No abstract

This study is concerned with the development of an instrument measuring decision‐making ability (DMI) and the relationship of scores on this instrument to intelligence, achievement, and participation in extracurricular activities, three variables known to be related to vocational maturity. The DMI was administered to 174 high school seniors, randomly selected from four metropolitan high schools in the Midwest. Chi‐square and analysis of variance were used to test the relationship of levels of DMI scores to each of the other variables. It was found that high DMI scores were associated with: (a) high intelligence, (b) high achievement, (c) high frequency of participation in extracurricular activities. It is concluded that decision‐making ability is related to vocational maturity.

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Evaluation of counselor trainees is a necessary step in the preparation of school counselors. One approach to such evaluation is by means of ratings by people who have had ample opportunity to observe. Instructor and peer ratings fall into this category and have been used (1,2,5,6,7).As Stemre, King, and Leafgren (7) have pointed out, ratings by these groups may be affected by knowledge of the trainee's academic performance and by knowledge of the instructor's perception and evaluation of the trainees. If ratings could be obtained in a non-academic, simulated work setting by persons independent of the academic influence, such ratings might be better indicators of the counselor's counseling activities than ratings affected by knowledge of the counselor's academic activities. Can such ratings be obtained? If so, how well would they agree with ratings made by instructors and peers?A recent study at the University of Minnesota illustrates one approach to this problem. In the counselor training program at that institution (a), each trainee spends one day a week for about twenty weeks in an off-campus junior or senior high school. In this simulated work setting, the trainees work with the full range of guidance and counseling activities under the direct supervision of the school counselor. The number of trainees assigned to each school varies, depending on the number of school counselors qualified to supervise. These supervisors have the opportunity to observe as the trainees perform assigned counseling and guidance tasks.This article presents the results of a study comparing the ratings of the off -campus, work oriented supervisors to the ratings of on-campus peers and instructors at the University of Minnesota. For the purposes of this study, the counselor was considered to be a generalist (4,9), and ratings were made in terms of general effectiveness taking into account Josiah S. Dilley is currently on the counselor education staff in the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin. 70

Our key counseling words are ambiguous and misleading. There are a number of possible meanings that could be supplied for each. The words do not have identifiable agreed-upon relationships t o significant events in real life. The result is miscommunication and misunderstanding. The negative effects on counseling research and training are discussed. The points are illustrated by reference to "counseIing." Words should clearly symbolize or describe identifiable events in real life. Writers should try to use words the reality of which can be verified. Readers need to stay reality-oriented instead of word-oriented, especially when the relationship between words and reality is unclear. ORENSON (1965) writes that counselorsS are like pterodactyls ,in that both are out of tune with the times, but that counselors (unlike pterodactyls) can get back in tune by reexamining their purposes, methods, roles, and training programs. To this list he might add not-words, for if this reexamination is really to accomplish anything, it must include liberal amounts of out-thinking about not-words. Out-thinking emphasizes that thinking must be directed outward to events in real life because words can be misleading. Notwords is Wendell Johnson's (1946) term for real life. Johnson's position is that words must reflect reality and that our knowledge is increased when people pause to examine not-words, words, and the relationship between the two. (Also see Young, 1960.)Readers who wonder why all of this is important should remember that:(1) counseling research results generally have been negative or conflicting. This may be JOSIAH S. DILLEY is Lecturer, Department of Counseling and Behavioral Studies, School of Education, University of W i s c o n s i n .due to our inability to specify clearly, both in real life and in writing, what we mean by counseling or to clearly diffarentiate counseling from not-counseling.(2) Counselors are trained by means of words, but counseling is real life. Unless there is correspondence between the two, the training may be inefficient, irrelevant, or misleading.Counselors not only may be out of tune with the times, but also out of touch with reality. Specifically: (1) Do the key words that we use (and feel we understand) actually symbolize clear, identifiable, significant events in real life? (2) Are the meanings that readers supply to key words the same meanings that the authors intend that they supply? These questions can best be understood by means of an example, in this case, counseling. COUNSELING (WORDS)