Role conflict for school counselors: training versus job demands

Principals' expectations on six counselor role dimensions were compared with ideal counselor roles as seen by counselor educators. The relationship of principals' training and practice in counseling to appropriate counselor role perceptions was also studied. Disagreement was found between principals and counselor educators on the role of the counselor in situations involving clerical tasks, confidentiality, personal-emotional counseling, and non-related counseling functions. Principals with some counseling training or experience were more similar to counselor educators in expectations concerning discipline, confidentiality, and clerical activity than those principals without counseling training experience. Yet all principals differed markedly from the ideal role as viewed by counselor educators.     

Vocational guidance during the depression: Phrenology versus applied psychology

The paper describes the design and use of a machine, the “Psychograph,” which automatically measured the size and shape of the skull and provided evaluations of mental traits according to phrenological principles. Developed in 1930, the psychograph was billed as a diagnostic tool capable of providing suitable vocational guidance to the thousands of unemployed as a result of the Depression. Its appearance prompted a vigorous opposition from the Psychology Department at the University of Minnesota, especially in the person of Donald L. Paterson. Subsequently, the psychograph was merely exploited for its entertainment value and disappeared after the 1933 World's Fair in Chicago.     

Semantic priming effects in normal versus poor readers

The authors studied sensitivity to semantic priming, as distinct from semantic judgment, in poor readers. Association strength (high vs. low semantic association) was manipulated factorially with semantic association type (categoric vs. thematic association). Participants were 11-year-old poor readers (n = 15) who were matched with a group of chronological-age controls (n = 13), and also matched with a group of reading-age controls (n = 15). Three priming conditions were used: related, unrelated, and neutral prime. Neutral primes consisted of a row of hash marks. Related primes elicited shorter decision latencies than did unrelated primes. Neutral primes elicited the slowest responses in all groups. Poor readers showed an additional delay in the neutral prime condition. No effects of association type (categorical vs. thematic) or association strength (high vs. low) were found, nor were any relationship with reading ability found. The delayed performance of the poor readers on neutral primes is explained in terms of orthographic processing and dependency on grapheme phoneme relationships. The findings are discussed with reference to F. R. Vellutino, D. M. Scanlon, and D. Spearing's (1995) work on semantic processing and reading ability.     

Groups as gatekeepers to genomic research: conceptually confusing, morally hazardous, and practically useless

Some argue that human groups have a stake in the outcome of population-genomics research and that the decision to participate in such research should therefore be subject to group permission. It is not possible, however, to obtain prior group permission, because the actual human groups under study, human demes, are unidentifiable before research begins. Moreover, they lack moral standing. If identifiable social groups with moral standing are used as proxies for demes, group approval could be sought, but at the expense of unfairly exposing these surrogates to risks from which prior group approval is powerless to protect them. Unless population genomics can proceed without targeting socially defined groups, or can find other ways of protecting them, it may fall to individuals to protect the interests of the groups they care about, and to scientists to warn their subjects of the need to do so.     

The role of neighborhood ecological assets and activity involvement in youth developmental outcomes: Differential impacts of asset poor and asset rich neighborhoods

Developmental system theories recognize that variables from multiple levels of organization within the bioecology of human development contribute to adolescent development, including individual factors, family factors and the neighborhood which includes extracurricular activities. Extracurricular activities provide a context for youth development, and participation has been linked with positive developmental outcomes. This study uses data from a subsample of early adolescents in the 4-H Study of Positive Youth Development to determine whether neighborhood assets moderate the effect of adolescent activity involvement on positive and negative developmental outcomes. The relationship between activity involvement and neighborhood assets was different for girls as compared to boys when assessing outcomes of positive youth development, risk behavior, and depression. Consistent with a developmental systems perspective, the findings affirm the need for researchers and practitioners to consider multiple contextual influences when seeking to understand or promote, respectively, positive youth development.     

How beginning counselors learn: The interaction of personal and professional experiences in counselors with an experiential orientation

Research suggests that the way counselors work is influenced not only by training and practice but also by their personal experiences and qualities. In this study, we aimed to explore how beginning counselors with an experiential orientation integrate the experiences from different sources (e.g. training, supervision, individual therapy, practice, and their personal life) and how they utilize them in practice. Seven in-depth interviews with beginning Gestalt-oriented counselors were conducted and grounded theory method was used for analysis. The results show that personal experiences and qualities play an important role in shaping the way beginning Gestalt counselors work. We conceptualized two main components of counselors’ working style – Personal Core and Professional Extension, and 10 specific types of interaction between these components which were subsumed into two broad categories: (1) cultivation of personal qualities and (2) adoption of new competencies. These findings challenge earlier assumptions that beginning counselors simply imitate their trainers, supervisors, and senior colleagues. Implications for further research and use in practice are discussed.     

Racial differences in sexual activity among affluent adolescents: a relative status approach

ABSTRACT

The experiences of black Americans vary widely depending on socioeconomic status (SES), suggesting that a monotonic view of race is inadequate when examining race differences in adolescent risk behavior. This study considers how class and race intersect as determinants of adolescent multiple sexual partnering. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (N = 3,538), the study adjudicates among three theoretical perspectives, including a relative status hypothesis that draws on Bourdieu’s insights on distinction and Steele’s concept of “stereotype threat.” Findings support the relative status approach: affluent black adolescents have considerably lower odds of engaging in multiple partnering than comparably advantaged whites, suggesting they adjust their behavior to counter stereotypes of “promiscuous” black adolescents.     

Pupils as consumers: Perceptions of guidance and counselling in a scottish school

Pupils' perceptions' of the effectiveness of counselling services were investigated within a school with a high degree of commitment to guidance and counselling. Pupils were asked to read eight problems: four were school-based, and four were personal/familial problems. Half the sample were given a list of possible sources of assistance (including counselling staff); half were unprompted On personal and familial problems, the unprompted group were as likely to cite counsellors as being sources of assistance as were the group prompted with the names of counselling staff. This was taken as an indication that counselling staff were spontaneously seen as sources of help on these matters. In addition, respondents completed semantic-differential protocols, analyses of which indicated that counselling staff were seen in more pastoral terms than were other teaching staff. These results are discussed within a perspective that sees the school's guidance and counselling system as interacting with its general ethos.     

Children like dense neighborhoods: Orthographic neighborhood density effects in novel readers

Previous evidence with English beginning readers suggests that some orthographic effects, such as the orthographic neighborhood density effects, could be stronger for children than for adults. Particularly, children respond more accurately to words with many orthographic neighbors than to words with few neighbors. The magnitude of the effects for children is much higher than for adults, and some researchers have proposed that these effects could be progressively modulated according to reading expertise. The present paper explores in depth how children from 1st to 6th grade perform a lexical decision with words that are from dense or sparse orthographic neighborhoods, attending not only to accuracy measures, but also to response latencies, through a computer-controlled task. Our results reveal that children (like adults) show clear neighborhood density effects, and that these effects do not seem to depend on reading expertise. Contrarily to previous claims, the present work shows that orthographic neighborhood effects are not progressively modulated by reading skill. Further, these data strongly support the idea of a general language-independent preference for using the lexical route instead of grapheme-to-phoneme conversions, even in beginning readers. The implications of these results for developmental models in reading and for models in visual word recognition and orthographic encoding are discussed.     

Clients' suitability for counselling: The perception of counselors working in general practice

This study investigated the attitudes of 112 counsellors in general practice towards various factors concernig the selection of clients. Response indicate that counsellors are influenced, not only by diagnostic criteria, and other factors relating to the client, but also issues relating to the counsellor and the setting in which she or he works. The diagnostic critreria whcih seem to be considered most important are desire for change, motivation for therapty and evidence of psychopathology, althoug there is no clear consensus about the criteria overall. Importance varied according to the age and sex of the counsellor, but not by the experience, training, model of working, desire for further training, or number of sessins available.     

Technology in guidance: a conceptual overview

Guidance technology has the potential to enable counselors to reach new goals and to accomplish old goals in new ways. The appropriate guidance use of technology, however, is not just one of designing machines but rather of discovering how to use technology to realize counselors' personal and societal goals in particular settings. The future of guidance could well depend on the capacity of the counseling profession to utilize technology effectively.     

Lay counselors: Thoughts on the crossing of ecological frameworks and the use of lay counselors in the scale up of early infant mental health interventions

The recent call for the scale-up of evidence-based early childhood development interventions, in lower and middle-income countries and for minority groups in high-income countries, has seen numerous suggestions to train greater numbers of lay mental health workers to fulfill these functions. While studies have found that concepts from developed country settings, such as attachment, parental sensitivity, and containment, find purchase and relevance within developing settings, the management of contextual and cultural factors and the tensions of cultural interfacing in the rollout of these programs in developing country settings require consideration. Drawing on the experiences of two successful South African mother–infant home-visiting programs as examples, this article discusses some of the challenges in provision of attachment-based infant mental health programs and highlights the need for careful consideration of a number of factors pertaining to the recruitment, supervision, and management of lay mental health workers before large-scale rollout is conducted.     

Faces of the Future: School Counselors as Cultural Mediators

Twenty years ago, futurists examined the changing role of the school counselor and forecasted what the 21st‐century school counselor would need to know. This article forecasts the future of school counseling in the next 20 years by focusing on expected diversity of K‐12 students. Speculation on student enrollment based on projected trends and extrapolated data is used to describe the professional knowledge, awareness, and skills school counselors will need to touch the lives of the students of the future.