Individuals in marriages and long term committed relationships often turn to friends and family members for support and input about relationship problems. Given their lower use of mental health services, these confiding relationships may be particularly important to African Americans. The goal of this study was to evaluate an educational…

The complex group work environment can be overwhelming and anxiety provoking, particularly for novice group leaders. Effectively accessing and managing one's own emotions are tasks central to effective group leadership and should be primary learning objectives of group workers in training. This article provides an overview of Gross's…

Counselor education programs are obligated by accreditation standards and professional codes of ethics to identify counselors-in-training whose academic, clinical, and personal performance indicate problematic behavior that would potentially prevent them from entering the profession (McAdams, Foster, & Ward, 2007; Rust, Raskin, & Hill,…

Social work education leans toward the applied approach emphasizing the practical and experiential. At present, many schools still offer social work education in the traditional academic model emphasizing textual learning. This approach is not suitable to the knowledge, student or teacher orientation in social work, and its pedagogy. To develop…

A confluence of forces addressing counselor identity occurred with the 20/20: A Vision for the Future of Counseling initiative, the 2009 Standards of the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Education Programs (CACREP), and the quest by the American Association of State Counseling Boards to establish license portability. This…

The school counseling field has evolved over the years and increasingly clarified school counselors' job roles and activities (Burnham & Jackson, 2000; Cervoni & DeLucia-Waack, 2011; Shillingford & Lambie, 2010; Trolley, 2011); however, school counselors' job roles and activities remain inconsistently understood and practiced (Burnham…

Counselor supervision occurs during a critical stage when counselors-in-training (CITs) are actively developing their career self-concept as they adapt to professional life and responsibilities. This article provides an application of a narrative approach for supervisors helping CITs understand how their personal occupational images interplay with…

The shape of alliance in psychotherapy and supervision using growth curve modeling was examined for clinically inexperienced trainee therapists, who were engaged in long-term cognitive behavioral--or psychodynamic individual psychotherapy at a Psychology Clinic in Sweden. Trainee therapists rated their view of the alliance with their clients and…

This study used the Solomon 4-group design to examine the relationship between a mindfulness experiential small group (MESG) and mindfulness skills, empathy, counseling self-efficacy, and perceived stress for counselors in training (CITs). Understanding how the MESG affects these characteristics provides essential information to inform the…

The aims of this article are twofold: to discuss the value of practice-based research as a basis for enhancing learning and teaching in social work and, as an illustration of this, to present the findings of a preliminary qualitative research study into social work students' development of professional judgment skills. The research was conducted…

Advanced practitioner skill development has become an important focus in health service delivery as increasingly complex consumer needs, practice environments and national professional registration requirements impact on professional work practices. Increasingly, work-based or workplace learning experiences are being seen as an effective means for…

The purpose of this study was to develop a core HIV/AIDS knowledge assessment (CHAKA) for students enrolled in counseling-related degree programs. Although there are studies that examined counseling HIV/AIDS knowledge, the instruments that were used were limited in ways that may compromise the accuracy of the inferences that were made. This study…

Ambivalence is the painful experience of feeling stuck between polarized feelings about an idea, a thing, or a person. The root of resistance, client ambivalence, is the bane of beginning counselors. To enhance personalized understanding of intrapsychic and interpersonal ambivalence, master's degree students in counseling wrote poems describing…

Lemberger (2012) argues that the author (Hansen, 2012) has no basis for recommending differential weightings or priorities to humanism and science, because those ideologies are only meaningful as they are subjectively interpreted within the counseling encounter. The author responds that their positions are completely compatible, but his focus was…

The effects of a stress management course on the stress knowledge and coping techniques of 101 graduate students in counseling were examined. Participants, drawn from various racial groups, were typically female (79%) and 21 to 55 years of age. Seven of the 8 null hypotheses were rejected. There were significant differences on 6 of the 7 dependent…