Most professions are represented by one unified association, but not rehabilitation counseling. From its earliest years of professionalization, rehabilitation counseling has been represented by multiple associations. Initially, representing the discipline through multiple associations was deemed necessary to capture nuanced differences within the field. However, the existence of multiple associations has come under increasing scrutiny in the face of declining membership and a changing professional and political landscape. The lively debates of the 1970s and 1980s have more recently devolved into what seems to be an apathy induced stalemate on this issue of consolidation. The primary aim of this article is to revitalize a conversation about the future of rehabilitation counseling associations by assessing professionals’ perspectives on consolidation. Data from 2,608 rehabilitation counseling professionals indicated that the majority of participants either favored consolidating into a single association or were unsure of their choice. Fewer than 7% of respondents opposed consolidation. We conclude the article with a brief discussion of actions that are supported by the research.
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a disparate impact across demographic groups, resulting in BIPOC and disabled people experiencing transmission, hospitalization, and death at higher rates than White and non-disabled populations. However, responses within the pandemic created new avenues for access to people with disabilities, including telehealth, work from home opportunities, and virtual participation, which were the very solutions and accommodations they have been requesting, but denied, for years. The call for a "return to normal" is steeped in ableist thinking. Society was made aware of the inequities for disabled people throughout the pandemic, and flexible solutions must be retained and refined to continue the access provided during this time. As a start to a discourse on reflection and action, the authors suggest four areas to target for change toward health equity: (a) messaging and communication, (b) accessibility, (c) addressing attitudinal barriers, and (d) seeking and using the input of disabled people. The following presents an overview of each factor and action steps, with resources to guide them.Author note: Although APA style conventions and professional discourse support the use of person-first language in academic writing about disability, both person-first and identity-first language was used throughout this paper. One of the authors identifies as disabled, and we chose to use both out of respect for the disabled community about whom we speak.
Rehabilitation counseling (RC), which grew out of vocational rehabilitation legislation in 1920, has quietly developed and expanded its range of services for people with disabilities. As a smaller specialty of counseling, RC has faced challenges to being recognized and valued for its diverse expertise within the counseling field, as well as the broader social service and allied health fields. With a changing landscape of accreditation, state licensing, and service reimbursement requirements, there is now a need for guidance, leadership, and collaborative planning to preserve the vitality of the profession. The purpose of this project was to capture the positive history of the profession through its leaders, utilizing an appreciative inquiry framework, to become more aware of strengths and opportunities, to begin drafting a blueprint for the future of RC. The authors conducted semi-structured interviews with 18 leaders in rehabilitation counselor education and research. Four main themes emerged: (a) formative influences, (b) threats, (c) current assets, and (d) future direction. Focusing on the influence of threats to the RC profession, a solution-focused response model is presented toward a vision of the future of RC practice, education, and research.
The potential for unification of rehabilitation counseling professional associations has been a conceptual debate for the past several decades. In a previous article of this special issue, Phillips et al. (2022) provided quantitative data to capture the opinions of professionals on the issue of consolidation. The present study builds on those findings by providing a qualitative analysis of the rationale provided for each response from not only professional association members, but the broader rehabilitation counseling community. The analysis provides clarity about stakeholders’ rationale regarding their beliefs on rehabilitation counseling professional association consolidation. Responses were analyzed by group according to whether participants were in favor of, opposed to, or uncertain about consolidation. The majority of respondents supportive of consolidation felt it offered a pathway toward internal unity and external validation of the profession, while the main rationale from those opposed to consolidation centered on loss of distinctiveness of individual associations. Overwhelmingly, those who were undecided on consolidation cited lack of familiarity as a barrier to providing a decisive response. Implications for these results are presented.
Distance education is constantly evolving and improving. To stay current, effective online instructors must utilize the most innovative, evidence-based teaching methods available to promote student learning and satisfaction in their courses. One emerging teaching method, referred to as blended online learning (BOL), involves collaborative education across multiple university settings. In this article, we describe an inter-university educational collaboration designed to connect students from various academic institutions using the BOL teaching method. The article begins with an overview of the theoretical framework that informs the BOL method, followed by an overview of the method and its key components. Benefits of this collaborative learning effort to students, educators, universities, and the profession are also provided. The article culminates with implications for using the BOL method with rehabilitation educators, including collaborative teaching tips for working in educator and student teams.Nerlich et al.
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