Chapter 1-Constructing Counselor Education

Question 1

What is significant learning?

Answer 1

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.

Question 2

What 2 forms of complexity might counselor education take?

Answer 2

(1) a way of knowing that is reflexive and includes a tolerance for ambiguity
(2) the ability to be culturally relativistic.

Question 3

For tolerance for ambiguity, what must counselors embrace?

Answer 3

uncertainty as an expected condition of the work.

“I must catch myself trying to be too complete,” (Robert Kegan)

Question 4

In order to work with all clients, counselors must be able to

Answer 4

de-center from their cultural assumptions.

Question 5

Walt Whitman framed this challenge in Leaves of Grass:

Answer 5

“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.

Question 6

What does philosopher Richard Rorty (1989) challenges individuals to be?

Answer 6

culturally de-centered,

might have “been initiated into the wrong tribe”

Question 7

Definition of constructivism

Answer 7

the communal act of making something, of putting together.

Question 8

What does the constructivist perspective state?

Answer 8

humans do not “find” or “discover” knowledge, nor do they receive it from infallible authorities. Knowledge is continually created through conversations.

Question 9

Constructivism is a method. True or false?

Answer 9

False-it is a way of understanding human meaning-making.

Question 10

What is constructivism’s central premise?

Answer 10

individuals actively create the world as they experience it.

Question 11

What do developmental constructivists emphasize?

Answer 11

the pre-understandings, or cognitive capacities, that individuals bring to experience.

Question 12

The social-in-the-individual

Answer 12

internalized conceptions of the good and the beautiful

Question 13

The individual-in-the social

Answer 13

ongoing public conversations in media, religion, literature, and culture

Question 14

What does social constructionism emphasize?

Answer 14

the inevitably social, or communal, context of human meaning-making. All meaning is saturated in culture, history, place, and time.

Question 15

example of the social construction of meaning

Answer 15

words humans use to describe their experience (Sinful, gay, mannerly)

Question 16

Other obvious examples of socially constructed meanings

Answer 16

norms that guide humans’ thinking and behaving, such as cultural rules for interpersonal relations (e.g., greetings, politeness, honesty) and gender behavior

Question 17

According to Gergen, what do social constructionists propose?

Answer 17

There are no ideas that are outside of time and place, or chronology and geography,

Question 18

Define discourse

Answer 18

Any particular socialized meaning system that informs a person’s constructions.

Question 19

Examples of discourse

Answer 19

Gender discourse
Religious discourse
Class discourse (middle class)
Ethnic discourse
Scientific discourse

Question 20

Define deconstruction

Answer 20

The act of examining the origins and implications of an idea

Question 21

Three dimensions of social constructionist thinking

Answer 21

A rejection of absolutes
The saturation of all social discourse with power or dominance
The celebration of difference.

Question 22

Social Constructionist-Rejection of Absolutes

Answer 22

Any declaration of objectively knowable universals results in the restriction of human possibilities.

Question 23

Standpoint awareness

Answer 23

consistently aware of their standpoints, whether they be based in culture, situation, temperament, or other characteristics of the time, place, and person.

Question 24

Social Constructionist-The saturation of all social discourse with power or dominance

Answer 24

Power pervades all human encounters,

veil of power to make sure that they are not perpetuating inequities.

Question 25

Social Constructionist-The celebration of difference.

Answer 25

quality of existence is plurality.

Question 26

What does the objectivist or essentialist stance proclaim?

Answer 26

a diversity of ideas is a temporary state on the way to perfect knowing.

Question 27

What are two implications of the social constructionist impulse?

Answer 27

Humility and egalitarianism.

Question 28

What does social constructionism ask counselor educators to embrace?

Answer 28

Paolo Freire’s (1994) concept of learner as teacher and teacher as learner.

Question 29

Where does the origins of constructivist-developmental theory lie?

Answer 29

The work of Jean Piaget

Children’s minds are not empty

Question 30

Kegan expanded mental capacity

Answer 30

Actively processing material in more and more complex ways

Question 31

Define epistemology

Answer 31

The study of how people come to know.

Question 32

Other terms for epistemology

Answer 32

Order of consciousness

Way of knowing

Question 33

What are 2 criticisms of constructivist-developmental theory?

Answer 33

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.

Question 34

Three Epistemologies of Interest for Counselor Education

Answer 34

Received/conventional knowing,
Self-authorized knowing, and
Dialectical knowing .

Question 35

Received/Conventional Knowing (Third Order of Consciousness).

Answer 35

Reliant on external norms or authorities for what to think and how to behave.

Question 36

Kegan culture of contradiction

Answer 36

self-authorization with a retreat to the conventional views of the person’s culture.

Question 37

Characteristics of received/conventional students

Answer 37

Their culture is fixed and true
Rely on authority figures
Cannot easily step outside of their inherited systems to question rules.

Question 38

subjective knowing (Belenky et al., 1986)

Answer 38

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

Question 39

Re: epistemologies, where do most counseling students operate from?

Answer 39

Received/conventional OR

Mix of Received/conventional and self-authorized knowing

Question 40

Self-Authorized Knowing (Fourth Order of Consciousness).

Answer 40

consistently use her own judgment and self-chosen procedures as sources of decision making.

Question 41

What are corresponding terms for self-authorized knowing?

Answer 41

procedural knowing (Belenky et al., 1986), relativism (Perry, 1998), and postconventional thinking (Kohlberg, 1981).

Question 42

self-authorizing thinkers are likely to have the following characteristics:

Answer 42

empathy, self-reflectiveness, insight, and tolerance for ambiguity (McAuliffe & Lovell, 2006).

Question 43

Dialectical Knowing (Fifth Order of Consciousness).

Answer 43

taking multiple perspectives and questioning assumptions.

Question 44

With dialectical knowing, What do individuals seek?

Answer 44

contradiction, input, and dialogue.

Question 45

Perry-commitments in relativism definition

Answer 45

tentative commitments to positions

Question 46

First characteristic of constructivist knowing

Answer 46

recognizing that she is engaged in the construction of knowledge.

Question 47

Second characteristic of constructivist knowing

Answer 47

accepting responsibility for continually evaluating one’s assumptions about knowledge.

Question 48

Third characteristic of constructivist knowing

Answer 48

being intensely self-conscious, that is, aware of one’s own thoughts, judgments, moods, and desires.

Question 49

Fourth characteristic of constructivist knowing

Answer 49

constructivist counselors can take positions outside of a particular frame of reference, whether that frame be science, logic, culture, family, religion, a political perspective,

Question 50

Fifth characteristic of constructivist knowing

Answer 50

feel related to them in spite of what may be great differences.

Question 51

sixth characteristic of constructed knowing

Answer 51

Real talk, not concealed strategic talk

Question 52

seventh characteristic of the constructivist counselor

Answer 52

recognize the inevitability of conflict and learning to engage it in a useful Way

Question 53

Eighth characteristic of the constructivist counselor

Answer 53

notice what is going on with others and care about the lives of people around them

Question 54

Ninth characteristic of the constructivist counselor

Answer 54

want their voices and actions to make a difference in the world.