A CCPTP Commitment to the Integration of Science and Practice*
[Adopted by CCPTP during its 1994 midwinter meeting in Atlanta]
Counseling psychology is a broad-based applied specialty within the science of psychology. As psychologists, we are committed to the generation and application of psychological knowledge based on scientific views of the world. As counseling psychologists, we are engaged in the pursuit and application of psychological knowledge to promote optimal development of individuals, groups, and social systems; to provide remedies for psychological difficulties and problems of living; and to enhance individual learning and education.
Counseling psychology training programs are developed from a scientist-practitioner model of education. At a core level this model prescribes the integration of science base with practice applications and the development of research that is relevant to practice. Our ideal is that each scientist will be engaged in scholarly inquiry. All counseling psychologists are expected to develop critical thinking skills and be sufficiently skeptical regardless of professional goals.** We believe that an attitude of scholarly inquiry is critical to all activities of those educated in the scientist-practitioner model..p> We are committed to participate in the further development and refinements of knowledge, whether for practice in the field or for elaborating basic psychological processes. We are committed to utilize diverse research strategies and to employ rigorous logical and analytic methods. Through professional publications and meetings, counseling psychology will support the sharing of knowledge gained through multiple forms of research and scholarly inquiry.
To accomplish these goals, and following the recommendations of the Task Force on Integrating Science and Practice in Counseling Psychology,*** the Council of Counseling Psychology Training Programs urges each training program to (1) create an environment that fosters scientific attitude toward all counseling tasks along the science-practice continuum; (2) undertake curriculum review and revision to strengthen science-practice skills; (3) increase the production and consumption of both theory and research through professional publications of faculty, students, and alumni; and (4) sponsor professional exchanges at regional and national meetings.
*This material is excerpted from several sources summarized in Heppner et al (1992), Research Design in Counseling, Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.
**From Gelso, C., & Fretz, B. (1992), Counseling Psychology. Orlando, FL: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich.
***A summary of this report is found in Heppner et al (1992), The Counseling Psychologist, 20, 107 - 122.
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