Experiential Orientation Research Articles

How beginning counselors learn: The interaction of personal and professional experiences in counselors with an experiential orientation

Research suggests that the way counselors work is influenced not only by training and practice but also by their personal experiences and qualities. In this study, we aimed to explore how beginning counselors with an experiential orientation integrate the experiences from different sources (e.g. training, supervision, individual therapy, practice, and their personal life) and how they utilize them in practice. Seven in-depth interviews with beginning Gestalt-oriented counselors were conducted and grounded theory method was used for analysis. The results show that personal experiences and qualities play an important role in shaping the way beginning Gestalt counselors work. We conceptualized two main components of counselors’ working style – Personal Core and Professional Extension, and 10 specific types of interaction between these components which were subsumed into two broad categories: (1) cultivation of personal qualities and (2) adoption of new competencies. These findings challenge earlier assumptions that beginning counselors simply imitate their trainers, supervisors, and senior colleagues. Implications for further research and use in practice are discussed.

Hazing rites/rights: using outdoor- and adventure education-based orientation to effect positive change for first-year athletes

This study is a qualitative examination of the experiences and impact of participating in an outdoor-based and adventure education-based orientation as an alternative to traditional forms of sport team initiation. Traditional forms of initiation for the participants in this study had included hazing ceremonies, whereby new team members were forced to engage in degrading, humiliating and abusive activities to secure their place on a team. Following an experiential weekend orientation that incorporated cooperative, team-building and adventure-based challenges, interviews were conducted with male and female varsity athletes from collegiate hockey, volleyball, badminton and basketball teams in Canada. The participants observed how the cooperative, outdoor team activities contributed to an egalitarian, inclusive climate, which promoted team cohesion, communication and support among veteran and rookie athletes. Tackling team challenges that required support and cooperation for success facilitated the restructuring of pre-established hierarchical relationships, which led to changes in the ways athletes perceived and subsequently treated each other throughout the orientation and into their season. This study highlights some of the promising possibilities for creating new welcoming traditions for collegiate athletic teams that draw from experiential outdoor education and adventure-based models.

INDIGENIZING TEACHER EDUCATION: AN ACTION RESEARCH PROJECT

This action research report focuses on a new elective course entitled “Indigenizing Education: Education for/about Aboriginal Peoples” that was developed and taught by two teacher educators—one Euro-Canadian and the other Métis. The purpose of the course was to increase understanding of Indigenous peoples and of the impact of colonization on Aboriginal communities. The course had an experiential orientation: participation by an Aboriginal Elder, educators working in Aboriginal settings, and educators who incorporate Indigenous knowledge and pedagogy into mainstream classrooms. Action research was conducted to determine the degree to which the course achieved its purpose with a view to enhancing future iterations of this course and contributing to teacher educator knowledge about effective teacher education approaches to including Aboriginal content and ways of knowing in teacher education. In particular, the authors were interested in the degree to which teacher candidates were responsive to Indigenous elements in the curriculum and teaching. Given the Aboriginal focus of this research, the Medicine Wheel is employed as an Indigenous framework for presenting and analyzing the findings.

In-store mobile usage: Downloading and usage intention toward mobile location-based retail apps

The purposes of this study were to examine whether characteristics of mobile location-based services (LBS) retail apps—time convenience, interactivity, compatibility, and effort expectancy were related to consumers’ affective and cognitive involvement, which in turn were related to their intention to download and use mobile LBS retail apps. Also investigated was the moderating effect of experiential orientation on the links between consumers’ affective and cognitive involvements and usage intention. An online survey was administered to mobile Internet users (n=853) from a U.S. consumer panel. Structural equation modeling was employed to test the proposed model. Perceived interactivity and compatibility were influential antecedents that shaped consumers’ affective involvement with mobile LBS retail apps, which in turn influenced their intention to download and use the retail apps. The relationship between affective involvement and usage intention was greater for mobile consumers with high experiential orientation than for those with low experiential orientation.

A Study of the Relationship between Shopping Orientation and Online Shopping Behavior among Indian Youth

The increasing use of the Internet by young adults in emerging markets such as India provides an opportunity for marketers to tap an underdeveloped segment of young net users. A better understanding of the drivers of online shopping behavior among young adults can enable online marketers to design more effective marketing strategies. The present research explores the relationship between shopping orientation of young adults in India and their online shopping behavior in terms of online shopping adoption and frequency. Primary data were collected through a self-administered questionnaire from 831 college students. The study finds a significant difference in the entertainment, experiential and convenience orientation of online and non-online shoppers. Trial and frequent online shoppers also differ in the extent of entertainment orientation but no significant difference is found in their experiential or convenience orientation. Based on the findings, recommendations are made for encouraging young adults to shop online.

Educational action research to initiate discourse on inclusion in an e-learning environment in teacher education

This paper reports on a fragment from an educational action research in a teacher education setting, ascertaining the possibilities of using the online environment of google.doc for initiating pre-service teachers’ discourse about the nature of inclusive relationships between individuals and the environment, and the ways of their enhancement. The method of discourse analysis applied to the generated data demonstrates contradictory evidence as regards the effectiveness of the chosen medium for discourse in terms of the participants’ involvement. However, content analysis of the generated discourse yields a system of 15 approaches that pre-service teachers use for communicating about the nature of and prerequisites for inclusive relationships as well as for contemplating the role of education in enhancing them. We suggest that teacher educators can apply these approaches as a framework for exploring the frames of reference that future teachers use in making sense of the phenomenon of inclusion. The identified approaches can help to identify the paths to be pursued to develop these frames, on the grounds of an assumption that a balance can be found between the cognitive, affective, experiential and action orientations.

The Gospel According to this Moment: Thoreau, Wildness, and American Nature Religion

AbstractEver since the Sierra Club adopted the slogan, “In wildness is the preservation of the world,” the text from which it was drawn—Thoreau’s 1862 essay “Walking”—has been construed as a tribute to wild places. To some extent this reading keeps faith with sentiments expressed in the essay. At the same time, a closer look suggests that the essay as a whole is really more about the life of the spirit than life in the wild. Despite the popular appropriation of “Walking” as a manifesto of environmentalist advocacy, some critics have questioned the usual view of “Walking.” Such observations also have a bearing on Thoreau’s legacy as a progenitor of the literary expression of American nature spirituality. The purpose of this essay is to elucidate a particular experiential orientation to this spiritually-inflected notion of wildness, beginning with Thoreau and extending into the work of three literary exemplars of American nature religion—John Muir, Edward Abbey, and Annie Dillard.

Moral Entrepreneurs and Moral Geographies on the US/Mexico Border

This article explores the difference and interplay between the border as legal/political fact and the borderland as complex social/cultural reality through the development and application of the theoretical concepts of moral geography and moral entrepreneur. I argue that these concepts provide a bridge between macro, structural views of ‘the production of (borderland) space’ as used by critical geographers and the more experiential orientation suggested by geographers and anthropologists in studies of cultural landscapes and ‘place-making’. My particular concern is to apply and illustrate this argument through the ethnography of the desert borderlands straddling Arizona (USA) and Sonora (Mexico), but it is potentially useful in other contexts.

Pre‐service teachers' beliefs and other predictors of pupil control ideologies

PurposeThis study aims to examine a variety of demographic, experiential, and philosophical orientation variables that may be predictive of pupil control ideologies (PCI) for teacher candidates at the beginning of a pre‐service program. In particular, it sets out to provide empirically grounded generalizations regarding the relationship between philosophical orientations and PCI. Philosophical orientation variables identified candidates' beliefs about key educational concepts.Design/methodology/approachQuantitative methodology was used in this study. Data from approximately 720 pre‐service participants in a pre‐service teacher education program were analysed via a series of correlational and multiple regression analyses.FindingsThese data supported the conclusion that while demographic and experiential variables were predictive of PCI at the beginning of the teacher preparation program, the most predictive variables were contained within the philosophical orientations variable cluster.Research limitations/implicationsThese findings provide empirical evidence of a link between what beginning teachers believe about education and their approach at the beginning of their teacher education program to pupil control in the classroom.Originality/valueThese findings identify circumstances that may assist in attracting males into elementary teaching at a time when major teacher organizations are highlighting this perceived weakness in the teacher recruitment process. Additionally, the study recommends inclusion in teacher preparation programs of curriculum units pertaining to pre‐service teachers' beliefs about education, and provides suggestions for the content of such units.

Clinical Exchange: The Architectural Failure

The Clinical Exchange invites eminent clinicians of diverse persuasions to share, in ordinary language, their clinical formulations and treatment plans of the same psychotherapy patient—one not selected or nominated by those therapists—and then to discuss points of convergence and contention in their recommendations. This Exchange concerns a Mr. L, a 47-year-old, married man presenting for outpatient individual psychotherapy with chief complaints of depression, anxiety, and a lengthy history of vocational underachievement. Drs. Herbert Fensterheim, Leslie Greenberg, and Leigh McCullough, who anchor their practices in the cognitive-behavioral, experiential, and psychodynamic orientations, respectively, are the featured commentators. Finally, Dr. Jerold Gold, the case contributor and Mr. L's psychotherapist, provides a few closing comments.

A causal model of voluntary turnover among nursing personnel in long-term psychiatric settings.

Causal modeling was used to explore the processes by which individual characteristics, job satisfaction, and intention to quit explain turnover among nursing personnel in 29 Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) long-term psychiatric settings. The sample consisted of 1,106 registered nurses (RNs), licensed practical nurses (LPNs), and nurses' aides. We conceptualized turnover as a multistage process linking social and experiential orientations, attitudes toward the job, the decision to quit, and the behavior of actually quitting. Intention to quit was the strongest direct predictor of turnover. Professional growth opportunities and workload were important indirect predictors of turnover. Dissatisfaction with work hazards and relationships with coworkers were both indirect and direct predictors of turnover. Attitudes towards the job varied by nursing group. LPNs and aides were less satisfied than RNs with autonomy and work hazards. RNs were more dissatisfied with workload. We conclude that strategies to promote retention need to address aspects of jobs tailored to specific nursing groups.

Immersion and Submersion Classrooms: A Comparison of Instructional Practices in Language Arts

Using the Communicative Orientation of Language Teaching (COLT) observation scheme (Spada & Frohlich,1995), this study compares the second language (L2) learning environments of elementary-level students of French in four submersion and four immersion classrooms in the Montreal area. The database is composed of almost 60 hours of observations during language arts lessons: 28.4 hours in the four submersion classrooms, so named because they are designed for native speakers of French but comprise a large number of minority-language students obliged to attend French-language schools, and 30.5 hours in the four French immersion classrooms, composed of a majority of anglophone students attending English-language schools. Results indicate clear differences between the two environments. Language arts lessons in the four submersion classrooms are predominantly analytic; the content focus is primarily on language form and most materials entail only minimal discourse.Conversely,language arts lessons in the four immersion classrooms involve a more balanced combination of analytic and experiential orientations, including more variety in classroom organisation, content thatfocuses on both language and other topics, and text that includes more extended discourse.

A dark side of the American dream: Correlates of financial success as a central life aspiration.

Aspiring for financial success is an important aspect of capitalist cultures. Three studies examine the hypothesis that values and expectancies for wealth and money are negatively associated with adjustment and well-being when they are more central to an individual than other self-relevant values and expectancies. Studies 1 and 2 use 2 methods to show that the relative centrality of money-related values and expectancies is negatively related to college students' well-being and mental health. Study 3, using a heterogeneous noncollege sample, extends these findings by showing that a high centrality of aspirations for financial success is associated with interview ratings of lower global adjustment and social productivity and more behavioral disorders. Discussion is focused on the deleterious consequences of materialistic world views and the need to examine differential effects of content regarding goals and values. Financial success has long been a core component of the American dream, and many of the values modeled and encouraged by modern society suggest that success and happiness depend on procuring monetary wealth (Derber, 1979). Yet folklore and table side discussion often suggest that a darker side lurks behind the American dream. Pursuing material wealth is sometimes viewed as empty or shallow and as precluding investment in one's family and friends, self-actualization, and contributions to the community. Suspicion about the worth of material pursuits is echoed in some humanistic theories. Both Rogers (1963) and Maslow (1954), for instance, consider humans to be energized by an actualizing tendency and believe that well-being occurs to the extent people can freely express their inherent potentials. In situations of conditional positive regard (Rogers, 1963) or forceful external demands (Maslow, 1956), however, individuals often forego their own actualization to attain regard or outcomes from others. Similarly, Fromm (1976) distinguished between a having or consummatory orientation and a being or experiential orientation to life. He considered the former as reflecting alienation from the actualizing tendencies of the self. Inasmuch as money represents an external incentive for behavior that is contingently given, these theories suggest the pursuit of

Moratorium-achievement (Mama) cycles in lifespan identity development: value orientations and reasoning system correlates

Three important questions emerging in identity research are: Why do only some persons with Foreclosed identities move on to Identity Achievement? Why do some Identity Achievement persons move “back” to Foreclosure? How can life-span identity re-formulation be accounted for? This study proposes that individual's positions on two variables, “instrumental vs. experiential orientation” and formistic vs. dialectrical thinking, may be important in answering these questions. Among 60 university students, 23 males and 37 females, those in an identity status characterized by formation and maintenance of structure (Foreclosure) were instrumentally-oriented while those characterized by openness to change and revision (Moratorium) were experientially-oriented. Similarly, more Moratoriums than other statuses were high in dialectic thinking. These results are discussed in terms of their theoretical implications for life-span identity development.

Quantitative assessment of the behavior of psychotherapy supervisors.

The aim of this study was to explore the behavior of psychotherapy supervisors by using the Psychotherapy Supervision Inventory. The authors used the Psychotherapy Supervision Inventory to rate 53 videotaped supervision sessions of 34 different supervisors. They also used the variable of the rater's perception of the excellence of the supervisor as a teacher. The data were subjected to a cluster analysis and a K-means analysis. Discriminant function analyses were applied to the comparison of the behavior of 19 supervisors with two different residents and the behavior of all 34 supervisors with residents in three different years of training. The relationship between rater-perceived excellence and Psychotherapy Supervision Inventory scores was analyzed by using stepwise multiple regression. There was a high level of agreement among the four raters' judgments of supervisors' excellence. Empathy accounted for 72% of the variance in rater-perceived excellence and focus on the therapist accounted for an additional 5%. When empathy was dropped from the equation, experiential orientation accounted for 60% of the variance in ratings of excellence, clarification and interpretation accounted for an additional 16%, and depth accounted for another 3%. In the context of established relationships, supervisors have stable behavior patterns. Rater-perceived excellence is related to the supervisor's focusing on the resident's immediate experiences and making many synthesizing comments in depth. The Psychotherapy Supervision Inventory can be used to orient supervisors to supervision and provide feedback about their behavior.

The HIV clinical tutorial for community mental health professionals

HIV disease is an emerging community mental health concern. The need for specialized training to help community mental health professionals develop comprehensive knowledge and skills to serve this new population of clients is evident. The HIV clinical tutorial model is an innovative approach to continuing education characterized by an experiential and clinical orientation, a small participant group, and an interdisciplinary faculty. The three-day intensive workshop provides participants with experiences that can alter their perspective toward clients affected by HIV/AIDS and toward the role of the mental health system in responding to this epidemic. Similar training programs should be developed nationwide through collaboration among medical schools, teaching hospitals, public health departments and community mental health centers.

Cotherapy: A Means of Training with the Family

This article explores cotherapy as a therapeutic and training tool. An exposition of both the advantages and challenges of cotherapy is provided. Ideas regarding cotherapy utilisation in marriage and family therapy training programs are discussed with particular reference to possible difficulties and how they might be addressed. The final section addresses factors relevant to the development of a cotherapy relationship, including an overview of various models that have been previously advanced in the literature. The primary reference point for this article is an experiential orientation, but those from a variety of orientations should discover applicability to their practices. The authors hope this article will serve to provoke readers to consider their own thoughts on this topic and pursue it in more depth.

Teaching the Practical Research Course

Practical research courses are an important component of the psychology curriculum. This article presents an approach to teaching one such course that emphasizes an experiential orientation to learning to do research. Course assignments are of two types. One is a series of specific exercises designed to teach a range of skills important for research practitioners; the other uses research projects to provide research experience. Several group-based projects furnish experience with different research strategies, and an individual project promotes application and generalization of the skills and knowledge gained. The advantages of the experiential approach to research courses are discussed. It is concluded that courses of this type are valuable, even in light of the heavy demands on the teacher.

Differential psychotherapy outcome among depressed and impulsive patients as a function of analytic and experiential treatment procedures.

Assessment of five psychotherapy procedures, broadly representing experiential and analytical orientations, was undertaken with two groups of clinic outpatients. The patient groups were similar in the length of treatment received, degree of psychological disturbance present, and the frequency with which they were exposed to each of the treatment procedures. Both therapist and external raters assessed the patients' improvement on target symptoms and global change measures at the conclusion of treatment. The results suggest a clear superiority of experiential treatment procedures across patient groups. However, analytic treatments achieved their greatest effect among depressive anxious patients and their least effect among impulsive externalizing patients.

The Management Training Laboratory: an Experiential Orientation To the Mba Program

The Management Training Laboratory: an Experiential Orientation To the Mba Program