CACREP: Precursors,Promises, and Prospects

National accreditation of counselor education has taken on new meaning. The profession has a recognized accrediting body within the community of higher education. This article recounts the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP) precursors, its founders' aspirations, and its prospects for influencing the professionalization of counseling as a discipline.     

An Empirical Exploration of the Occupational Satisfaction of Counselor Educators: The Influence of Gender,Tenure Status,and Minority Status

In higher education, occupational satisfaction is influenced by the environment as well as by the dispositional variables explored for occupational satisfaction in general. Within the context of counselor education, there are no empirical studies that explore the occupational satisfaction of counselor educators. This article provides an overview of the empirical research exploring group differences based on gender, tenure status, and minority status in occupational stress, coping strategies, and personal strain ratings for counselor educators. Implications for counselor education and future research are discussed.     

A Performance-Based Admissions Screening Program

The development of a competency-based admissions program for counselor education majors at James Madison University was begun in 1974. This program evolved as a result of dissatisfaction with traditional criteria used for selection of applicants to counselor training programs. The development progressed from a reference checklist to eventually include a career-goal essay, personality testing, and a required on-campus interview. Continued revision, including quantification of the various portions of the screening process, has led to its present state. Further refinement and change continue as additional research is completed.     

Guidance and Counseling in the Republic of Ireland

University College Dublin introduced counselor training in 1967, and guidance and counseling are now established in secondary education and the national employment and rehabilitation services.     

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.     

Medicalizing tensions in counselor education?

The aim of this paper is to summarize research into the tensions associated with medicalization in graduate counselor education in a primarily Canadian context. Counselor education, until recently, has largely embraced pluralistic traditions of practice that are potentially at odds with a medicalized approach to practice. Medicalization here refers to a diagnostic and treatment focus most commonly associated with use of DSM5 diagnostic procedures and evidence-based treatment. Tensions, in this study, refer to competing accountabilities encountered in reconciling medicalized with other approaches to practice. Following a review of relevant textbooks, graduate program websites and curricula, Master’s-level counseling students, counselor educators, and profession leaders were surveyed and/or interviewed regarding how medicalization influenced counselor education, and for how they responded to its influence. Data across all sources were analyzed using the mapping procedures of Situational Analysis, a method useful in analyzing contested phenomena and processes. We report our findings as navigable, negotiable, and dilemmatic tensions shaping the experiences of students and other stakeholders in counselor education. We recommend ways to enable students and educators to navigate and negotiate potential dilemmas associated with medicalizing influences on counselor education. We close by discussing the implications of our findings with respect to practice and training in the UK context.     

The Personal,Academic, and Career Problems of College Student Athletes: Some Possible Answers

This paper reports the development of a unique counseling program for student athletes at the University of Florida in which the athletic counselor's role has been expanded beyond traditional roles to that of identifying and assisting with the athletes' personal, vocational, and academic concerns. The authors also report on a recently developed course in counselor education targeted toward athletes and discuss a preventive approach using individual and group counseling of athletes.     

Don C. Locke: A Profile in Leadership

This interview highlights the professional influence of Don C. Locke on the field of counselor education and supervision as well as his thoughts and views on multiculturalism and leadership in the field of counselor education, scholarship, teaching, and mentoring. This interview took place 1 year after Locke left his position as a counselor educator in which he provided 30 years of service to the field of counseling, counselor education and supervision, and the multicultural movement.     

College admissions assistance by secondary school counselors

Information was collected over a three-year period dealing with college admissions assistance received by 2,500 (27 percent) of the entering freshmen at the University of Massachusetts. This information concerned the timing of various student decisions about college admission, sources of information, and reactions to the assistance provided by high school counselors. Entering freshmen perceived the counselor as being a helpful source of specific information but having little effect on their decisions to continue in higher education. The authors make interpretations related to the University, and they compare the results to Kerr's similar study in 1961.     

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.     

Oedipal Issues in Counseling Psychology

The current status of counseling psychology is analyzed from the perspective of a Freudian, drive-structure theory. It is argued that counseling psychology has committed the classical response to the Oedipal conflict in its treatment of counselor education by identifying with the aggressor (i.e., psychiatry and clinical psychology). A more unified relationship between counseling psychology and counselor education is recommended.     

The Counselor and Student Discipline: Suggested Roles

The problem of role definition for counselors relative to discipline problems has been persistent. Difficulties in defining and adopting appropriate roles in discipline have been exacerbated by conflicting expectations between and among administrators, counselors, and faculty. This article provides a short summary and analysis of the literature on the counselor's role in school discipline; possible counselor roles are grouped into six categories: mediator, ombudsman, consultant, psychological educator, special program developer, and counselor. From the variety of roles defined and discussed, counselors may find one or a combination of several roles that both satisfy the needs of their students and are appropriate to their own personalities and/or skill levels.     

Ethics Education in CACREP‐Accredited Counselor Education Programs

The authors present the results of a survey investigating ethics education practices in counselor education programs accredited by the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs and counselor educators' beliefs regarding ethics education, Survey responses describe current curricular approaches to ethics education, content, and instructional methodologies used in counselor education. The survey also ascertained information regarding counselor educators' beliefs about ethics education and their abilities to teach ethics. Implications for counselor education, professional development and suggestions for further research are discussed.     

The Impact of the Accreditation Movement on One Counselor Education Program: Idaho State University

This article covers a 30-year-long relationship between the accreditation standards and the development of the counselor education program at Idaho State University. Specifically, accreditation's impact on the faculty members as they pursued doctoral study, the years following the approval of the Association for Counselor Education and Supervision (ACES) Standards, and the current impact of the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP) accreditation on the program are addressed.     

A Survey of Consultation Training as a Part of Counselor Education Programs

A survey was devised to obtain feedback from counselor educators throughout the country regarding the teaching of consultation skills in their master's degree programs. This survey was mailed to 410 counselor education departments, with the request that the faculty member most closely associated with teaching consultation at the master's level respond. Usable survey forms were returned by 144 programs. A phone follow-up survey of selected nonrespondents substantiated the indicated findings. Reported survey results indicate the extent to which counselor education programs include training in consultation skills, the number of students involved, and the emphasis placed on various consultation skills.     

Disciplinary Counseling: A Contradiction?

Many counselors appear to be operating on false assumptions (shibboleths) regarding counseling. The removal of these shibboleths leaves one more receptive to examining the basic assumptions underlying the linkage of discipline and counseling. Discipline and counseling may be seen as similar in terms of their educational goals, and counseling is used as a tool for the disciplinary counselor to implement the attainment of these common goals. Unresolved problems remain, however. Counseling is used during only a portion of disciplinary activities; thus there seems to be a misplaced emphasis on counseling in the title of the disciplinary counselor. Such inaccuracy may have unfortunate implications. Because of the usually accepted meaning of “discipline,” the title of disciplinary counselor is confusing and possibly damaging to both the profession and the students it intends to serve.     

Using Expressive Arts in Online Education to Identify Feelings

The authors of this article present two creative teaching activities to illustrate how online counselor education can use expressive arts to promote awareness of how one feels. Included is a discussion of this awareness of feelings, the downside of expressing feelings, creative arts in counselor education, and how counselor education can promote feeling experiences. Two examples of expressive arts are offered with a brief discussion.     

College Freshmen View Counselor Help in College Selection

Little attention has been paid to the role performance of counselors in the college decision process. This study surveyed 270 college freshmen at a northeastern university in an attempt to explore the activities of their high school counselors in college admissions. The students came from 233 institutions of secondary education. Among the findings were: (1) the high school counselor has increased in importance and in potential influence in the college-choice process; (2) the helping activities of counselors were for the most part active and direct; (3) the expectations of the students for the counselor were for active involvement by the counselor; and (4) in some cases, the counselor played a restricting role in the process of college selection.     

Recommended Curricular Change and Persistence in College

Counselor judgment regarding the appropriateness of student curricular choice and the strength of counselor commitment to that judgment were related to student persistence in college. Students who failed to change curricula when the counselor felt such change was indicated remained at the University a fewer number of terms than any of the other groups studied. Sex of student and strength of counselor judgment regarding curricular choice were also significantly related to persistence, although strength of counselor judgment regarding curricula choice was best treated as moderating the relationship between student behavior in relation to counselor judgment and academic performance. Results were discussed in terms of objectives and procedures of counseling with respect to academic performance.     

On Becoming A Counselor

Counselor education theory requires a broad-spectrum model that makes room for a wide diversity of orientations. This paper presents several broad-spectrum formulations about the nature of counselor behavior. Counselor behavior is described in terms of three elements (introgression, intervention, implementation), two simultaneous levels, and the principal domain of counseling. Together, these constructs become a theoretical framework with potential for facilitating cognitive communication between counselor educator and counselor trainee. The framework presented here is admittedly in tentative form. It is presented not solely for whatever inherent merit it may have but also to suggest how counselor education theory can help to give direction and meaning to the process of becoming a counselor.