Counselling training for tutors in higher education

Traditionally the relationship between tutor and student has been regarded as of great importance in higher education. With the recent growth of student services in universities, polytechnics and colleges, some tutors have felt redundant or de-skilled. This article describes a course which aimed to restore an important role to tutors by helping them to develop their skills and see their work in a wider perspective. The course was basically practical and did not aim to produce fully-trained cousellors. Rather, it explored the hazards of adolescence, practical skills in tutoring, and sources and techniques of referral.     

Counselling in higher education: the experience of lone counsellors

A qualitative study was conducted into the experience of student counsellors working as lone counsellors or as members of a small team in higher education colleges. The data, gathered through semi-structured interviews of eight participants, all of whom were responsible for the management of their counselling service, revealed the complexity of the student counsellor's role. While the one to one work with clients was seen as the primary task, the significance of the counsellor's involvement in the organisation was not to be underestimated. Issues around case load, support and relationships with colleagues, which can be problematic for counsellors working in organisations generally, were highlighted for those working as lone counsellors.     

Counselling and careers education in the united states: Some current trends

The author visited the United States in May/June 1972 with a grant from the US Department of State under their Leaders and Specialists Programme. He visited nine major cities and met nearly a hundred people in the guidance and counselling field, including some of the leading figures. This paper identifies some of the main current trends in American guidance work — notably the reevaluation of the counsellor's role and the push for “career education” — and examines their implications for guidance work in Britain.     

A program for psychological education: Some preliminary issues

The recent interest in personal and/or psychological education as an objective for school programs has created the necessity for the development of a careful theoretical framework. This paper examines the current status of theory vis à vis personal education and suggests a number of major issues for consideration. A toxonomy for personal education has yet to be developed. Concepts of emotions as “bad”, pathological, and private need revision. Also, it is suggested that adolescence as a stage of development comprehends a special set of theoretical questions which cannot be begged. Particular attention is directed at implications derived from a developmental framework suggested by Piaget in cognitive areas and by Kohlberg in moral growth. Such a framework connotes educational goals as objectives which avoid the problems inherent in other current theoretical frameworks.     

Counselling in colleges of education

Information on the form and functioning of student welfare services in colleges of education is reported from evidence supplied by college principals, by counsellors, and by student bodies reporting through their union presidents. The personal tutor system is ubiquitous, but is supplemented in two-fifths of the colleges by full-time and/or part-time 'trained' counsellors.¹ Where the personal tutor system operates alone, a modest degree of effectiveness can be claimed in dealing with academic and vocational problems, but little success in identifying and resolving the more personal problems of students. Various inferences are drawn for the further development of counselling services in colleges of education.     

Aggregation and beyond: Some basic issues on the prediction of behavior

Failure to appreciate the role that aggregation plays in increasing reliability and validity and in establishing the range of generalization of findings has resulted in misunderstandings about the stability of behavior across time and situations, and in the conduct of experiments that produce results that tend to be neither generalizable nor replicable. Appropriate aggregation can reduce error variance associated with the unrepresentativeness of individual stimuli, situations, occasions, judges, items of behavior, and subjects. Inappropriate aggregation can result not only in a loss of information but also in a reduction in reliability as well as validity. Different approaches to prediction with single items of behavior are discussed, and it is concluded that single items tend to be too unreliable and too narrow in scope to measure broad dispositions such as traits. A major emphasis is that behavior is often so highly situationally specific that unless this is taken into account by procedures such as aggregation over situations and/or occasions, or by the investigation of events that are so highly ego-involving that experimental effects dominate situation-ally unique effects, results will tend to be unreplicable or ungeneralizable, no matter what their level of statistical significance.     

Mental health and education: Counselling as prophylaxis

Though school counselling is concerned primarily with prevention rather than cure, in practice the urgent needs of the wayward and the sick leave little time for genuinely preventive work. Furthermore, effective prophylaxis in the strong sense of laying foundations of robust mental health, competence and well-being in all children must involve the whole school to some degree, and particularly a team of willing and able teachers working along with the school counsellor on curriculum development in personal and social education. Though the needs of the few can be met by one-to-one counselling, the needs of the many will be answered only through group work. Trained counsellors must take the initiative in such work. They will retard the mental health movement if they permit their colleagues to feel complacently that the appointment of a school counsellor is an ample school contribution to the objectives of preventive psychiatry. Mental health is every teacher's business.     

The Lewis Counselling Inventory: Some Validity Data

The Lewis Counselling Inventory and the Junior Eysenck Personality Inventory were simultaneously administered to 606 fourth-form pupils in six secondary schools in the north-west of England. Correlations of.4 were obtained on the scores of similar scales on the t wo inventories, thus providing evidence of validity for the Lewis Counselling Inventory.     

The introductory class in higher education: Some old problems and new considerations

The traditional text and lecture format has remained the norm in introductory college courses despite evidence, such as the personalized system of instruction, that other practices could improve what is learned and retained. The growth of distance learning provides new opportunities to implement effective teaching practices. Unfortunately, an adequate comparison of various teaching practices is not possible (even with regard to the teaching of behavior analysis). Few practices have been assessed with respect to course-end effects (final exam performance), and longer term effects remain almost wholly unexplored. Studies of the retention of academic materials, the practice required for mastery or fluency, and the relation between verbal repertoires and correspondent everyday behaviors suggest course outcomes more modest than those hoped for earlier. Suggestions for changing current practices have little credibility until the size of the gap between present and possible learning outcomes is much better known, and the personal, social, and economic consequences of bridging that gap (or not) are assessed.     

Some Legal Issues in Counselling and Psychotherapy

Although substantial legal difficulties can face anyone trying to recover compensation from counsellors for breach of their legal duties, such claims can in principle succeed. Counsellors ought to take particular care to provide a physically safe setting for the counselling session. Advice given to the client can lead to liability both to the client and to third parties who may be affected. The impact of the client's actions on third parties can justify, and less often compel, departures from confidentiality. The importance of keeping client records has to be balanced against legal obligations imposed on counsellors in various situations to make such records available for inspection by the client or third parties.     

Careers education in higher education: Principles and practice

It is argued that careers education represents a distinctive new approach in careers guidance within higher education. A detailed analysis is presented of American and British experiments to date, dividing them into three groups: unit courses leading to credit, courses not leading to credit, and intensive experiences. Attention is also paid to the need to integrate formal group work of these kinds with other formal and informal learning experiences. Finally, an attempt is made to identify some crucial dilemmas and issues which need to be addressed if careers education is to be structured into the British higher education system.     

The meaning of bad news in HIV disease: Counselling about dreaded issues revisited

HIV disease is a slow, progressive immunological disorder. As there is neither a cure nor a vaccine, morbidity and mortality arising from HIV infection will continue to challenge health care providers, including those who counsel these patients. Psychological preparation for ‘bad news’ and support for those whose health is deteriorating is an important task in HIV counselling. This paper describes what may be considered bad news for people living with HIV, how to prepare them for unwelcome changes in their medical condition and how to give bad news, should the need arise.     

Competition: Some behavioral issues

Conclusions drawn from research in the social sciences comparing the quality or quantity of performance under cooperation and competiton stress the advantages of cooperation. This generalization may be premature, however, because of the paucity of experimental analyses investigating variations in competitive conditions. Neglected in particular have been variables that affect reinforcement conditions among competitors. These include performance differences, the basis of reinforcement, reinforcer distribution, and stimuli that indicate the performances of other competitors. These variables provide the basis for a behavioral interpretation of performance under competition. The result is a clearer understanding of the options that are available in instituting competitive contingencies and the areas in which experimental analyses are needed.     

Community Psychology in higher education in Europe: Results of a survey and discussion of the basic competency approach

This report from the Standing Committee on Community Psychology of the European Federation of Psychological Association provides an overview of higher education in Community Psychology (CP) in 14 European countries. Our findings show that 10 countries have some kind of CP teaching in their educational system. Twenty European universities offer a CP‐oriented Master degree, two universities at the Bachelor level and 16 universities also have CP‐oriented Ph.D. programmes. The profiles of the universities focus on two areas: Community psychology in a pure form and a combination of social psychology and community psychology. The other universities vary between clinical, organisational psychology, and a pedagogical focus. Within a certain European emphasis, these universities are analysing and changing the social conditions of community life and mental health. The responding universities failed to report adequately on comprehensive core competences and key elements in CP. To compensate for this deficit, the Standing Committee on Community Psychology proposes to develop a primer of basic CP competences for inclusion in programmes like EuroPsy.     

Counselling, careers education and pastoral care: Beyond the National Curriculum

The National Curriculum and other recent educational reforms in the UK have had the effect of compartmentalising children's education into the measurable—usually the academic—and of undervaluing its socio-emotional aspects. A symposium presenting different views of the implications of these reforms is introduced. A plea is made for all professionals involved in education to move from a reductionist view to one which truly enhances the whole child.     

Information processing in bilinguals: Some selected issues

Summary Issues concerning some perceptual, attentional, and memory processes in bilinguals are reviewed and discussed with regard to language dominance and the interaction between the bilingual's language systems. The first part of the paper focuses on the speed of basic decoding and encoding operations: speed (automaticity) of processing is considered to be a major factor in language dominance. Speed of perception and rehearsal is shown to be affected by covert pronounceability of words which is typically poorer for the bilingual's weaker language. Factors causing short-time changes in the relationship between the non-balanced bilingual's languages are then considered: high information load, noise, rapid switching, and language set. Noise is thought of as enhancing language dominance by two mechanisms: the masking of inner speech, and increased arousal. The second part of the paper focuses mainly on the interaction between the bilingual's language systems. The issue of language independence/interdependence is illustrated by a task involving parallel encoding and decoding; it is shown that the input switch which is considered to be automatic can select information by language. Experiments on memory are commented on with reference to the two major models of bilingual-storage systems: the common-store hypothesis, and the separate-stores hypothesis. While most experimental data are clearly supportive of the former, it is argued that both language-specific and language-free storage takes place, depending on task demands. The problem of the retention of language-information along with item-information in verbal learning tasks is then discussed: in addition to the specific task demands (e.g., meaningfulness), retention time appears to be a decisive factor here. A model of bilingual memory storage is suggested which combines the two extreme models (i.e., the shared and the separate ones). The model assumes that working memory plays a different role with regard to the language-free and the language-specific stores respectively. Finally, some problems in the use of more than one language in the process of verbal learning are pointed out.Most of the research work reported in this paper was supported by grants from the Swedish Council for Social Science Research (now the Swedish Council for Research in Humanities and Social Sciences).