Chapter 19-Teaching Family Counseling

Question 1

How can counselor educators usebest practices in the field of family counseling with students?

Answer 1

Create opportunities for students to:

1. interact with best practices in family counseling,
2. try on new behaviors
3. Discard old myths about families

Question 2

What thoughts do students often bring to family counseling class about families.

Answer 2

1. There are normal families, then the rest.

2. Thoughts about how families “should” be

Question 3

How can instructors help students move beyond entrenched perspectives about families?

Answer 3

1. Students encounter family norms and values that genuinely challenge ways of knowing about family
2. Their understandings of families are never “true” or final
3. Are contextual, shaped by social class, gender, history, ethnicity, and culture.

Question 4

RE: families, social interactions and economic factors have affected:

Answer 4

1. Definition, structure, and functioning of the family
2. How the life cycle of the family may progress
3. Issues that may bring families to counseling

Question 5

With the unique and diverse needs of families now, what can help counterbalance the challenges that bring them to family counseling?

Answer 5

1. Paying attention to the diversity

2. Helping them identify their unique resources

Question 6

To achieve the necessary qualities of challenge and support in family counseling instruction, family counseling can be grounded in what principles ?

Answer 6

1. Constructivist
2. Multicultural
3. Cognitive developmental

Question 7

In teaching family counseling, what does principles of constructivist teaching call for?

Answer 7

1. Abandonment of socially stereotyped definitions of family
2. Definitions shaped by family’s unique social history and context
3. Attentiveness to diversity in all aspects of family understanding, assessment, and intervention.
4. Cognitive developmental framework promoting students’ abilities to formulate counseling intervention with unique family culture

Question 8

The evolution of marriage and family therapy is seen in the postmodern approaches, such as:

Answer 8

1. solution-focused and solution-oriented
2. narrative therapies
3. Therapist moves from being an expert to collaborator, participant, and observer-engages client/family in deconstructing the story of their lives

Question 9

What do these postmodern therapy models focus on for the therapist and for therapy?

Answer 9

1. Therapist does not have solution, gives client opportunity to define what would be helpful, what solution to seek, and how to co-create solutions in therapy.
2. Focus on strengths
3. Look at social issues that define meaning people give to problems

Question 10

How can counselor educators encourage the development of multicultural counseling competence?

Answer 10

1. Students’ awareness of personal biases
2. Seek knowledge about families’ unique cultural compositions
3. Integrate family counseling models to increase cultural relevance of counseling

Question 11

To accomplish multicultural competence aims, the course emphasizes:

Answer 11

1. Dialogue among students and:
   A. Other students
   B. Their family members
   C. The instructor.
2. Culturally focused reflective journaling
3. Family history genograms
4. Texts that expose students to influence of ethnic values on family life

Question 12

The instructor meets students’ efforts toward cultural competence with:

Answer 12

1. Supportive guidance
2. Affirmation
3. Individualized feedback

Question 13

RE: family counseling, a positive relationship exists between:

Answer 13

1. Counselor’s level of cognitive development and ability to comprehend complex family dynamics
2. Higher levels, greater ability to “read and flex,” more accurately assess client needs and choose appropriate interventions

Question 14

What are 3 assumptions that drive development-oriented education?

Answer 14

1. Process of accommodation and assimilation
2. The notion of hierarchy
3. The idea of mismatch

Question 15

Describe the first assumption: process of accommodation and assimilation.

Answer 15

1. Learner initially attempts to assimilate the experience into existing cognitive structures.
2. When structures prove insufficient, learner creates new meaning-making structures that accommodate for new experience.
3. Disparity results in anxiety or disequilibrium, provides drive for cognitive growth.

Question 16

Describe the second assumption: the notion of hierarchy.

Answer 16

1. Cognitive development occurs in hierarchical and sequential stages
2. Reflect qualitative advances in learner’s capacity for processing and making meaning of complex experiences

Question 17

Describe the third assumption for cognitive development: the idea of mismatch.

Answer 17

For cognitive development to occur, must be “constructive mismatch” between learner’s current stage of cognitive development and educational intervention with developmental intentions

Question 18

DPE provides what five necessary learning conditions to trigger development?

Answer 18

1. Qualitatively significant new perspective-taking experience
2. Guided reflection
3. Balance between experience and opportunity for reflection on that experience
4. Instructor challenge and support
5. Assurance of continuity

Question 19

What does research suggest is the optimal time for developmental interventions?

Answer 19

Weekly interventions for 6 months to a year

Question 20

In the family counseling course, experiential activities encourage students to:

Answer 20

1. Personalize experience
2. Engage in self-reflection
3. Make meaning of what helps families function better

Question 21

Assignments recommended for the family counseling course:

Answer 21

1. genogram
2. family story paper
3. family role play
4. case study paper

Question 22

Drawing from tenets of Murray Bowen’s family counseling model, what should the genogram contain?

Answer 22

1. At least three generations of the students’ family histories.
2. Include a written reflection on:
   A. relationship patterns
   B. trends
   C. alliances
   D. cut-offs
   E. separations
   F. cultural elements

Question 23

The genogram assignment serves what 4 purposes?

Answer 23

1. Gain greater understandings about the family patterns
2. Promote multicultural counseling competence
3. Gain greater self-awareness.
4. Increase cultural sensitivity

Question 24

How do case studies help students in family counseling course?

Answer 24

Initial opportunity to integrate family counseling theory with individual client needs.

Question 25

What are 2 variations of case study activities?

Answer 25

First, choose theory that appeals to student’s way of understanding. Deconstruct meaning of the case to create possible clinical observations/interventions that fit with student’s personal style.
Second, students receive a case vignette and apply one of the models of family therapy.