Teaching professional ethics in counsellor education in Aotearoa New Zealand

One mark of a profession is that it articulates a shared vision of the responsibilities involved in professional relationships, generally expressed in a Code of Ethics. But what are the processes involved in inducting new members into a profession and offering them opportunities to translate and grow personal ethics into professional ethics? The study on which this article reports aimed to investigate the practices employed by counsellor educators in Aotearoa New Zealand in ethics education. The study asked two organising questions: what is taught, and how is it taught? In reporting on the study, this article seeks to offer a contribution to dialogue about how ethics might be learned and taught in initial counsellor education. The article raises questions for further discussion. To what extent should the how and what of ethics teaching be woven together? How do we educate for a practice where we cannot know ahead of time whatambiguities will emerge? How much theory of ethics is needed for ethical practice? When do we begin to teach ethics? How well are we teaching an ethics of partnership that is relevant for Aotearoa

Noble metals in mid-ocean ridge volcanism: A significant fractionation of gold with respect to platinum group metals

Hydrothermal precipitates, black smoker particulate, and massive sulphide dredge samples from the Explorer Ridge on the Juan de Fuca Plate and the TAG hydrothermal area on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge were analyzed for selected noble metals including Au, Ir and Pd by radiochemical neutron activation analysis. The preliminary results indicate that gold contents may reach the ppm range although values in the neighborhood of 100 to 200 ppb are more typical. The platinum group elements (PGE) represented by Ir and Pd are typically less than 0.02 ppb and less than 2 ppb respectively. These abundances represent a significant enrichment of gold relative to the PGE in comparison with average noble metal abundances in mid-ocean ridge basalts (MORB). A partial explanation of this distinctive fractionation can be found in the concepts of sulfur-saturation of basic magma in mid-ocean ridge (MOR) settings, and the origin of MOR hydrothermal fluids. Experimental and petrological data suggest that MORBs are sulfur-saturated at the time of magma generation and that an immiscible sulfide component remains in the mantle residue. Hence, MORBs are noble metal-poor, particularly with respect to PGE. Consequently, black smoker fluids can be expected to reflect the low Ir and Pd contents of the rock column. The average Au content of MORB is 1.3 ppb, and so the rock column is not significantly enriched in Au. The generation of fluids which precipitate solids with 200 ppb Au is apparently dependent on highly efficient fluid chemistry to mobilize Au from the rock column, high Au solubility in seawater hydrothermal fluids and efficient precipitation mechanisms to coprecipitate Au on Fe, Zn and Cu sulfides. Significant differences in these parameters appear to be the ultimate cause of the strong Au-PGE fractionation in the MOR setting. It does not appear from the current data base that MOR hydrothermal fluids are significant contributors to the Ir enrichment seen in Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary sediments

Research for counselling practice

In many professional fields, including counselling and education, there have been significant efforts to bring practice and research closer together. However, for each situation and each new practice problem and responsive research question, there is bridging to be done. This paper takes the form of an autoethnographic essay: it tells a story of the first author’s engagement in a small research project that offered opportunities to negotiate her way toward collaboration and respect as a researcher in her own community. As a school counsellor, she held concerns for the positioning of a small group of Pasifika students in the school. This research aimed to consider how the school might do better in serving the educational interests of these students and their families. The article focuses on the shaping effects of the research for the first author’s professional and personal life. Its argument is that her experiences as researcher have profoundly shaped the counsellor it is possible for her to be

Gender discourse, awareness, and alternative responses for men in everyday living

In this paper, the authors use examples from their experiences to explore the nuances and complexities of contemporary gender practices. They draw on discourse and positioning theories to identify the ways in which culturally dominant, and difficult to notice, gender constructions help shape everyday experiences. In addition, the authors share their view that there are benefits in developing skills in noticing contemporary practices made available by dominant gender constructions. Such noticing expands possibilities for ways of responding and relating that might produce outcomes for men and women that fit with their hopes for living

Professional regulation - The challenges

This panel discussion offered attendees an insight into experiences of statutory regulation from a psychotherapist, a social worker, a Maori viewpoint and a different experience of non-statutory regulation from the UK

Recognition, regulation, registration: Seeking the right touch

More than a decade after the passage of the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act in 2003 it is undecided whether counselling will become a state-regulated profession. This article focuses on three possible directions potentially available to NZAC and its members: state-regulation, the current status quo as a self-managing organization, or a self-regulation approach with a measure of state approval. It argues that counsellors need to be pragmatic in deciding which to support, since government policy considerations will influence the success of any direction we choose to take

Whose future? Whose choosing?: Counselling in a context of (im)possible choice.

Critically reflexive practice is at the heart of counselling, and even more so when clients come face to face with (im)possible choices. As counsellor educators, the authors show counselling practice at the edge of uncertainty. This article features a counselling context in a secondary school. It describes a fictional situation where action is called for in the midst of undecidability, at an impasse in the life of a young woman client. The article explores the aporia that confront the young woman and the counsellor, in the context of education, career, families, cultures and communities. The authors show that these explorations produced transformational questions for their teaching practice as counsellor educators

Considering counsellor education in Aotearoa New Zealand. Part 2: How might we practise?

The registration environment offers particular challenges for the identity of counselling in 21st-century Aotearoa New Zealand. Counsellor education cannot hold itself apart from such challenges as it enters what the authors suggest is a third phase in its development (see Part 1, the companion to this article, earlier in this volume). Counselling in New Zealand has spent many years investigating and debating statutory regulation, and professional associations have implemented various internal regulatory practices that have had implications for counsellor education. Counselling and counsellor education in other parts of the world, and related professions in New Zealand, have engaged more actively with registration in a variety of forms. This article describes these various regulatory activities with the intention of making visible some possible directions for counsellor education in New Zealand. While we cannot predict with any accuracy what these possible directions would each offer to counselling, our review of various forms of registration leads us to make a case for pluralism and partnership. Advocating for pluralism in counselling, Cooper and McLeod (2010) suggest that it involves both sensibility and practice. The authors of the current article explore a pluralistic sensibility, emphasising its potential to produce a professional landscape in which practices of pluralism and partnership may emerge

Grappling with ambiguity and contradiction: an examination of the role of reflexivity in coach education research

In this article, I analyse the complex process of developing a beginner coach education programme for ultimate Frisbee (ultimate) in collaboration with New Zealand Ultimate and volunteer coaches within New Zealand’s ultimate community. I construct a reflexive account of this participatory action research project, which sought to generate pedagogically informed coach education that would benefit New Zealand’s ultimate community and meet Sport New Zealand’s coaching policies. I focus on particular contextual challenges and opportunities, such as ultimate’s lack of resourcing, and SportNZ’s Coach Development Framework, and, in a reflexive manner, consider how my biography impacted this project