Carrie A. Wachter Morris

Empathy and care within engineering: qualitative perspectives from engineering faculty and practicing engineers

The purpose of this study was to investigate how empathy and care look within an engineering context from the perspective of (1) existing literature (2) engineering faculty and (3) practicing engineers. The project employed three separate, but interrelated studies, including a summative content analysis of the existing literature, a consensual qualitative research analysis of small group interviews with the engineering faculty, and a consensual qualitative research analysis of written responses from practicing engineers to an open-ended question about empathy and care. Thematic analyses of all three studies demonstrated that although empathy and care appear to have a place within engineering and engineering education – particularly given the current trends in engineering towards sustainability, team-oriented design work, and the renaissance engineer of tomorrow – it appears that conversations and awareness of these two constructs may not often be explicitly stated within the literature or frequently addressed by academic and professional engineers. Results from this study help define the role, benefits, and challenges of framing empathy and care within the engineering field. Our analysis and interpretation regarding how these findings parallel and depart from the existing conceptualizations of empathy and care is specified, and implications for engineers and the practice of engineering in general are discussed.

Preparing School Counselors to Address Concerns Related to Giftedness: A Study of Accredited Counselor Preparation Programs

Professional school counselors are responsible for serving students across a wide range of cognitive ability, yet counselor educators may not attend to issues related to giftedness, such as how and when developmental phenomena may be experienced by highly able students, and the need to differentiate counseling approaches for this population. This study examined the extent to which CACREP-accredited school counseling programs addressed giftedness, as well as perceived barriers and supports that influenced whether programs included topics related to extreme ability in their preparatory curricula. Findings included that minimal attention was given to the implications of high ability for counseling practice, and that a lack of room in the curriculum, lack of funding, and absence of pertinent, mandated standards were some of the largest barriers to inclusion. Supports in the form of openness to including information, faculty expertise and experience, and perceived need were generally perceived to be low to moderate.

A Qualitative Exploration of the STEM Career-Related Outcome Expectations of Young Adolescents

Perceptions developed and choices made during the preadolescent and early adolescent years may restrict or enrich youth’s future career aspirations. These years are critical for acquiring and exploring academic and career-related interests. In addition, outcome expectations – what youth believe will happen if they pursue certain interests, tasks, or goals – are important predictors of eventual career choice. With national, state, and local initiatives advocating science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) knowledge and career goals, there is a need to understand youth’s outcome expectations regarding these fields. We present a qualitative study examining the outcome expectations of 95 youth aged 10–14, using focus group data. Several of the identified outcome expectations had negative connotations. Results supported the outcome expectations identified by Bandura (i.e., physical, social, and self), and two additional types of outcome expectations (generativity and relational). These two outcome expectations have special relevance for the underrepresentation of girls, women, and minorities in STEM occupations.

Developing skills in providing outreach programs: Construction and use of the POSE (Performance of Outreach Skills Evaluation) rubric.

Rubrics, commonly used in classroom assessment, can be beneficial in assessing the performance of counseling outreach and presentation skills. A rubric to assess how well graduate students in counseling learned and demonstrated outreach presentation skills was developed. The development of the rubric is described, along with results of the evaluation of the rubric. Suggestions for a variety of uses of rubrics in the college counseling center context, as well as in counselor education, are presented.

Assessing Counselors’ Self-Efficacy in Suicide Assessment and Intervention

Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs Standards state that counseling students must be adequately trained in suicide assessment and intervention. To evaluate how well students or practicing counselors are prepared, there is a need to measure self-efficacy specific to the tasks required in suicide assessment and intervention. The purpose of this study was to develop and assess the validity evidence for the Counselor Suicide Assessment Efficacy Survey (CSAES), a measure of self-efficacy related to suicide assessment and intervention. CSAES was studied for use in measuring the outcomes of suicide assessment curricular and professional development. Detailed results of reliability and validity studies are reported.

The case for interprofessional education in teacher education and beyond

Abstract In many PreK-12 school environments, individuals with a variety of professional identities and roles provide services to students. Typically, these individuals are trained with minimal interaction with each other, yet they must work cooperatively with each other in the schools. Interprofessional education (IPE) provides a model whereby students in different disciplines learn to collaborate. This article describes the origins and current status of IPE in the health professions; suggests strategies for applying IPE to educator training; describes a promising example IPE project involving two distinct school-based professionals, pre-service special educators and school counsellors in training, including outcomes documented through student reflections; and offers implications for implementing and sustaining IPE in schools of education.

Preparing preservice English teachers and school counselor interns for future collaboration

The authors believe that by working together, teachers and school counselors can better support students and more effectively work for their success. In this article, we present our efforts in creating a collaborative class for preservice English teachers and school counselor interns. While offering an overview of English teachers and school counselors in their daily interactions with adolescents, we focus on the university preparation of both groups, specifically the preparation at our university, a large research institution in the Midwestern United States. We provide a look at the collaborative class created for the preservice English teachers and school counselor interns, offering examples of their interaction and feedback from the students. Lastly, we close with a consideration of the meaning of such collaboration at the university level for both English teachers and school counselors.

Nonsuicidal Self-Injury in the Schools: A Tiered Prevention Approach for Reducing Social Contagion:

Despite rising rates and prevalence of nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) and growing awareness in schools of NSSI social contagion, little discussion has taken place regarding ways to prevent and react to this prevalent issue occurring among youth in a school. The authors address how to prevent social contagion using a tiered response to intervention including primary prevention, secondary prevention, and tertiary care. This article discusses each level of prevention and provides school counselors with intervention methods that have the potential to reduce or even avert social contagion among youth in school settings.

Special Educators and Nonsuicidal Self-Injurious Behavior Self-Injury Training, Exposure, and Self-Efficacy

Nonsuicidal self-injurious behavior (NSSIB) is one of the most perplexing and challenging behaviors special educators come across in their schools. Thus, there is a need for special educators to be equipped with information regarding NSSIB to help identify students with disabilities who engage in these behaviors and provide them with appropriate support or referrals. This study examined the effectiveness of training received by 390 special educators on NSSIB and their self-efficacy regarding the training. Results revealed that although many special educators serve students who engage in self-injurious behaviors, many did not receive training on how to implement strategies for students who self-injure. Those special educators who received training were more confident in their abilities to work with students who self-injured compared with those special educators who did not receive training. Implications, limitations, and future research areas are discussed.

Insights from industry: a quantitative analysis of engineers' perceptions of empathy and care within their practice

ABSTRACT This study focuses on two seldom-investigated skills or dispositions aligned with engineering habits of mind – empathy and care. In order to conduct quantitative research, we designed, explored the underlying structure of, validated, and tested the reliability of the Empathy and Care Questionnaire (ECQ), a new psychometric instrument. In the second part, we used the ECQ to explore the perceptions of empathy and care of alumni/ae of an internationally ranked US institution, along with how perceptions differed by work experience and gender. Results show that participants perceived empathy and care to be important in multiple respects, most notably in relational aspects of engineering practice. Engineers with more engineering experience were more likely to perceive empathy and care as existing in engineering practice and as important to their work. While these phenomena are sometimes depicted as feminine qualities, we found no gender differences among our respondents.