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"Speech." This course is especially useful for counselor-students with minimal familiarity with habilitative and rehabilitative aspects of deafness. It covers the role of speech, hearing, and language in human communication. While communicative disorders are covered, primary emphasis is placed on the normative aspects of speech, hearing, and language.

"Audiology." This course is specific to rehabilitative aspects of the deaf and hard of hearing. Emphasis is on pathologies of the hearing mechanism and their auditory manifestations, evaluation and applications of audiological diagnostic procedures, and treatment aspects, e.g., aural (hearing aid) training and speech-reading skill development.

"Rehabilitation of the Adult Deaf." This course includes an indepth study of all communication methods used by the deaf, manual and oral. An overview of research and literature pertaining to communication among the deaf is made. Special emphasis is placed on the examination of the relationships between manual and oral skills and social, mental, emotional, educational, vocational, and family adjustment.

"Observation and Participation." This course is designed to give the counselor-student opportunity to observe and participate in the work of professionals actually working with the deaf child and deaf adult. The counselor-student will observe the communicative interactions of audiologists, otologists, speech therapists, vocational rehabilitation counselors, vocational evaluators, and others with their deaf clients. For example, the speech therapist, audiologist, and a vocational evaluator in the University of Arizona Rehabilitation Center use manual methods of communication when needed with their deaf clients. The counselor-student is in an excellent position to compare the effectiveness of these specialists who can communicate more readily with the deaf with those who cannot.

"Practicum." It has been mentioned previously in this chapter that the counselor-student in the University of Arizona program learns to communicate with deaf individuals by actually counseling them and that he is given ample opportunity to do this. To repeat briefly, professionally supervised individual and group counseling is available to the counselor-student at the Rehabilitation Center and at the Arizona School for the Deaf and Blind. All that can be added here is that all counselor-students are encouraged to meet and mingle with the adult deaf in the community, e.g., visit their clubs, their homes. To join them in their individual and group activities is the only way to learn to communicate effectively with them, and relevant communication is a prerequisite for understanding them, which all professional counselors must do before they can counsel the deaf.

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Additional Aspects of Training

In addition to the two main areas of special preparation, there are some other aspects of the preparation of counselors of deaf people that deserve attention. The first is in the area of community relations and the second is in the area of psychological testing.

Community Relations. The likelihood that a counselor for the deaf will function solely as a psychological counselor is remote. This will be the case for counselors in Division of Vocational Rehabilitation agencies for the most part (Tully, 1970) and very probably the case for counselors in other settings. The chief reason for this is that the counselor, in addition to his counseling of individual clients, will be expected to keep records, write reports, attend staff meetings, and so on. In a sentence, the counselor must have some administrative ability.

Although all counselors for the deaf must have this administrative training, it does not distinguish them from any professional counselor who also must have it. What does make the counselor for the deaf stand out is that he may be one of a very few people in the community who is an authentic expert on deafness and deaf people. When this is the case, it is the counselor's responsibility to share his expertise not only with his clients, the client's family, or others who have a claim on the client, but also with the general community. In effect, the counselor must work for community understanding and acceptance of deaf people as a group. For example, he must work with agencies or groups controlled by deaf persons themselves and with other agencies and organizations that are in contact with and purport to serve deaf people in some manner.

In order for the counselor to intervene actively and specifically in what usually will be complex and broad community situations he must be skilled in interpersonal relations. Basically this requires that he understand, accept, and work within the limitations of other people, especially with respect to what people in any given community do not know or understand about deafness and deaf people.

Besides giving counselor-students a thorough understanding of the facts related to the abilities and capacities of deaf people and their limitations, all counselor-for-the-deaf training programs should also give the counselor-student the skill to interpret and present this relevant knowl edge to the community without alienating that community.

Psychological Testing. The professional counselor for the deaf is expected to be as technically skillful as any professional counselor with respect to understanding, administering, and interpreting test results. Only by having this technical skill can the counselor begin to understand why

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certain tests may or may not be used fruitfully with deaf children and adults. No counselor-training program should eliminate this requirement because of the oft repeated ideas that (1) few tests have been constructed that can be used solely with deaf persons; (2) most tests are designed to measure various traits or attributes of sense-intact persons and so are verbally loaded and cannot work with language-impoverished deaf people; (3) special knowledge of deafness, deaf people, and their community and language problems provides a counselor with special insight that precludes the need for testing skill.

Certainly, it is a well-known fact that few tests have been fashioned for exclusive use with the deaf. There should be no refutation of this. However, more of such tests could and should be developed. The people most likely to do this are those who have sound knowledge of the language and communication strengths and weaknesses of the deaf and a thorough understanding of general test construction, administration, and interpretation principles. The counselor for the deaf should be expected to be one of these people.

It also is true that most tests are verbally oriented and therefore their indiscriminate use with deaf persons can be damaging. But, it is also true that some of these tests, if used judiciously and with understanding of the needs of the deaf client, can be very useful (Brenner and Thompson, 1967; Falberg, 1967; Vernon, 1967a).

While it may be true that in some instances counselors who have acquired sound knowledge of deafness and deaf people also have acquired special insight about them, it is naïve to believe that this insight renders testing skill irrelevant. Testing skills, used judiciously with selected tests, can enhance this insight and, in many cases, validate it since tests are constructed to yield objective information about the person tested.

Counselors should be familiar with several important implications that have emerged from that body of research which has focused on assessment of the "deaf personality." For example, Donoghue (1970) in his overview of this research, has clearly shown the limitations of the projective tests used in these investigations-Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, Rorschach, Thematic Apperception...:

... the results attained to date in research may not be presenting a valid picture of this (deaf) subculture's personality structure. Possibly part of the onus of these findings can be laid at the door of the tests themselves. As was indicated, projective tests have never been fully validated and objectively tested for reliability. What statistical procedures have been used in an effort to provide something more solid than an examiner's sometimes nebulous clinical judgments are

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still but records of subjective interpretations, and hence, only slightly more useful. (p. 6)

With respect to the special attributes needed by those who test deaf people, Donogue (1970) has underscored the importance of counselorcommunication proficiency in this particular area:

The competent tester should possess at least two attributes primarily: (1) he should be well versed in all communication techniques utilized by the deaf person he tests. By this, it is also implied that the limitation of each of these techniques should be recognized and accounted for. As an example, some of the research using the Rorschach while depending on speechreading ignored that the best of lipreaders understand but 25% of what is said. Obviously, failing to acknowledge this belies the illusion of competent testing; (2) the tester should be able to identify closely with the deaf, i.e., exhibit some degree of empathy. (p. 6)

In Conclusion

In this section we have tried to describe in some detail some of the qualifications and standards that should be required of all counselors who work with deaf persons. It should not be thought that the qualifications and standards mentioned here are all that is needed to ensure professional competence. There may be others that are unknown to or overlooked by the writer. The suggestions in this section should instead be thought of as a preliminary overview of what we believe to be some of the most basic qualifications and standards for counselors who work with deaf people.

References

Adler, E. P. (ed.). Deafness: Research and professional training programs on deafness sponsored by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. Journal of Rehabilitation of the Deaf, 1969, Monograph No. 1.

American Personnel and Guidance Association. Support personnel for the counselor: Their technical and non-technical roles and preparation. Personnel and Guidance Journal, 1967, 45, 857-61.

American Psychological Association, Division of Counseling Psychology. The role of psychology in the preparation of rehabilitation counselors. Mimeographed report of the American Psychological Association, Division of Counseling Psychology, December 1963.

American Rehabilitation Counseling Association. The professional preparation of rehabilitation counselors. Rehabilitation Counseling Bulletin, 1968, 12, 29-35.

Anderson, R. P. The rehabilitation counselor as a counselor. Journal of Rehabilitation, 1958, 24(2), 4-5.

Babbidge, H. D. Education of the deaf. A report to the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare by his Advisory Committee on the Education of the Deaf. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, 1964.

Barret-Lennard, G. T. Dimensions of therapist response as causal factors in therapeutic change. Psychological Monographs, 1962, 76 (43, Whole No. 562).

Best, H. Deafness and the deaf in the United States. New York: Macmillan Co., 1943.

Bijou, S., and Baer, D. Child Development II. New York: AppletonCentury-Crofts, 1965.

Blanton, R., and Nunnally, R. Cognitive processes in deaf and hearing adolescents and adults. In E. P. Adler (ed.), Research trends in deafness: State of the art. Washington, D.C.: Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Social and Rehabilitation Service, Office of Research and Demonstrations, 1970.

Blish, S. C. An educational and vocational counseling program for deaf students. Volta Review, 1955, 57, 385-89.

Educational and vocational guidance for the deaf. Paper read at Council for Exceptional Children Convention, Chicago, 1964. Boatner, E. B., The need of a realistic approach to the education of the deaf. Paper given to the Joint Convention of the California Association of Parents of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children, California Asso

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