Jeffrey H. D. Cornelius-White

Big changes, but are they big enough? Healthcare professionals’ attitudes toward transgender persons

ABSTRACT Media interest in transgender issues has increased substantially, yet empirical studies are lacking. Little is known about the attitudes of healthcare professionals regarding transgender identity and transgender persons. Previous studies are decades old or did not differentiate sexual orientation from gender identity. This study fills a gap in the literature and addresses shortcomings seen in previous research on healthcare professionals’ attitudes toward the LGBT population. The authors surveyed 243 healthcare workers, including 83 nurses, 60 doctoral-level healthcare professionals, and 100 other healthcare workers using the Transgender Attitudes and Beliefs Scale (TABS). Results of two-way ANOVAs showed that healthcare professionals on the whole hold generally favorable attitudes toward transgender persons with no differences in attitudes across professions. The current study found gender differences in attitudes consonant with previous findings, with females displaying more-accepting attitudes toward transgender individuals compared to their male counterparts. A chi-square test for independence also found changes in healthcare professionals’ views regarding sex reassignment surgery and mental health potential for transgender persons over the past 30 years. The paper includes discussion of earlier studies along with hypothesized and known correlates of attitudes towards transgender persons in an effort to inform possible strategies to improve healthcare for transgender persons.

Interdisciplinary applications of the person-centered approach

Introduction to Interdisciplinary Applications.- An Experiential Example of the Person-Centered Approach: Carl Rogers Work.- Person-Centered and Experiential Psychotherapies: An overview.- Motivational Interviewing and Client-Centered Therapy.- Linking the Person-Centered Approach to the Arts: Person-Centered Expressive Arts Therapy and Empowerment.- Person-centered work in services for people in need of everyday care.- Counseling the Sai Way.- Person-Centred Medicine and Subjectivity.- The Learner-Centered Model: Vision for the Future.- The Person-Centered Approach in Adult Education.- Characteristics and Effects of Person-Centered Technology Enhanced Learning.- Ubiquitous Educational Computing and Learner-Centered Instruction: A Likely Pair.- Foundational Oppression: Families and Schools.- The Person-Centered Approach in Family Education.- Successful Management with the Person-Centered Approach: Building the Bridge to Business.- Person-Centered Approach: Theory and Practice in a Nontherapeutic Context.- A Person-Centered-Approach to Innovation Management: Experiences and Learnings.- The Person-Centred Approach and its Capacity to EnhanceConstructive International Communication.- Conflict Transformation.- PCA Encounter Groups: Transformative learning for individuals and communities.- Staying Human: Experiences of a Therapist and Political Activist.- The Person-Centered Approach: An Emergent Paradigm.

Congruence: An integrative five-dimension model / Kongruenz: Ein integratives Modell mit fünf Dimensionen / Congruencia: Un modelo integrativo de cinco dimensiones / La Congruence: Un modèle intégratif en cinq dimensions / Congruência: Um modelo integrativo em cinco dimensões /

Abstract There have been numerous discussions of the concept of congruence. This paper presents a five-dimension model that brings different aspects together, clarifying their similarities and differences. It articulates various characteristics of congruence, including what it means to be a person, relationships with other person-centered and experiential theoretical concepts, historical and conceptual contexts, and appropriate synonyms inherent in these discussions. The paper explores the different dimensions separately with the understanding that congruence in practice is a unified experience.

The Public Affairs Scale: Measuring the Public Good Mission of Higher Education

This article describes the development and construction of the Public Affairs Scale, specifically designed to assess student development in the three areas of the public affairs mission at Missouri State University. This development process involved shared governance, literature review, and other tools used to assess components related to public affairs. The article also explains the public affairs mission at Missouri State University, including definitions of themes and goals and select markers of that mission’s manifestation during the past 15 years. It provides a brief review of assessments used in universities to measure similar constructs, such as engagement and the public good. The Public Affairs Scale is shown to have feasibility (40 items), adequate to strong internal consistency, and construct validity. It appears sufficiently sensitive to capture differences between students and within students over time. The Public Affairs Scale has been used to assess the impact of a first-year service-learning initiative. Readers are encouraged to use it for further program evaluation and research.

Reminiscing and Predicting: Rogers’s beyond Words Speech and Commentary

In his “Beyond Words Symposium” at the Chicago Counseling and Psychotherapy Center in 1986, Carl Rogers offers reminiscences commemorating the 40th anniversary of the founding of the University of Chicago Counseling Center. He recalls the individuals whose work contributed to the birth of client-centered therapy and offers commentary not only on the development of the counseling center but also on the foundations of his own therapy process research, encounter group trainings, and person-centered education. Rogers’s symposium is peppered with individual stories and fond caricatures of his many colleagues, and he offers a variety of insights on the direction and scope of the person-centered movement. Rogers concludes with a discussion of the global need for person-centered expansion and offers a call to clinicians everywhere to continue to ride the “growing edge” of the client-centered movement.

Congruence as Extensionality / Kongruenz als Extensionalität / La congruencia como extensionalidad / La congruence conçue comme extensionalité / A congruência como extensionalidade /

Abstract Within person-centered and experiential approaches, congruence is a central and evolving concept. It has been described both by Rogers and later theorists in a wide variety of ways. This paper aims to highlight and elaborate an under-examined aspect of congruence, namely congruence as extensionality. Extensionality conveys how the open, mature, adjusted person interacts with not just their self (internal) or others (relational), but the world (systemic). It involves the practice of personalizing perception and thinking critically and creatively to manage multiple realities. Extensionality has important implications for the development of person-centered and experiential approaches beyond the therapy room.

A comparison between self-identified evangelical Christians’ and nonreligious persons’ attitudes toward transgender persons.

The present study provides the 1st descriptive survey study to date that reports attitudes and beliefs toward transgender persons with a sample of the U.S. evangelical Christian population. Data were collected from 483 participants (nonreligious n = 253, evangelical Christian n = 230) recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk. The study employed the Transgender Attitudes and Beliefs Scale—a psychometrically sound and culturally sensitive, 3-factor (interpersonal comfort, sex/gender beliefs, and human value) 29-item scale—to assess attitudes and beliefs toward transgender. Data were analyzed using two-way analyses of variance, item analyses, independent samples t tests, and Pearson’s correlations. Findings indicated that evangelical Christians showed significantly lower attitude scores and a more dichotomous or fixed view of gender compared to their nonreligious counterparts. At the same time, evangelical Christians displayed greater variability in their attitudes toward transgender persons and had high ratings on the human value factor overall (measuring the extent to which a person affirms transgender persons’ intrinsic value as a person), which was, in turn, less correlated with the other factors—interpersonal comfort and sex/gender beliefs—than for their secular reference group. On questions pertaining to civil rights, evangelical Christians, on average, gave significantly lower ratings than did nonreligious persons, though the effect size was small on the issue of access to housing.

Relationships between the Timing of Social Interactions and Preschoolers' Engagement in Preschool Classrooms.

Social factors in the classroom (such as interactions with peers and teachers, talk, observation of others, and presence of peers and teachers) influence engagement, but little is known about the sequence or timing of these social factors with engagement. In this observational study of 12 preschoolers, ages 2–5 years, the influence of the timing of social factors on engagement was examined in depth, using sequential analysis techniques. Children’s talk to teachers and teacher presence encouraged initial engagement in activities. Teacher and peer presence, talk to and from peers, and self-talk encouraged continuing, sustained engagement, while teacher talk to children led to disengagement. Children’s observations of peers in a new activity led both into and out of engagement. Teacher interactions with children function as a bridge into and out of engagements but did little to sustain engagement, whereas peer interactions and self-talk sustained ongoing engagements. Implications for encouraging engagement in preschool classrooms are considered.

Counselors’ and Counseling Students’ Attitudes toward Transgender Persons

ABSTRACT Issues related to persons who are transgender have gained large interest in recent years, but discrimination and differential health outcomes for persons who are transgender continue. This article reviewed the 14 existing studies on attitudes toward persons who are transgender, none dealing exclusively with counselors and/or counselors in training. This study involved investigation of those attitudes with a sample of 95 counselors and counselors in training. Findings indicated that counselors tend to have positive attitudes. Greater personal familiarity and multicultural competence as well as being female were associated with more positive attitudes, whereas quantity of diversity training was not related and professional experience was related to more negative attitudes.

Introduction to the Special Issue on Person-Centered Approaches in Schools

This special issue of the Person-Centered and Experiential Psychotherapies journal was commissioned to emphasize the usefulness of person-centered approaches in schooling practices and contexts, broadly defined. In Rogers’ (e.g. 1951, 1969, 1977) original writings he often discussed the similitude between psychotherapeutic and educational behaviors. This correspondence is not terribly surprising given that sufficient expressions of psychotherapy and learning are both contingent on the sharing of the core conditions including congruence, unconditional positive regard, and empathetic understanding (Rogers, 1951). In this way, the person as client or learner is prioritized in a manner that the means for actualized living or learning is emphasized and the facilitative relationship prized. Taxonomical distinctions between psychotherapy and formal educational practices are often blurred, but Rogers (1969) generally demurred these distinctions as unnecessary and even potentially deleterious to the person as client or learner. Contemporary educational scholars have slowly adopted a similar position, especially seen in the literatures pertaining to social-emotional learning and its influence on the classroom climate or student learning behaviors (see Blair, 2002; Durlak, Weissberg, Dymnicki, Taylor, & Schellinger, 2011; Sklad, Diekstra, De Ritter, Ben, & Gravesteijn, 2012). Specific to the field of counseling in the USA, as endorsed by the American Counseling Association and the American School Counseling Association, counseling practice includes psychotherapeutic interventions but also system support, educational and learning activities, social justice advocacy, and career planning and development. Considered together, the learning sciences and the school counseling profession have supported Rogers’ original posits pertaining to education of the whole person, with a special focus on relational and experiential opportunities in schools. Unfortunately, there appears to be a fracture between the academic and professional recommendations and the praxis in schools; generally speaking, many school systems, educators and their various stakeholders are becoming ideologically less concerned with humanizing the whole person and, instead, each proffer educational behaviors that are too often reductionistic and dehumanizing. The authors of the four articles included in this special issue each evoke the spirit of Rogers’ beliefs about learning. Together they identify a myriad challenges in contemporary schools and offer a person-centered alternative. Similar to Rogers, the foci across the articles are not limited to traditional definitions of psychotherapy or educational