalists find other such sources. The trouble with such accounts is not that they are wrong, but that they are incomplete. On occasion, epistemological differences run deeper, raising the very notion of experience as an issue for epistemology. This paper looks at two epistemological debates which concerned not simply the place of experience in knowledge but also the appropriate account of experience itself. The first episode is the rise of Marburg Neo-Kantianism in the 1870s – in particular the seminal work of Hermann Cohen in his Kants Theorie der Erfahrung (1871). Cohen's principal point was that Kant's significance as an epistemologist was in providing a new theory of experience, one that tied experience to exact science and led to a new stress on the formal conditions of exact knowledge. The second episode is Carnap's rejection of epistemology in the 1930s in favour of a program of the logic of science. My focus in each case will be the interplay between an epistemology focused on exact science as the locus of knowledge and a concomitant call for logical methods in epistemology. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Strengths-Based Practice in Child Welfare: A Systematic Literature Review

Journal of Child and Family Studies - This paper examines the academic research discourse on strengths-based practice in child welfare. A gap in the literature exists concerning systematic research...     

Linda Nicholson's The Play of Reason: From the Modern to the Postmodern

Nicholson's political philosophy is distinctively grounded in history. The Play of Reason: From the Modern to the Postmodern argues that such “grounding” phys as much of the foundational role demanded of philosophy as can coherently be played by anything—and that such a foundation is, pragmatically, enough. I focus on two moves: (1) thinking historically as a model for thinking cross‐culturally, and (2) historicizing “all the way down,” as a way of exorcising the demand for the ahistorical grounding of epistemology.