This study briefly outlines the results of a pilot project within the Bowen Special Education District directed to the training of parents as effective listeners of children's oral reading. The study assesses the relevant listening behaviours of two parents before, during and after being involved in a Parent Helper's Reading Program. The effectiveness of the program is generally evident from the observed improvement in listening behaviours demonstrated by the parents. Furthermore, the increased competency in listening behaviours by parents is paralleled by a simultaneous improvement in oral reading and comprehension performance by the target children. Also, the children's generalisation of skills from home to school is noted by both parents and teachers. Overall, this study suggests two significant implications to be considered within the context of existing reading programs utilising adult helpers. Firstly, the use of untrained helpers within school reading programs needs to be questioned. Secondly, the effectiveness of parent helper programs is dependent upon the level of follow-up and monitoring made available to program participants.

While the limitations of generalising from a project using only two subjects is realised, the results suggest important areas for future investigations.

In this case-study, an educational psychologist trained three primary teachers to give feedback to three 11-12 year-old low progress readers who were each tutoring one low progress classmate, with the Pause, Prompt and Praise procedures. After themselves learning the Pause, Prompt and Praise procedures the teachers were provided with written instructions, and then trainer feedback on how to provide feedback for the peer tutors. Results of the eight week program indicated substantial gains for both tutees and tutors on the Dunedin Teachers College Informal Prose Inventory, and on the number of successive book levels read to criterion. With the written instructions alone, teachers use very intrusive prompts when giving feedback to peer tutors. However, when teachers also received feedback on their own performance they used far less intrusive forms of prompts, encouraging tutors to remember and explain their own tutoring behaviours and implement the procedures accurately without becoming dependent on teacher support or supervision.

The social integration (sociometric status) of 22 mainstreamed handicapped high school children was compared with that of their non-handicapped peers.

Results indicated that in friendship and work oriented situations the handicapped were less socially accepted than their nonhandicapped peers, more frequently identified as stars, and female handicapped students were more popular and accepted than the male handicapped.

A limitation of the study was its small sample size.

This paper investigates the effects of factors which socially disadvantage the young unemployed. Studies on school and work experiences of disadvantaged youth make it clear there is no single problem of a cycle of disadvantage. Factors such as chances at birth, house and neighbourhood, family circumstances, ill-health and physical development, and school experience and parental interest, crucially influence the process of growing up. The author questions what happens to the needs of the individual when unemployment causes a sudden change in the individual's habitual social structure.

Personal construct psychology enabled teacher stress to be conceptualised in terms of their perceptions of their ability to cope with stressors. Different degrees of support were seen in terms of the teachers' allocation of dependencies. Pre- and post-intervention questionnaires and FOCUS-ed (or cluster analysed) Dependency (individual and mode) grids were used to reveal and manipulate 11 teachers' resources and then to monitor how their group levels of stress were affected. Although the study reflected an idiographic approach rather than a substantive pattern, stress was reduced for the highly stressed, maintained for the moderately stressed and increased for the low stressed. Since using a not coping rather than a coping perspective characterised the distressed group before the intervention, teachers may need to emphasise a more affirmative stance. Once teachers establish what they construe as stressful and what support they can use, they are in a more informed position to engage in stress management or maintenance.

The concepts of Freud's Psychoanalytic Therapy are well-known to professional helpers, and many of his principles and techniques (e.g. the “Freudian slip”, Dream Analysis) are familiar to laypersons. For many reasons, training courses for tertiary counsellors often focus on humanistic, existential or behavioural approaches to counselling, with psychodynamic approaches relegated to the minor league. This paper highlights the attempts to raise the consciousness of postgraduate counselling students to the significance of Freudian concepts in counselling and therapy, through a teaching unit developed by the author. The rationale, objectives, content, process, and student evaluations of the course are discussed.

While most counselling approaches have an established foundation in psychological theory, few can claim to provide a window through which one can observe and comprehend contemporary society. This essay considers the relevance of one theory, Alfred Adler's Individual Psychology, in terms of its ability to address the challenges and issues being confronted by people today. Herein, we look at concepts that are infrequently considered by counsellors, but nevertheless, influence the development of our thoughts and behaviour.