Confusing Identities of Counseling Psychologists and Educational Psychologists in Turkey

Abstract

Universities have been at the centre of social evolution since their creation in medieval times. Universities are part of world history. Universities modeled Europe and from Europe, universities participated in modeling the world and its development. According to Wilhelm von Humbolt’s definition, the university is an institution where the education in all fields of science is given together with research activities within a unified system. Popper in his book The Logic of Scientific Research gives a definition of science which complements Humbolt’s idea of the university. According to Popper, the aim of science is to expand the range of science by producing lots of hypotheses and conducting necessary observations in accordance with these hypotheses, and also to try to falsify the already produced hypotheses in order to put forward new ones. Hence, the function of the university as an institution which is in the service of society, besides educating people is to train people who have scientific thinking skills combined with a rational-critical attitude as summarized in Popper’s account of science. The aim of this presentation is to question how much and how far are the Faculties of Arts and Sciences and Educational Sciences in Turkey, which are the main faculties for educating people for future scientists and teachers, able to give this aforesaid critical-rational scientific approach to their graduates. A case in hand is the Department of Psychology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Department of Counseling and Guidance in the Faculty of Educational Sciences. Both counseling psychology and educational psychology are different areas of specialization in psychology, and definitely need to be graduate programs as it is practiced in the USA and in Europe. An undergraduate degree in counseling and guidance is not enough for the graduate of that program to be either a counseling psychologist or educational psychologist. The identity crisis and overlaps between these fields can only be prevented by converting the current undergraduate level counseling and guidance departments into graduate programs within the faculty of education and prepare joint graduate programs with psychology departments in the Arts and Sciences faculties.