Educational Philosophy, Concepts, Methods, and Skills in Teaching 17 responses and running marginal comments about their entries, and have said that this constitutes an extremely important dialogue for them in their pro- fessional development. The journal is time-consuming for the students and teacher, but well worth the investment for both. The Record of Service The Record of Service is more specific than the journal. It deals with just one aspect—a specific stressor—of a practice experience, but in greater depth and at particular points during the semester. It requires a more sophisticated response than the journal and can be used most productively after students have acquired a substantial overview of practice, such as in the second semester or late in the first. In learning about helping a client with a life stressor, the student is asked to: 1. Conceptualize a life stressor. 2. Define the client’s view of it. 3. Present an assessment of the degree of fit between the client and environmen- tal strengths and limitations to deal with the life stressor. 4. Conceptualize and then evaluate and analyze the specific helping efforts over time (whatever the temporal arrangement). 5. Identify the progress (or lack thereof) being made in working on the life stressor. 6. Specify the next helping steps. The student is required to draw upon the theoretical and research literature with respect to the particular stressor and relevant practice concepts through- out the discussion or at the end of the presentation. We find doing this most helpful when students base this assignment on their own cases. An assign- ment, instructions, and excerpts from an actual Record of Service are found in appendix B of the textbook. Analysis of a Critical Incident The analysis of a critical incident is also more specific than the journal it helps students examine in greater depth one incident in the course of the helping process and the interactions between a client—an individual, family, or group— and them around a specific life stressor. The emphasis is on students’ abilities to maintain a continuing process of assessment, relating their interventions to their understanding not only of the incident itself, but also of the client’s direct