Career/Life Planning for Displaced Homemakers

This article describes the development, content, and outcome of a highly cost-effective program designed to meet the personal and vocational needs of displaced homemakers. Future research directions are suggested.     

Faculty Perceptions of College Creativity Courses

If you were going to teach a college-level course in creativity, would you be interested in what other instructors believe about such courses? Would you like to know their views about planned outcomes, evaluation and course content? These are some of the areas addressed in this report. The study orginated discussions at the First National Conference on Creativity in American Colleges and Universities.¹ The conference was promoted by the work of McDonough and McDonough (1987),² and was held in July of 1990 at the Alden B. Dow Creativity Center of the Northwood Institute in Midland, Michigan. It was an exciting opportunity for university-level teachers of creativity to get together and talk. To facilitate discussions, most participants brought with them copies of their course syllabi. Much of the ensuing discussion centered around the purposes of creativity courses, appropriate course experiences, required products, and the evaluation of student participation and learning. While the diversity of opinion of those present soon become clear, many participants were left questioning if the opinions heard and syllabi offered at this conference were representative of what was being done nationally. The present study is born from that question.     

Inundating the School Board with Support for Counselors: An Eleventh Hour Strategy for Saving an Endangered Species

Counselors in the Santa Barbara (California) High School District recently faced the threat of abolishment of all counseling positions. This article describes how a guidance task force, consisting of counselors and teachers, sought and obtained community and professional support needed to defeat the proposed staff realignment plan.     

EFFECTS OF SELF-EFFICACY AND POST-TRAINING INTERVENTION ON THE ACQUISITION AND MAINTENANCE OF COMPLEX INTERPERSONAL SKILLS

This study examined the effects of self-efficacy and a two-stage training process on the acquisition and maintenance (i.e., retention) of complex interpersonal skills. In stage one, all participants received basic training in negotiation skills; behavioral measures of negotiation performance were taken following this training. During stage two, alternative post-training interventions (goal setting and self-management) were offered to facilitate skill maintenance. Six weeks later, behavioral measures of performance were repeated. Results indicated that pre-test self-efficacy contributed positively to both initial and delayed performance. While training condition contributed to skill maintenance, self-efficacy also interacted with post-training method to influence delayed performance. Specifically, self-management training attenuated the self-efficacy performance relationship, while goal-setting training accentuated performance differences between high and low self-efficacy trainees. Implications of these findings are discussed for researchers and practitioners concerned with interpersonal skills training.     

Diagnostic Model for Assessing the Effect of Developmental Issues on Career Action

The authors describe a Diagnostic Model for Assessing the Effect of Developmental Issues on Career Action that is designed to help career counselors diagnose problems that are interfering with clients' career development and to determine appropriate interventions.