Chapter 1-Constructing Counselor Education Flashcards
What is significant learning?
Achievement of a set of specific counseling competencies
Set of positive attitudes toward the work of helping
What Schön (1991) defines as professional work—the use of judgment and considered action in ambiguous situations.
What 2 forms of complexity might counselor education take?
(1) a way of knowing that is reflexive and includes a tolerance for ambiguity
(2) the ability to be culturally relativistic.
For tolerance for ambiguity, what must counselors embrace?
uncertainty as an expected condition of the work.
“I must catch myself trying to be too complete,” (Robert Kegan)
In order to work with all clients, counselors must be able to
de-center from their cultural assumptions.
Walt Whitman framed this challenge in Leaves of Grass:
“Re-examine all you have been told at school or church, or in any books, and dismiss whatever insults your soul.”
ask individuals to self-authorize (Kegan, 1998) their values.
What does philosopher Richard Rorty (1989) challenges individuals to be?
culturally de-centered,
might have “been initiated into the wrong tribe”
Definition of constructivism
the communal act of making something, of putting together.
What does the constructivist perspective state?
humans do not “find” or “discover” knowledge, nor do they receive it from infallible authorities. Knowledge is continually created through conversations.
Constructivism is a method. True or false?
False-it is a way of understanding human meaning-making.
What is constructivism’s central premise?
individuals actively create the world as they experience it.
What do developmental constructivists emphasize?
the pre-understandings, or cognitive capacities, that individuals bring to experience.
The social-in-the-individual
internalized conceptions of the good and the beautiful
The individual-in-the social
ongoing public conversations in media, religion, literature, and culture
What does social constructionism emphasize?
the inevitably social, or communal, context of human meaning-making. All meaning is saturated in culture, history, place, and time.
example of the social construction of meaning
words humans use to describe their experience (Sinful, gay, mannerly)
Other obvious examples of socially constructed meanings
norms that guide humans’ thinking and behaving, such as cultural rules for interpersonal relations (e.g., greetings, politeness, honesty) and gender behavior
According to Gergen, what do social constructionists propose?
There are no ideas that are outside of time and place, or chronology and geography,
Define discourse
Any particular socialized meaning system that informs a person’s constructions.
Examples of discourse
Gender discourse Religious discourse Class discourse (middle class) Ethnic discourse Scientific discourse
Define deconstruction
The act of examining the origins and implications of an idea
Three dimensions of social constructionist thinking
A rejection of absolutes
The saturation of all social discourse with power or dominance
The celebration of difference.
Social Constructionist-Rejection of Absolutes
Any declaration of objectively knowable universals results in the restriction of human possibilities.
Standpoint awareness
consistently aware of their standpoints, whether they be based in culture, situation, temperament, or other characteristics of the time, place, and person.
Social Constructionist-The saturation of all social discourse with power or dominance
Power pervades all human encounters,
veil of power to make sure that they are not perpetuating inequities.
Social Constructionist-The celebration of difference.
quality of existence is plurality.
What does the objectivist or essentialist stance proclaim?
a diversity of ideas is a temporary state on the way to perfect knowing.
What are two implications of the social constructionist impulse?
Humility and egalitarianism.
What does social constructionism ask counselor educators to embrace?
Paolo Freire’s (1994) concept of learner as teacher and teacher as learner.
Where does the origins of constructivist-developmental theory lie?
The work of Jean Piaget
Children’s minds are not empty
Kegan expanded mental capacity
Actively processing material in more and more complex ways
Define epistemology
The study of how people come to know.
Other terms for epistemology
Order of consciousness
Way of knowing
What are 2 criticisms of constructivist-developmental theory?
The theory is hierarchical (later ways of knowing are more valued) and thus elitist
The stages of knowing are not “hard,” that is, not absolute all of the time, in every situation.
Three Epistemologies of Interest for Counselor Education
Received/conventional knowing,
Self-authorized knowing, and
Dialectical knowing .
Received/Conventional Knowing (Third Order of Consciousness).
Reliant on external norms or authorities for what to think and how to behave.
Kegan culture of contradiction
self-authorization with a retreat to the conventional views of the person’s culture.
Characteristics of received/conventional students
Their culture is fixed and true
Rely on authority figures
Cannot easily step outside of their inherited systems to question rules.
subjective knowing (Belenky et al., 1986)
The individual relies on implicit subjective rationales for deciding on what is good or right, without reference to larger reasoning, scientific evidence, or other self-chosen procedures
Re: epistemologies, where do most counseling students operate from?
Received/conventional OR
Mix of Received/conventional and self-authorized knowing
Self-Authorized Knowing (Fourth Order of Consciousness).
consistently use her own judgment and self-chosen procedures as sources of decision making.
What are corresponding terms for self-authorized knowing?
procedural knowing (Belenky et al., 1986), relativism (Perry, 1998), and postconventional thinking (Kohlberg, 1981).
self-authorizing thinkers are likely to have the following characteristics:
empathy, self-reflectiveness, insight, and tolerance for ambiguity (McAuliffe & Lovell, 2006).
Dialectical Knowing (Fifth Order of Consciousness).
taking multiple perspectives and questioning assumptions.
With dialectical knowing, What do individuals seek?
contradiction, input, and dialogue.
Perry-commitments in relativism definition
tentative commitments to positions
First characteristic of constructivist knowing
recognizing that she is engaged in the construction of knowledge.
Second characteristic of constructivist knowing
accepting responsibility for continually evaluating one’s assumptions about knowledge.
Third characteristic of constructivist knowing
being intensely self-conscious, that is, aware of one’s own thoughts, judgments, moods, and desires.
Fourth characteristic of constructivist knowing
constructivist counselors can take positions outside of a particular frame of reference, whether that frame be science, logic, culture, family, religion, a political perspective,
Fifth characteristic of constructivist knowing
feel related to them in spite of what may be great differences.
sixth characteristic of constructed knowing
Real talk, not concealed strategic talk
seventh characteristic of the constructivist counselor
recognize the inevitability of conflict and learning to engage it in a useful Way
Eighth characteristic of the constructivist counselor
notice what is going on with others and care about the lives of people around them
Ninth characteristic of the constructivist counselor
want their voices and actions to make a difference in the world.
