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Any framework used to conceptualize the career development of women and of racial and ethnic minorities must accommodate multiple influences shaping their experiences concurrently and over time. An ecological model of counseling is proposed to expand conceptualizations and interventions of counseling practice with diverse groups of individuals. Cualquier armazon utilizado para conceptualizar el desarrollo de la carrera de mujeres y de minorias raciales y etnicas debe acomodar multiples influencias que forman sus experiencias concurrentemente y con el tiempo. Un modelo ecologico de aconsejar se propone ensanchar las conceptualizaciones y las intervenciones de aconsejar la practica con grupos diversos de individuos.

Twelve experienced therapists were interviewed about their perceptions of why they used silence in therapy. Qualitative analyses revealed that these therapists typically perceived themselves as using silence to convey empathy, facilitate reflection, challenge the client to take responsibility, facilitate expression of feelings, or take time for themselves to think of what to say. Therapists generally indicated that a sound therapeutic alliance was a prerequisite for using silence, and they typically educated their clients about how they used silence in therapy. Therapists typically believed they did not use silence with clients who were psychotic, highly anxious, or angry. They typically thought they now used silence more flexibly, comfortably, and confidently than when they began doing therapy. Therapists typically believed they learned how to use silence from their own experience as a client and from supervision.

A study of 354 nontraditional college women found robust levels of confidence in their ability to manage the student role and pursue career-related tasks. Findings indicated that perceived career barriers and social support accounted for variance in student and career decision-making self-efficacy for nontraditional college women with and without children. Social support added to the prediction of self-efficacy over and above the contribution of perceived barriers. The discussion focuses on recommendations for career counseling interventions to facilitate educational and vocational success among nontraditional college women.

Current career counseling practices are based on certain assumptions about clients and their career development, and these assumptions implicitly reflect male, western European experiences and worldviews. These assumptions may not reflect the general life priorities and specific role commitments of many women of color and White women. An ecological perspective on career counseling is proposed to conceptualize the dynamic interaction between the person and the environment. This perspective holds promise for assisting career counselors in their work with women of color and White women. Career counseling, as widely practiced today, evolved at a time when the typical career client was young, male, White, able-bodied, publicly heterosexual, and ethnically homogeneous (White immigrants from western Europe). However, today's U.S. labor force is far from homogeneous. One strategy to remedy the previously limited practice of career counseling is to make counseling available to everyone regardless of race, color, creed, affectional preference, or biological sex. In fact, the practice of career counseling has increasingly been extended to populations that vary in age, sociocultural status, race or ethnicity, and gender (Gysbers, Heppner, & Johnston, 1998). In this article, we argue that this open-door policy of offering career counseling to everyone is insufficient in itself to address the needs of many women of color and White women. First, we briefly examine how the assumptions on which current career counseling practices are based implicitly reflect male, western European experiences and worldviews. These assumptions concern (a) the separation of work and family roles in people's lives; (b) reverence for individualism and autonomy in American life; (c) the centrality of work as life activity in people's lives; (d) the linear, progressive and rational nature of the career development process; and (e) the structure of opportunity characterizing the labor force as a whole. These assumptions render many career counseling practices either insufficient or irrelevant to the experiences of many women of color and White women. Next, we suggest that implementation of an ecological perspective may better meet the needs of many career clients today. Finally, we make suggestions to encourage the career counseling profession to embrace a broader, ecological model of career development. It is important to emphasize the reason for the careful use of modifiers (e.g., some, many) throughout this paper. The analysis of basic assumptions related to career counseling requires an examination of broad generalizations that are rooted in gender and cultural diversity and that reflect modal expectations about career development. Little justice would be done on behalf of marginalized individuals if a new singular mold was simply substituted for previous models of career development. An innovative model embracing diversity as the core of career development is needed. Moreover, it is important to note that not all individuals have the luxury of making career choices. For many low-income people, having a paid job is a necessity that does not often involve choices about a career path. In these situations, the oppressive nature of pervasive poverty becomes the salient influence on career development. Career Counseling Today: Examination of Basic Assumptions Career counseling, as widely practiced today, continues to follow a brief, three-step model that includes an intake interview, administration of assessment measures, and test interpretation (Gysbers et al., 1998). The client's role in this model is to obtain and synthesize information about self and the world of work. The subsequent job and educational decisions are expected to initiate a potentially rewarding career trajectory over time. The counselor's role is to provide the client access to sufficient information about self and work and, if necessary, to improve independent decisionmaking skills. …

The commitment to social change demonstrated by the founder of vocational psychology, Frank Parsons, continues in several areas of vocational psychology today, including individual career counseling, guidance work in the schools, career interventions with special populations, and vocational research. This article highlights ways in which career counselors and vocational psychologists have focused and can continue to focus their practice and research to improve the condition of society and to provide interventions that enhance the ability of all individuals to love and to work in a meaningful way. The founder of vocational psychology, Frank Parsons, was an advocate for youth, women, the poor, and the disadvantaged and "taught the principles of cooperation, love of justice, and hatred of oppression and discrimination" (Davis, 1969, p. 23). Although Parsons died at a young age, his legacy continues in the work of many career counselors and vocational psychologists. The focus of this article is to highlight several areas of vocational research and intervention that emulate the social justice work of Parsons and to propose several lessons for career counselors and vocational psychologists from the work and life of Frank Parsons. Social Justice Social justice or social change work can be defined as actions that contribute to the advancement of society and advocate for equal access to resources for marginalized or less fortunate individuals in society. Herr and Niles (1998) suggested that although few career counselors conceive of their work as contributing to social change, many are involved in work that brings hope to the discouraged and has implications not only for individuals but also for institutions and public policy. They noted the following: In this sense, for most of the last 100 years, whether or not it has been explicit, counseling and, in particular, career counseling and career guidance have become sociopolitical instruments, identified by legislation at the federal level, to deal with emerging social concerns such as equity and excellence in educational and occupational opportunities, unemployment, human capital development, persons with disabilities, child abuse, AIDS, teenage pregnancy, substance abuse, career decision making relative to the preparation for entrance into emerging skilled occupations, and the identification and encouragement of students with high academic potential to enter higher education in science and mathematics. (p. 121) This focus on social justice through career interventions originated with the founder of vocational psychology, Frank Parsons. Parsons was a complex and, in some ways, contradictory man whose legacy of social action continues in several areas of vocational psychology today, including individual career counseling, guidance work in the schools, career interventions with special populations, and vocational research. Social Justice Work Individual Career Counseling Parsons (1909) was an ardent advocate for individualized approaches to career counseling. He founded the first vocational guidance center (i.e., the Vocational Bureau) and provided counseling using the overarching principles of Light, Information, Inspiration, and Cooperation (Parsons, 1909). Spokane and Glickman (1994) operationalized these principles as follows: Light was defined as the insight gained about oneself; Information included data collected about oneself and the world of work; Inspiration was equated with hope that encouraged confidence in career pursuits; and Cooperation involved the mobilization of resources to actualize one's career choice. Although many would consider Parsons's greatest gift to career counseling the articulation of the primary tenets of the matching model of career development (i.e., understand yourself, learn about your environment, and use true reasoning to select an occupation from these data), Jones (1994) suggested that some of Parsons's principles of vocational interventions are congruent with more integrated approaches to career counseling being advanced today (Blustein & Spengler, 1995; Lucas, 1993; Zamostny, O'Brien, & Tomlinson, 2000). …

This article applies the social cognitive career theory formulated by Lent, Brown, and Hackett (1994) to training career counselors. Specifically, the authors propose extending the theory to understand and influence trainees' interest, engagement, and performance in career counseling. An initial offering of an advanced career counseling seminar is described as an example of an intervention designed to increase interest and involvement in career counseling and to improve performance among career counselors. Suggestions are made for future research and for training students to be interested, involved, and skilled in providing career counseling. Researchers have documented a decline in interest and involvement in career counseling (Fitzgerald & Osipow, 1988; Pinkney & Jacobs, 1985), a pattern that seems particularly troubling at a time when the need for vocational services is growing (Zunker, 1994). However, revitalizing the training programs for vocational counselors by incorporating educational strategies based on recent theoretical advances could result in enhanced interest, involvement, and performance among career counselors. Recently, theorists advanced social cognitive career theory (SCCT; Lent, Brown, & Hackett, 1994) as a framework to understand the development of career and academic interests, the choices individuals make and enact, and finally, the performance attainments that result from these choices. Although the focus of SCCT is on clients' academic and vocational behavior, we believe that this model can be applied within training programs to recruit, engage, and train career counselors. Thus, the purpose of this article is to apply the tenets advanced in SCCT both to understand and to influence (a) students' interest in career counseling, (b) their decision to engage in vocational interventions with clients, and finally, (c) their performance in providing career counseling to clients. Before applying this model to training career counselors, we must first extend Bandura ( 1986) and Lent et al.'s ( 1994) definitions of key constructs, including self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and goals. The first focus of our article is on career counseling self-efficacy or the belief that an individual can perform the tasks necessary to successfully provide career counseling. O'Brien and Heppner ( 1995) have operationalized this construct with an instrument (the Career Counseling Self-Efficacy Scale) comprising the following three scales: General Career Counseling Skills; Application of Career Theory, Assessment, and Research; and Understanding Special Issues and Populations. Career counseling outcome expectations are defined as the beliefs that students have regarding the benefits and end products that result from engaging in career counseling. These outcome expectations subsume values and include, but are not limited to, the following categories defined by Lent et al.: physical, social, and self-evaluative benefits. For example, physical outcome expectations include money earned from providing career counseling. Social outcome expectations include the prestige related to career counseling and the approval received from others for this work. Finally, self-evaluative outcome expectations, noted as critical motivators of human behavior by Lent et al., include the satisfaction one receives from engaging in career counseling. A final construct identified by Lent et al. as being important to understanding choice and performance is goals. In this article, choice goals relate to the decision to provide career counseling or to select this area as a specialty, and performance goals involve the level of performance one aspires to in career counseling (e.g., excelling as a career counselor or providing basic vocational interventions in a competent manner). DEVELOPING INTEREST IN CAREER COUNSELING Lent and his colleagues ( 1994) suggested that both self-efficacy and outcome expectations exert direct influences on developing interests. …

This article presents the development of an interuniversity research team that addressed factors related to research productivity as well as a preliminary evaluation of this innovative method of enhancing research training.

Counselor trainees perceptions during a multicultural counseling course highlighted the importance of experiential activities and ethnically diverse speakers to the development of awareness and knowledge.