The National Board for Certified Counselors (NBCC) is the largest counselor certification agency in the U.S. and is widely recognized as a national credential based upon training, experience, and performance on a written examination. NBCC has developed two examinations: the National Counselor Examination (NCE) and the National Career Counselor…

Couselor credentialing is a way to symbolize professionalism and high standards to the public. Its purpose is to identify counselors who are at least minimally qualified to provide counseling services. This special digest collection on credentialing counselors covers many aspects of legislation, methods, and special concerns about credentialing.…

Within the last 5 years, policymakers and practitioners have confronted the challenge of replacing many retiring educational leaders. To address this issue, standards for educators themselves have been proposed, some modeled around those of the Interstate School Leadership Licensure Consortium (ISLLC). Attention is also turning to advanced…

This digest focuses on coaching certification, its importance, its current status, and types of certification programs currently in existence. The discussion also covers the status of women coaches and the issue of national certification requirements. The list of addresses of certification programs given includes commercial agencies state…

This paper defines professional certification as a voluntary process regulated by a profession to measure competencies possessed by its practitioners. A hierarchy of motives for certification is illustrated, and its importance for the fields of adult education and human resource development (HRD) is emphasized. The evolution of the concept of…

Staff utilization, role definition and articulation, task overlap, educational requirements, certification, and status have been difficult issues within the library profession for most of this century, and remain mostly unresolved today. Over the past 20 years, library automation and declining budgets have caused the redistribution of the library…

This monograph contains four papers based on a series of lectures delivered to graduate students and faculty at Northern Illinois University between 1976 and 1979. Robert Carlson examines European adult education, especially such issues as emphasis on job training over liberal education, the danger that adult education will become a method of…

This digest summarizes the ERIC report concerning proprietary school education. Many proprietary schools offer no degrees and many of their courses are less than one year. They are profit oriented and market driven with decision making centralized in the ownership. The curricula are job-skills oriented and comprise programs in office, technology…

The training of child caregivers is a key factor in the provision of quality day care for young children. However, little is known about what types of training for day care providers are most effective in promoting children's development. Several issues related to training and credentialing need to be addressed: (1) Do day care home providers need…

Perspectives on the profession of guidance and counseling during the 1970's are discussed and reviewed. Major topics focus on licensure, government relations, counselor renewal, collective bargaining and counselor competence. Also included is a survey of the 1980's, focusing on testing programs and their potential future, emerging sex roles, and…

The purpose of this two-phase study, guided by the theory and method of interpretive interactionism, is to describe how family day care providers perceive and implement their caregiving intentions and practices. In phase 1 of the study, data were obtained from interviews with 31 providers and in phase 2, observations of 6 providers over a 10-month…

Despite much rhetoric, foreign language teacher education lacks a substantial research base. Teacher education programs in general consist of subject-matter coursework, general education requirements, and specialized educational content, domains that have remained relatively unchanged in two decades. However, recent reform movements may have a…

Although the teaching of English as a second language (ESL) is a relatively new profession, it is an old activity. Until World War II, ESL instruction in the United States was irregular. In 1940, the first ESL teachers enrolled in a University of Michigan training program based on structural or descriptive linguistics. The Army Language School…

In December 1991, the South Carolina Supreme Court ordered the State Board of Education to stop using the Education Entrance Examination (EEE) for licensing parents who want to teach their children at home. In ruling that the test's validation process did not meet a standard of reasonableness, the Court established a significant precedent for test…

This report reviews what is known about today's proprietary schools, their role in higher education, their curricula, the types of students who attend them, educational outcomes of their graduates, and the policy issues that effect them. First, the report discusses the historical aspects of how private career schools evolved from the colonial era…