A Meta-Model for Evaluating Counseling Programs

One of the problems associated with program evaluation is the selection of appropriate evaluation procedures. Given the existence of multiple evaluation models, counselors would benefit by having a systematic means for identifying the evaluation model best suited for the task at hand. This article responds to that need by presenting a conceptual framework or meta-model for appraising the utility of existing evaluation models and for identifying the evaluation procedure best suited to any particular situation.     

The Opportunity Structure: Implications for Career Counseling

Traditional career counseling methods are based on the assumption that matching clients' interests, values, abilities, and aptitudes to a suitable occupation will result in opportunities for self-actualization and personal expression. However, vocational psychology tends to neglect a critical extra-individual factor: the nature of the opportunity structure. True career choice may be the experience of only a small proportion of clients. Vocational psychology has focused almost exclusively on individuals to the neglect of social, economic, and political realities.     

A Multicultural Competency Checklist for Counseling Training Programs

This brief report presents a Multicultural Competency Checklist that can be used by counseling training programs as a pragmatic guide in multicultural program development. The Checklist includes 22 items organized along six major themes: minority representation, curriculum issues, counseling practice and supervision, research considerations, student and faculty competency evaluation, and physical environment. Guidelines for using the Checklist are provided.     

Comprehensive School Counseling Programs: A Review for Policymakers and Practitioners

This article describes components of effective school counseling programs that have emerged from 30 years of empirical research and professional standards. Results are summarized in seven sections: core principles of school counseling programs, program resources, program interventions, program evaluation, program renewal, written policies, and program climate.     

Capability as Opportunity: How Amartya Sen Revises Equal Opportunity

Although the concept of equal opportunity has received scant attention from theological ethics, it attracts widespread approval in the U.S. popular culture and has been examined extensively by contemporary moral philosophy. Amartya Sen's conception of capabilities as "freedom" or "real opportunity" corrects deficiencies in both popular and philosophical conceptions of equal opportunity that ignore interpersonal variations in mental, physical, and psychological abilities beyond agents' control. Recent theologically informed conceptions of love and common grace affirm and revise Sen's conception of equal capability as equal opportunity. The resulting understanding of equal opportunity is quite different from some uses of this concept and could be an important criterion for a just society.     

International Counseling: An Opportunity for Culture-Specific Counseling With the New Zealand Maori

Evidence of multiculturalism in New Zealand has become common throughout the educational system in the last two decades. In spite of these efforts, Maori leaders contend that the schools have failed to meet the needs of Maori students, citing continuing high dropout rates and low academic achievement of Maori youth to support their claims. Many Maoris are demanding a separate educational system for their youth. An embedded component of any improved education delivery system for the Maori involves the development of adequate and appropriate guidance and counseling services for Maori youth. A culture-specific model seems to be a most appropriate one.     

The Systems Approach: A Technique for Establishing Counseling and Guidance Programs

Schools and agencies are under increasing pressure to demonstrate program effectiveness and be accountable in terms of cost to the consumer. Systems methodology, developed for use in other fields, may have the potential for program development in counseling. This article discusses some of the ways in which systems technology may be directly employed in a counseling setting.     

A Case for Uncertainty in Career Counseling

This article suggests that an important aspect of the career decision-making process is the awareness that uncertainty (i.e., “1 don't know”) is normal, natural, and most likely unavoidable. The essential message of this article is that it is as useful, and even vocationally mature, to be both certain and uncertain about making a career decision.     

A Case for Standards of Counseling Practice

A mature counseling profession has entered the decade of the 1990s. Several factors including professionalism, accountability, health care consumerism, credentialism, and public demands for quality mental health care indicate a need for more definitive statements on standards of practice in counseling. In response to this need, an 8-point proposal for standards of practice in mental health counseling is offered.     

Genetic Counseling for Confined Placental Mosaicism: A Case Report

New technologies can lead to unforeseen discoveries which in turn can lead to diagnostic and counseling dilemmas. A case which involved confined placental mosaicism for trisomy 16 is presented to illustrate such a situation. While interpreting data and explaining a newly described phenomenon created uncertainties for the genetic counseling team, the patient and her husband were primarily dealing with grief surrounding the loss of a wanted pregnancy. It is important to recognize that the counseling issues may be different for the professionals and the families. Genetic counselors must be cognizant of their own reactions and those of their clients and be prepared to use all of their counseling skills to address these varying needs.     

Managed Care and Pastoral Counseling: An Opportunity for Spiritual Growth

Managed care has forced changes on pastoral care. Among these changes are increased demand for and volume of clients. An appropriate response to this demand is for pastoral counselors to adopt a more short-term oriented treatment approach. While this approach has historically been at odds with the pastoral counseling movement, the authors argue that a combination of the therapies of Albert Adler and Albert Ellis provides a framework for addressing the needs of clients. Social Work at the     

The Value in Equal Opportunity: Reply to Kershnar

abstract Stephen Kershnar (2004) recently argues that under its most plausible interpretation, equality of opportunity is simply not something worth pursuing; at least, not for itself. In this paper I try to show that even if we accept Kershnar's characterisation of equality of opportunity in terms of weighted aggregate chances, none of his objections succeed. Opportunities, not outcomes, are the appropriate focus of EO advocates; hedonic treadmills are irrelevant to the issue; we do not need to assume general equality in some attribute to ground equality of opportunity; finally, it is possible to show that it is permissible to promote EO at some cost to other independent values.     

Case Report: A Systems Approach to Genetic Counseling for Albinism

A systems approach to family therapy assumes that a person and his/her problems do not operate in a social vacuum but instead are imbedded in a social context. This context includes fairly small social systems such as a nuclear family and larger social systems such as school systems and cultural beliefs. A case of a girl with albinism born to a couple from India will be used to discuss how a systems approach might be useful in a genetic counseling setting.