NDEA Participants Prepared for Inner‐City Counseling: A Ten‐Year Follow‐Up

Abstract

This article presents a ten-year follow-up of 22 former participants in a National Defense Education Act (NDEA) inner-city counseling and guidance institute. The study reveals that 13 respondents have served as counselors in inner-city secondary schools for an average of 7.6 postinstitute years, and several are currently functioning in positions other than that of a counselor. A majority of respondents however, seem to be involved in work activity related to counseling. Most felt that the objectives of the NDEA institute were achieved, and most revealed a positive view of the Institute's activities and curriculum after 10 years.The National Defense Education Act (NDEA) of 1958 spawned the development of many NDEA Guidance and Counseling Institutes at vanous institutions throughout the nation. These funded projects had vanous focuses, but were generally aimed at improving the educational experiences of prospective and/or in-service counselors. Follow-up studies of such institutes have usually sought to examine postinstitute attitudes and values of former institute participants on the basis of various standardized instruments (Bernos, 1966; Munger, Myers, & Brown, 1963; Munger 8c Johnson, 1960;Rochester, 1967;Rochester & Cottingham, 1969;and Rochester & Hopke, 1969). Such studies have also been relatively short-term, as they were usually one, two, or three-year postinstitute studies.A two-year postinstitute study by Munger, Brown, & Needham (1964) departed from the above pattern of studies by examining the degree to which former institute participants were using their counseling preparation. The study revealed that 20 of the 24 respondents were secondary-school counselors and that 20 had also earned the master's degree. The former participants seemed to value the practicum as the most meaningful Institute experience. Concurrently they indicated that "the cooperativeness and permissiveness of the Institute created a climate that enabled them to realize desired personal goals during the training period" (Munger et al., 1964, p. 990 50 COUNSELOR EDUCATION AND SUPERVISION

Career Patterns of NDEA Elementary School Counselors

“…These counselors would be in the vanguard of a new guidance movement. Walton (1980), in a lO-year follow-up of 22 individuals who were participants in a 1968-69 NDEA Counseling and Guidance Institute-Inner City, found that 59% of the enrollees had experiences as secondary school counselors in inner city schools but that currently the majority of the respondents did not work as secondary school counselors. Ginzberg (1966) believes that most career patterns are either straight, where a person enters and remains in one field and performs essentially the same type of work, or broad, where one shifts fields or performs different functions within the same field.…”