ABSTRACT
It can be assumed that the success of group work practice, particularly in dealing with complex problems of our troubled society, is directly related to the effectiveness of group work education. An important part of group work education is experiential learning opportunities (Euster, 1979), which increasingly include dual-purpose groups (e.g., Oxley et al., 1979; Berger, 1992). Although the use of such groups in group work education is not yet pervasive, in many other human service professions, preparation of students for work with groups includes participation in a dual-purpose group. For example, in an exhaustive review of the literature (Dies, 1980), this type of group has been identified as one of four components in the training of group psychotherapists. A more recent study (Huhn et al., 1985) has found that 80 percent of counselor education programs surveyed used such a group.
