The need for developing counselling/teaching tools to promote rational thinking

• Main Authors: Alias, Nurul Fitriah, Syed Mustafa, Sharifah Muzlia, Ahmad, Zaiton
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: LB1603 Secondary Education. High schools
• Online Access: http://repo.uum.edu.my/24616/1/SICONSEM%202017%20198%20200.pdf; http://repo.uum.edu.my/24616/
• Institution: Universiti Utara Malaysia

Purpose - The present study was conducted in order to examine the need to develop counseling/ teaching tools aimed at explaining the concept of ABCDE to clients or students. The counseling/ teaching tools will connect the theoretical concepts of ABCDE to practical applications. Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy (REBT) was developed by Albert Ellis in 1957 and is one of the wellknown cognitive and behavioural approaches of counselling and psychotherapy.REBT assumes that people are both “inherently rational and irrational, sensible and crazy” unless a new way of thinking is learned (Weinrach, 1980).The theory believes that human emotions stem from our belief, evaluation, interpretation and reactions to life situation.Therefore, counselors use ABCDE technique where clients are taught how to change their negative perception towards an event in a more rational and positive way.Albert Ellis used an “ABCDE” mnemonic or memory system to teach the basics of rational-emotive behavior therapy. The ABCDE stands for: A = Activating event. B = Beliefs (IBs & RBs).C = Consequences of B. D = Rational Debate of B. E =Effective/expected new behaviors (new emotion and new actions).The concepts of ABCDE techniques can be difficult to explain to clients or students. Using only verbal descriptions can take time for the clients or students to comprehend the concepts.The counseling/teaching tools are transformation from theory to practical products.Instead of using traditional method of chalk and talk to explain the concepts, lecturers or counselors can use the tools to show the sequence of steps from A to E. Therefore, the counselling/teaching tools will make learning the technique more fun, easy to understand, and take less time to comprehend. There are three objectives of this study: (1) to find out whether the concept of ABCDE is difficult to explain and understand, (2) to determine if there is a need to develop the counselling/teaching tools for ABCDE technique, and (3) to explore the marketability of the counselling tools.