Knowledge Formation in Systemic Counselling Trainees from Germany: A Pilot Study from a Competence-Based Perspective

This pilot study has two areas of focus. It examines how the knowledge and competences of twelve Master’s-level systemic counselling trainees are connected, and how well their own assessment of their competence corresponds to external assessment. Methodologically, three instruments were used: first, an instrument to measure their explicit knowledge; second, videos of consultations with simulated clients to measure their competence in practice; third, a self-assessment measure to explore how externally assessed competence corresponds to self-assessment. The results show no indication that knowledge is related to externally assessed competence. Furthermore, their self-assessment did not show any systematic connection to the external assessment. The study concludes that the development of systemic counselling skills is a long-term process of theory acquisition, practise, and reflection. Important reflection processes can be stimulated by self-assessment. However, such assessments are not sufficient to capture the quality and scope of competence.

Effects of Fidelity-Focused Consultation on Clinicians' Implementation: An Exploratory Multiple Baseline Design

Identification of effective consultation models could inform implementation efforts. This study examined the effects of a fidelity-focused consultation model among community-based clinicians implementing Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up. Fidelity data from 1217 sessions from 7 clinicians were examined in a multiple baseline design. In fidelity-focused consultation, clinicians received feedback from consultants' fidelity coding, and also coded their own fidelity. Clinicians' fidelity increased after fidelity-focused consultation began, but did not increase during other training periods. Fidelity was sustained for 30 months after consultation ended. Findings suggest that consultation procedures involving fidelity coding feedback and self-monitoring of fidelity may promote implementation outcomes.

Permutation Tests in the Educational and Behavioral Sciences

Over the past two decades, permutation tests (PTs) have received much attention in the educational and behavioral sciences. The aim of this article is to review the theoretical developments of PTs, the active areas in the educational and behavioral research using PTs, and the types of analysis under which PTs have been applied. We obtained 224 published articles, which included 141 theoretical articles and 83 application articles. After scrutinizing each article, we are happy to see that (1) some researchers began to advocate introducing PTs into basic statistics training; (2) computing load for PTs may be reduced dramatically by some intelligent algorithms; (3) PTs began to be applied in new areas such as studies on the relationship between brain and behavior and the relationship between gene and behavior; (4) besides simple types of analysis such as independent two-group comparison, PTs can also be carried out under more complex situations such as multivariate analysis. However, we should also notice that PTs are still mostly used for simple analyses (e.g., randomness analysis).