CLINICAL INQUIRY AS SCIENTIFIC TRAINING

This article addresses the prospect of approaching clinical inquiry as a scientific activity and considering counseling practice as a context for the scientific training of the counseling psychologist. Problems in attempting to find a common ground between clinical teaching and research training are first discussed. A nonadversarial relationship between research and practice is sought by acknowledging common issues of epistemology and proposing a continuum of knowledge processes used by the scientist-practitioner in research and practice. It is proposed that scientific training needs to be defined not only by the ability to conduct formal research but also in terms of the development of those attitudes, skills, and qualities of mind that are essential to all investigative activities and acts of knowing in human inquiry. Recommendations for areas of training emphasis are made on the basis of cognitive research and the experience of teaching research, clinical inquiry, and practice as philosophically linked graduate courses. © 1991, Sage Publications. All rights reserved.