III.

Name of the Subject: Disciplines and Ideas in the Applied

Social Sciences

3.1 Description:

This subject introduces some Applied Social Sciences, namely, Counseling,

Social Work, and Communication, which draw their foundation from the theories and
principles of Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, and other Social Sciences. The
subject highlights the seamless interconnectivity of the different applied social science
disciplines while focusing on the processes and applications of these applied disciplines
in critical development areas. At the end of this subject, students may now demonstrate
competencies in interacting and relating with other individuals, groups, and
communities; apply social sciences principles, practices, and tools in addressing the
development areas identified by the class; and analyze how processes in these applied
disciplines work in specific life situations.

3.2 Contents:
Course Introduction (Applied Social Sciences)
 Definition of social sciences
 Definition of applied social sciences

COUNSELING

The Discipline of Counseling

Counseling

 Definitions
 Goals
 Scope
 Core values
 Principles
Professionals and Practitioners in Counseling
 Roles, functions, and competencies of counselors
 Areas of specialization where counselors work
 Career opportunities of counselors
 Rights, Responsibilities, Accountabilities, and Code of
Ethics
Clientele and Audiences in Counseling

Characteristics and needs of various types of clientele and audiences

 Individuals
 Groups and Organizations
  Communities
Settings, Processes, Methods, and Tools in Counseling

Settings

 Government
 Private Sector
 Civil Society
 Schools
 Community
Counseling services, processes, and methods

SOCIAL WORK

The Discipline of Social Work

Social Work

 Definitions
 Goals
 Scope
 Core values
 Principles
Professionals and Practitioners in Social Work
 Roles, functions, and competencies of social workers
 Areas of specialization in which social workers work
 Career opportunities of social workers
 Rights, Responsibilities, Accountabilities, and Code of
Ethics
Clientele and Audiences in Social Work

Characteristics and needs of various types of clientele and audiences

 Individuals
 Groups and Organizations
 Communities
Settings, Processes, Methods, and Tools in Social Work

Settings

 Government
 Private Sector
 Civil Society
 Schools
 Community
Social Work services, processes, and methods
 COMMUNICATION

The Discipline of Communication

Communication

 Definitions
 Goals
 Basic elements of communication process
 Levels of Communication (from intrapersonal to mass
communication)
Professionals and Practitioners in Communication
 Roles, functions, and competencies of communicators
and journalists
 Areas of specialization in which communicators and
journalists work
 Career opportunities of communicators and journalists
 Rights, Responsibilities, Accountabilities, and Code of
Ethics
Clientele and Audiences in Communication

Characteristics and needs of various types of clientele and audiences

 Individuals
 Groups and Organizations
 Communities
Settings, Processes, Methods, and Tools in Communication

Settings

 Government
 Private Sector
 Civil Society
 Schools
 Community
Communication media channels
 Mass media
 New Media and Social media
 Telecommunications
Importance of Social Sciences
 Functions of Applied Social Sciences
 Self-development
 Persuasion
 Art and Entertainment
 News and Information
  Organizing advocacy and mobilization
 Education
 Socialization
Effects of Applied Social Sciences processes
 Awareness and knowledge, i.e., social media, self-
understanding
 Attitude and value change, i.e., disaster risk reduction
and climate change, the “bahala na” habit
 Behavioral change, i.e., power and corruption, conflict
management and peace building process, risk
assessment behavior
 Structural Change, i.e., personal and family relations,
gender, overseas migration of OFW, domestic violence,
single parenting, community life, criminality, substance
abuse
Defining the Applied Social Sciences

A branch of study that applies the different concepts, theoretical models, and
theories of the social science disciplines to help understand society and the different
problems and issues. The applied social sciences are utilized to provide alternative
solutions to the diverse problem of the society.

Three main career tracks for applied social scientist:

 Counseling. Is one of the fields of applied social sciences as an application of

the social sciences, counseling provides guidance, help, and support to
individuals who are distraught by a diverse set of problems in their lives.

Counseling can be done by the following:

 Guidance counselor and life coaching are applications of the social

sciences and these professions, expert help are given to individuals who
needed guidance or advice pertaining to their business successes,
general conditions and personal life transitions, relationships and career.
 Life coach analyzes the present condition of the client, discovers different
obstacles or challenges that a client faces, and provides a certain course
of action to make the client’s life better.
 Career counseling is needed by people who are in the process
of entering the job market, searching for possible career change, or those
wanting career advancements.
 Personal growth counseling concentrates on the evaluation of different
aspects of a client’s life.
 Social work. Practitioners help individuals, families, and groups, communities to
improve their individual and collective well-being.
 Communication Studies. Applied social science provide adequate training
for careers in the field of journalism and mass communication because of
multidisciplinary knowledge and skills that graduates learn from social sciences.

Goals of Counseling

It is the key component of individual, group, organizational and community

success-Detailed and expansive counseling goals have been identified by Gibson and
Mitchell (2003), which are as follows:

1. Development Goals - assist in meeting or advancing the clients human growth

and development including social, personal, emotional, cognitive, and physical
wellness.

2. Preventive Goals - helps the client avoid some undesired outcome.

3. Enhancement Goals - enhance special skills and abilities.

 4. Remedial Goals - assisting a client to overcome and treat an undesirable
development.

5. Exploratory Goals - examining options, testing of skills, trying new

and different activities, etc.

6. Reinforcement Goals - helps client in recognizing, that what they are doing,
thinking, and feeling is fine.

7. Cognitive Goals - involves acquiring the basic foundation of learning and

cognitive skills.

8. Physiological Goals - involves acquiring the basic understanding and habits

for good health.

9. Psychological Goals - aids in developing good social interaction skills, learning

emotional control, and developing positive self-concept.

Scope of Counseling

The wide ranges of human problems create a widened scope and field of
counseling. Broadly, the scope of counseling includes individual counseling, marital and
premarital counseling, family counseling, and community counseling. A more focused
subject matter related to scope of counseling is the 4757-15 Scope of Practice foe
Licensed Professional Counselors. It contains the rights and responsibilities of licensed
counselors including the following:

Licensed Professional Counselors may for a fee, salary, or other considerations

A. Afford counseling services to individuals, groups, organizations, or the

general public compromising of: application of clinical counseling
principles, methods, or procedures to assist individuals in
realizing effective personal, social, educational, or career development
and adjustment.
B. “apply clinical counseling principles, methods , and procedures “,
means an approach to counseling that emphasizes the counselor’s role in
systematically assisting clients through all of the following: assessing
and analyzing emotional conditions , exploring possible solutions, and
developing and providing treatment plan for mental and emotional
adjustment or development. It may include counseling, appraisal,
consulting, supervision, administration, and referral.
C. Engage in the diagnosis and treatment of mental and emotional disorders
when under the supervision of a professional clinical counselor,
psychologist, psychiatrists, independent marriage and family therapist, or
independent social worker.
D. Provide training supervision for students and registered counselor trainees
when services are within their scope of practice, which does not include
 supervision of the diagnosis and treatment of mental and emotional
disorders.

Core Values - is a key component of an organization. It has significant influence

on other organizational components, more specifically, to its members. It serves as
standards that shape the members behavior in their interaction with their clients and
other people. According to Mcleod (2003), the founders of humanistic psychology,
including Maslows and Roger, highlighted the importance of values.

Ethical Principles of counseling which are follows:

These are the ideas that underpin both personal and professional codes.

1. Autonomy of individuals

 Is based on the right to freedom of action and freedom of choice in so

far as the pursuit of these freedom does not interfere with the freedom
of others ; counseling cannot happen unless the client has made a free
choice to participate.

2. Principle of Non maleficence

 This refers to instruction to all helpers or healers that they must ,above
all, do no harm;
 Beneficence refers to the order to promote human welfare.

3. Principle of Justice

 Concerned with the fair distribution of resources and services, unless

there is some acceptable reason for treating them differently.
 For counseling, the principle has particular relevance to the question
access.

General Moral Theories

 The BACP Ethical Framework for Good Practice, drawing on virtues

perspective also identified a set of personal qualities that all
practitioners should possess: empathy, sincerity, integrity, resilience,
respect, humility, competence, fairness, wisdom and courage.

Roles and Functions of Counselors

According to Gibson and Mitchell (2003) a helping profession is composed of

members “who are especially trained and licensed to perform a unique and service for
fellow human beings”.

Roles/Functions

o Individual Assessment - Seeks to identify the characteristics and potential of

every client; promotes the client’s self -understanding and assisting counselors to
understand the client better.
 o Individual Counseling - Considers as the core activity through which other active-
ties become meaningful. It is a client–centered process that demands
confidentiality. Relationship is established between counselor and client.
o Group Counseling and Guidance - Groups are means of providing organized and
planned assistance to individuals for an array of needs. Counselor provides
assistance through group counseling and group guidance.
o Career Assistance - Counselors are called on to provide career planning and
Adjustment assistance to clients.
o Placements and Follow - A service of school counseling programs with emphasis
on educational placements in course and programs.
o Referral - It is the practice of helping the clients finds needed expert assistance
that the referring counselor cannot provide.
o Consultation - It is the process of helping a client through a third party or helping
system improves its service to its clientele.
o Research - It is necessary to advance the profession of counseling; it canprovide
empirically based data relevant to the ultimate goal of implementing effective
counseling.
o Evaluation and Accountability - Evaluation is a means of assessing
the effectiveness of counselor’s activities. Accountability is an outgrowth of
demand that schools and other tax-supported institutions be held accountable for
their actions.
o Prevention - This includes promotion of mental health through primary prevention
using a social-psychological perspective.

Competencies of Counselors

Seven distinct competence areas of counselors. There might be other areas but we will
focus on the input of McLeod (2003).

a) Interpersonal Skills - Counselors, who are competent display ability to listen,

communicate; empathize; be present; aware of nonverbal communication;
sensitive to voice quality, responsive to expressions of emotion, turn taking,
structure of time and use of language.
b) Personal beliefs and Attitude - counselors have the capacity to accept others,
belief in potential of change, awareness of ethical and moral choices and
sensitive to values held by client and self.
c) Conceptual ability - counselors have the ability to understand and assess client’s
problem; to anticipate future problems; make sense of immediate process in
terms of wider conceptual scheme to remember information about the client.
d) Personal Soundness - counselors must have no irrational beliefs that are
destructive to counseling relationships, self-confidence ,capacity to tolerate
strong of uncomfortable feelings in relation to the clients, secure personal
 boundaries, ability to be a client ; must carry no social prejudice, ethnocentrism
and authoritarianism.
e) Mastery of Techniques - counselors must have a knowledge of when and how
to carry out specific interventions, ability to assess effectiveness of the
interventions, understanding the rationale behind techniques, possession of wide
repertoire of intervention.
f) Ability to understand and work within social system - this would be compromise
of awareness of family and work relationships of client the impact of agency on
the clients, the capacity to use support networks and supervision ; sensitivity to
client from different gender, ethnicity ,sexual orientation, or age group.
g) Openness to learning and inquiry - counselors must have the capacity to
be curious about client’s backgrounds and problems; being open to new
knowledge.

Career Opportunities and Areas of Specialization of Counselors

1. Marriage and Family Counseling

– refers to the efforts to establish an encouraging relationship with couple or family and
appreciate the complications in the family system.

2. Child and Adolescent Counseling

– is a developing area of expertise in counseling profession. The counseling strategies

focus on helping children and adolescents acquire coping skills through promotion of
resiliency, positive attachment relationship, emotional and intellectual intelligence, and
other qualities that promote optional development.

3. Group Counseling

– is the dynamic field in the counseling profession. Group counseling as a practice can
be located in most counseling programs and became the essential part of counselor’s
system. Group counseling offers the following: opportunities to members to learn from
observing other group members; can functions as helpers and helps; opportunities to
discover that you others have similar concerns; members are encouraged to offer help
to others; opportunities to enhance interpersonal skills; the therapeutic climate created
similar as the client’s family origin.

4. Career Counseling

– is an evolving and challenging counseling field. This type of counseling aids individual
on decisions and planning concerning their career. The counseling approach includes
integrating theory and practice. Adopted Savickas (1996) as cited Nystul (2003)
adopted the model of Wagner (1971) on structural analysis of personality to the realm of
vocational psychology. The model consists of vocational career services, occupational
placement, vocational guidance, career counseling, career education, career therapy,
and position coaching.
 5. School Counseling

- refers to the process of reaching out students with concerns on drugs, family and
peers or gang involvement. The job requires sensitivity to individual differences and
considers diversity in enhancing educational perspective. The job requires skills on
consultation, counseling’s exceptional students and with the ability to handle problems
such as drug abuse, teenage pregnancy, divorced or single parents, dropping out of
school.

6. Mental Health Counseling

- is manifested in the challenges posed by its clientele with mental disorders. Mental
disorders include serious depression, schizophrenia, and substance abuse. Mental
health counselors have to be inventive, and creative to address these problems. The job
requires patience, humility, kindness and compassion.

Rights and Responsibilities, and Accountabilities of Counselors (MIDTERM)

Code of ethics helps counselors to remind them of their rights, responsibilities

and accountabilities in the counseling profession. The rights, responsibilities and
accountabilities of the counselors are based on the counselors associations of Code of
Conduct.

The code of ethics of the counselors is divided into seven sections, namely;
counseling relationship, confidentiality, professional responsibility, relationships with
other professionals , evaluation, assessment, interpretation, teaching ,training
supervision, research and publication. We shall only present in details three of the
seven areas, namely, counseling relationships, confidentiality, and professional
responsibility. The following three tables below provide a sample code of ethics of the
American Counseling Association.
 3.3 Photos with Caption:

The Parts of a Counselor

In this picture, it is showing the things that a counselor has like working with
individuals, groups and communities to improve mental health.

Community

These are the persons who have commonality such as norms, religion, values,
customs, or identity.
 Counseling a Rape Victim

Rape victims have undergone an experience of extreme stress that is often

sudden, unexpected, and felt to be life-threatening. So, in this picture you can see a
counselor counseling a rape victim person who’s being abused.

Mass Media Communication

Using the mass media, it can reach a large variety of audience on just a single
moment. This includes television, radio, advertising, movies, the Internet, newspapers,
magazines, and so forth. Mass media is a significant force in modern culture.
 3.4 Reflection:

I learned that in this subject known as the “Disciplines and Ideas in the Applied
Social Sciences”, this is about the counseling, the social work and the communication,
and how it is being useful on individuals, groups or an organization. The applied social
sciences are utilized to provide alternative solutions to the diverse problem of
the society.

First, let’s go on to my learnings about counseling. Counseling means giving an

advice or making recommendations of a person who has a mental illness, being a rape
victim, being abused and many traumatic event that have happened to a person’s life.
But also, counseling helps its clients to make their own decisions. A counselor is also a
problem solver and counseling involves brain washing. In counseling, there are a lot of
roles and functions, and rights and responsibilities that each of us needs to know.

Second, let’s go on to my learnings about social work. In discipline of social work,

it is closely associated with government welfare and social programs that aimed at
achieving social justice, fairness, and attainment of social equilibrium. The social work
profession promotes social change, problem solving inhuman relationship and the
empowerment and liberation of people to enhance well-being. Utilizing theories of
human behavior and social systems, social work intervenes at the points where people
interact with their environments. This includes personal care, supporting individuals with
daily living and to engage with their communities and have more interaction with others.
There’s no requirement are professional license needed to do social care. It utilizes
theories of human behavior and social systems. Principle of human rights and social
justice are fundament to social work. It is concerned with individual and personal
problems but also with broader social issues such as poverty, unemployment and
domestic violence.

Lastly, let’s move on to my learnings about communication. Communication as

an academic discipline, relates to all the ways we communicate, so it embraces a large
body of study and knowledge. The communication discipline includes both verbal and
nonverbal messages. As we know, communication happens at many levels even for
one single action, in many different ways, and for most beings, as well as certain
machines. Several, if not all, fields of study dedicate a portion of attention to
communication. I also learned that communications is an academic discipline that
covers everything, focuses especially on the distinctions between words and not-words,
people and not-people, and produces textbooks, electronic publications, and journals.

Therefore, all of these were aiming to empower students in developing

competencies in interacting and relating with other individuals, groups, and
communities; apply social science principles, practices, and tools in addressing several
appropriate development areas; and sharpen their analytical skills specifics to the
processes and life context where these applied disciplines are at work.