effort seemed to intensify the total effect achieved. There was more thinking through of the implications of new ideas, more rapid acquisition of knowledge, more rapid improvement of skills. To sum up, the distinguishing characteristics of the Counseling and Guidance Training Institutes were all designed to produce a focused, concentrated, intensive educational experience for each participant. The aim was to make this period of a few weeks stand out in each enrollee's life as a distinctive period with an unusual growthstimulating effect on his professional development. Ambitious as this undertaking sounds, there is evidence that it was to a considerable extent accomplished. Some Characteristics of Institutes Let us turn now to some of the facts that can be counted and tabulated. Fifty institutes, serving a total of 2,210 enrollees, were held in the summer of 1959. There was some variation in length, depending primarily on summer school practices in the institutions where they were held. Table 1 shows the distribution, with 6- or 8-week institutes the most common. Table 1.-Lengths of Short-Term Institutes Held in the Summer of 1959 The institutes varied much more in size. Table 2 shows this distribution. While the median enrollment is 38, many institutes were planned for considerably smaller numbers and 3 for very much larger numbers. This variation in size was, of course, related to objectives. It is easier to provide practicum experience for the improving of interviewing skills if not too many trainees must be supervised. Background knowledge can more easily be transmitted to larger groups. Some of the larger institutes did give practicum training, however, and many worked out ingenious ways of dividing the total group into smaller work groups for part of the day's activities. Several directors thought that institute enrollment should not be too large for the most effective work. But there is no consensus as yet about just what is the optimum size for any one kind of program. 551713 0-60 Institutes also differed from one another in the level at which they were pitched. The majority were designed for counselors and teachers with a limited amount of previous graduate work in areas related to guidance. Institutes at the advanced level, designed for teachers who had achieved or nearly achieved a master's degree, were set up only for those with some gap in their training that needed to be filled, in order for them to function effectively as high school counselors. For example, some enrollees had taken a considerable number of guidance courses, but had never had supervised counseling experience. The institute practicum courses were very valuable to such advanced students. Other enrollees had missed the kind of intensive work on the statistical aspects of mental measurement that one needs for interpreting test results to students and their parents. In many cases institute courses filled in this gap. Other enrollees were teachers with master's degrees in some field other than guidance. It is obvious that a teacher who is to do counseling needs training in this area, even though he has done advanced graduate work in history, mathematics, or music. Because there was a great deal of variability in the educational background of enrollees at most of the institutes, regardless of their level of experience, a breakdown of the 50 institutes according to level would not be very meaningful. Institute programs were built around the question: "What do these enrollees need to learn?" rather than the question: "What level of training have these enrollees reached?" Institutes were held in many different kinds of colleges and universities, in all regions of the United States, although not in all States. While State universities appear on the list more frequently than any other type of institution, independent and church-related schools, as well as teachers colleges, are also included. As the many persons who helped to plan and carry out this new program under the National Defense Education Act looked back upon its first year, they could take pride in the fact that policies had been formulated, a general plan for an accelerated kind of counselor education had taken shape, and 50 Counseling and Guidance Training Institutes had actually been held. |