Child Development and Counseling

Elkind outlines three constructs, the assumptive reality of childhood and the imaginary audience and personal fable of adolescence, which help explain normal as well as problem behavior. In dealing with individuals operating under the premises of these constructs, counselors are asked to accept the young person's view of reality as valid for him or her, but not necessarily for the counselor or others. To structure a new reality, they should not be shown they are wrong, but helped to distinguish between personal and social reality.     

The center/satellite model: grand strategy for change

Whatever happened to the federal monies that used to support NDEA and EPDA counseling and guidance institute programs? Starting in 1971, an abrupt change in USOE policy led to the development of a new program, one that was no longer as much of a counseling and guidance program as it was a national and regional grand strategy for institutional and organizational change. In this article the author traces the new program from its origins during the days of the NDEA Institutes, and he also describes its potential as an instrument for change.     

Needed: professional ethics for working with groups

The present apga Ethical Standards statement is deficient in several respects regarding group work. It leaves judgment and responsibility entirely in the practitioner's hands. This article discusses the issues that arise from the properties and dynamics of groups themselves and ethical concerns that occur in the formation of groups in personnel and guidance work. It also offers suggestions for interpreting and extending the Ethical Standards in working with groups and examines the need for apga to seize leadership in developing appropriate new standards.     

Stability/Instability in the Alcoholic Marriage: The Interrelationships Between Course of Alcoholism,Family Process,and Marital Outcome

Thirty-one alcoholic families who were originally studied in home, multiple-family group, and laboratory settings were reassessed two years later to determine course of alcoholism and degree of marital stability. This paper presents data comparing baseline alcohol consumption and family interactional behavior at home with subsequent alcoholism and marital stability outcomes. Findings suggest that the relative degree of stability/instability in these marriages is best understood as a function of the “goodness-of-fit” between the relative predictability of drinking on the part of the identified alcoholic and the family's characteristic pattern of interactional behavior at home.     

Theoretical Frameworks for the Study of Structuring Processes in Group Decision Support Systems

Most theoretical perspectives used to explain the use and effects of communication and decision support technologies assume some form of technological determinism. Inconsistencies in the research findings have prompted theorists to reject the assumptions of technological determinism in favor of an emergent perspective. To date, only adaptive Structuration theory (AST) offers the promise of satisfying two requirements for explanation based on an emergent perspective: recursivity and unique effects. The current article reviews the application of AST to the study of a relatively recent technology in the work place—group decision support systems (GDSS). Next it discusses AST's challenge to capture, dynamically and precisely, GDSS processes and outcomes. In response to these concerns, self-organizing systems theory (SOST) is reviewed and applied to problematic areas in GDSS research with the aim of advancing AST.