Advanced School and Career

Counseling
By: Moges Ayele (PhD) & Mr. Abera
Getachew
 Introduction to the Field of School
Counseling
• History of School Counseling
• School counselors are members of an
expanded profession of practitioners who
work in a variety of settings.
– mental-health centers, family clinics, military
services, hospitals, businesses, schools, and
colleges
• School counseling is a specialty field that has its
roots in the vocational guidance movement of
the Industrial revolution during the late 19th
and early 20th centuries.
• The Counseling Profession(In General)
• The exact beginning of the counseling
profession is unknown.
• Its roots may be found in a range of helping
relationships.
• The counseling profession evolved from
traditions and practices to help people:
– formally assess their needs,
– design interventions, and provide services to assist
people in identifying issues,
– developing self-awareness,
– making life-altering decisions,
– solving problems, and
– establishing healthy personal and social
relationships.
• Discussion Points
• What historical factors do you think underlie
the initiation of school counseling in the
West? What about the situation of school
counseling in Ethiopia?
• What do you think are the world events that
shaped direction and momentum in the
counseling profession?
• School Counseling
• Before the 20th century in American schools,
classroom teachers provided guidance to
students for their social, personal, vocational,
and in many cases, spiritual development.
• Emphasis on vocational guidance was an
important part of the early response to
industrialization.
• Leaders of the early guidance movement included
Jesse B. Davis in Michigan, Frank Goodwin in Ohio,
Anna Reed in Washington, Frank Parsons in
Massachusetts, and Eli Weaver in New York.
• Frank Parsons, the “Father of Guidance,” is
considered to have started the guidance movement
in the United States.
• In 1908, he established the Boston Vocational
Bureau to assist young men in choosing their
careers.
• The focus of the guidance programs on
student development formed the early years
of what we know today as the school
counseling profession.
• It is noteworthy that the school counseling
profession throughout the years has
continually addressed aspects of student
development.
• Influential Factors
• The testing movement contributed to the
development of approaches to guidance and
counseling that focused on measurement of
students’ traits and characteristics in the process of
selecting vocational goals and planning career
directions.
• In 1946, the U.S. Congress passed the George–
Barden Act, which allocated financial support for
guidance and counseling services in schools.
• This legislation initiated the availability of
funds and resources for state education
supervisors, local school systems, and
practicing school counselors.
• The next major world event to influence
American education and the school counseling
profession was the launching of the first
unmanned satellite, Sputnik I, by the Soviet
Union in 1957.
• Public fear, political criticism, and educational
debate culminated in the passage of Public
Law 85-864, called the National Defense
Education Act of 1958 (NDEA).
• The bill provided direction and funding to
– improve assessment of student abilities,
– create systems for identifying students’ potential
(particularly in math, science, and foreign
language) early in their school years,
– and encourage scholarships
– and other financial incentives to enable motivated
and talented high school graduates to attend
college.
• Academic, Career, and Personal/Social
Development
• The work of Carl Rogers in the 1950s fueled the
development of new theories of counseling and
approaches to professional helping.
• Various counseling approaches developed during
the 1960s and 1970s encouraged counselors to
consider broader student development issues.
• With this change in direction, the school
counseling profession brought together three
main developmental aspects that separately
had defined the role of counselors in schools
up to this point in time.
• Now the profession advocated for programs of
services to address the academic, career, and
personal/social development of students.
• In addition, this new direction encouraged the
expansion of services to include all students in the
schools.
• According to ASCA, school counselors work with all
students, including those who are considered at-risk
and those with special needs. They are specialists in
human behavior and relationships who provide
assistance to students through four primary
interventions: counseling (individual and group),
large group guidance, consultation, and coordination.
• Discussion Points
• How important is counseling service in
elementary schools? Do we need counseling
services in elementary schools? If yes, why? If
not, why?
• How do you see the feasibility of initiating
counseling service in elementary schools of
Ethiopia? Discuss the possibilities and the
challenges.
• The beginning of elementary school guidance
and counseling has occurred as early as 1910
in the Boston schools where teachers were
appointed counselors.
• But it remained undeveloped until 1920s and
1930s when William Burnham began focusing
on counseling in elementary schools.
• In early 1960s schools witnessed an increase in the
number of counselors employed for elementary
school programs.
• The early elementary school counselors performed
functions such as:
– providing individual counseling with students;
– conferring with teachers and parents about children’s
needs, developmental characteristics, and school progress;
and
– referring students and their families to community
agencies.
• Another Influence
• Publication of the book A Nation at Risk in 1983 by
the National Commission of Excellence in
Education has propelled the United States into an
accountability mode known as the effective schools
movement, which has guided
– how schools function,
– teacher preparation programs,
– and other aspects of American education including the
school counseling profession.
• Comprehensive School Counseling Programs
• Counselors and schools are encouraged to
adopt a philosophy of program planning,
organization, implementation, and evaluation.
Within such a framework, some common
processes and services are used by school
counselors and these processes and services
help define and describe the nature and scope
of a comprehensive school counseling program.
• In theory and practice, a comprehensive
program is designed and developed around
the two broad goals such as:
– managing intervention demands and
– programming for prevention.
• Discussion Points
• What do you think distinguish counselors who
practice in educational settings from
counselors who work in clinical environments?
• List and discuss the functions of school
counselors or what are the roles and activities
of school counselors? (devise the job
description of school counselors)
• Moving Toward Standards and Models
• For too many years, and for as long as the
school counseling profession has existed, the
scope and sequence of services delivered have
been defined and influenced by forces outside
of the profession more than by the profession
itself
• Confusion existed as to what actually
constituted a school counseling program and
what role the school counselor assumed in a
school setting.
• In today’s 21st-century, professional school
counselor is a systemic change agent.
• School counselors use leadership, advocacy,
collaboration and teaming, and data-driven
decision making skills to become the academic
conscience of the school, insuring that the
school remains focused on student
achievement and accepts responsibility for
student outcomes.
• National standards-based school counseling
programs are intended to help students
develop attitudes, knowledge, and skills in
academic, career, and personal/social
development that are needed in today’s and
tomorrow’s world.
• National Standards for School Counseling
Programs
• Academic
– Students will acquire the attitudes, knowledge, and
skills contributing to effective learning in school and
across the lifespan.
– Students will complete school with the academic
preparation essential to choose from a wide range
of substantial post-secondary options, including
college.
 – Students will understand the relationship of
academics to the world of work and to life at
home and in the community.
• Career
– Students will acquire the skills to investigate the
world of work in relation to knowledge of self and
to make informed career decisions.
– Students will employ strategies to achieve future
career goals with success and satisfaction.
 – Students will understand the relationship between
personal qualities, education, training and the
world of work.
• Personal/Social
– Students will acquire the knowledge, attitudes and
interpersonal skills to help them understand and
respect self and others.
– Students will make decisions, set goals, and take
necessary action to achieve goals.
– Students will understand safety and survival skills.
• The essential components of successful and
effective comprehensive school counseling
programs involve:
– (a) Foundation and Philosophy,
– (b) Management,
– (c) Delivery, and
– (d) Accountability.
• The Foundation of the program describes the
what of the program and discusses what every
student should know and be able to do. The
foundation of the program, based on the
National Standards, highlights the importance
of a mission statement and developing a
proactive belief system to ensure that every
student will benefit from the school
counseling program.
• Delivery monitors how the program will be
implemented and defines the components of
the comprehensive program—that is,
guidance curriculum, individual planning with
students, responsive services, and system
support.
– 1. school counseling curriculum (e.g., structured
groups, classroom guidance, advisory programs);
– 2. individual planning with students (e.g., advising,
assessment, placement, academic, career and
personal/social goal setting, and follow up);
– 3. responsive services (e.g., individual and group
counseling, consultation, and referral); and,
– 4. system support (e.g., program management,
coordination of services, community outreach,
and public relations).
• Management addresses the when, the why,
and on what authority the program is
delivered. This section also presents the
organizational processes and tools needed to
deliver a comprehensive school counseling
program. The model presents sample
agreements of responsibility, data application,
and action plans. Time and task analysis tools
are also presented.
• Accountability answers the question: “How
are students different as a result of the school
counseling program?” The ASCA National
Model encourages school counselors to
demonstrate accountability by presenting the
effectiveness of their work in measurable
terms such as impact over time, performance
evaluation, and undertaking a program audit.
Student Accomplishment: Equity and the
School Counselor’s Role
• Discussion points
• How do you see the differential role of families
SES in teaching students social skills necessary
for school success? Base your discussion on
the Ethiopian circumstances.
• In our increasingly complex society, all
children are coming to school with fewer
social supports than they had a generation
ago. Is this true for Ethiopia? Discuss
• Accomplishment, Achievement, Success
• Minority Students
• How do you see the minority student
achievement gap?
• In Ethiopian context who are minority
students?
• The effectiveness of a school and district is
often measured
– by the percentage of children who go on to highly
competitive higher institutions, which increasingly
use grade point averages, challenging core
academic courses, and standardized scores as
their criteria for admissions.
• Obviously, academic proficiency is one
measure of accomplishment; however, it is not
the only useful measure.
• What other measures of accomplishment do
we have?
• Accomplishment is developing the awareness,
knowledge, and skills to become an effective
citizen in a pluralistic society.
• How do you think the academic achievement
is different from accomplishment?
• Social Class and School Counseling
• The way an individual sees his or her current situation
and makes meaning of poverty affects that person’s
psychological outlook and well-being and not the
poverty itself. Discuss
• Discuss how social class is linked to developmental
outcomes in children and adolescents.
• How do you think school counselors consider social
class while they are working in the area of
developmental and vocational guidance? Discuss
• Disability and School Counseling
• How do you think children and adolescents
with disability can be treated in school
counseling program? What is the psychosocial
impact of having a disability? How do you
think school counselors can enhance the
internal motivation of students with
disabilities?
• Process Model of Minority Student
Achievement
• Three major categories of factors interact to
predict minority student achievement: social
stratification (e.g., class), contextual factors
(e.g., parental involvement), and personal
factors (e.g., social competence).
• Social Stratification (social class, gender,
discrimination)
• These factors are associated with the groups into
which a person is born, which have, over time,
regulated those group members to a particular
status within a certain society that is reinforced
by the values and practices of that society
• It is apparent that socioeconomic status can
protect a child or put a child at risk.
• The gap between boys’ and girls’ academic
performances is significantly reduced.
• Contextual Factors
• Individuals develop within a complex weave of
distal and proximal variables.
• Three contextual factors investigated were
– (a) parental involvement,
– (b) school and teacher quality, and
– (c) a caring and committed community, both within and
outside of the school
• Parental involvement
• There is evidence that the more a parent
attends to his or her child’s academic progress,
the better that child will do in school.
• What factors do you think correlate with
parental involvement in child’s schooling?
• An important focus of an effective school
counseling program with a focus on equity will
be to develop strategies to increase parental
involvement in the school and provide training
in parenting techniques that facilitate student
accomplishment.
• School and teacher quality
• Student performance is closely related to the
quality of a school in terms of enriched
curricular offerings, safety of the school,
student/teacher ratio, and extracurricular
activities.
• Student performance is also closely related to
the percentage of well trained and
experienced teachers on the staff of a school.
• Caring school and community
• There is a growing body of evidence to show
that schools that facilitate connections within
classrooms (e.g., between faculty and
students, and with the community at large)
have better academic performance than
schools that have not created this type of
community.
• Personal Factors
• In addition to social stratification and
contextual factors, personal factors could
explain the academic performance of minority
students.
• Let us divert our attention from minority
students’ accomplishment for some time and
focus on personal/social development of all
students.
• Discuss about personal/social development of
students. Define what personal/social
development is and how school counselors
need to work to enhance students’
personal/social development.
• Discuss the role of the following in promoting
personal/social development of students and
how you view these in Ethiopian schools at
present.
– character education, moral development,
emotional intelligence, self-efficacy, self-esteem
and other-esteem, decision making, assertiveness,
anger management, conflict resolution, and goal
setting
• Minorities who perform well in school have
overcome significant risk factors and they are
resilient. In order to increase the number of
minorities who are resilient, we need to better
understand the factors that contribute to this
success.
• What do you understand about resilience?
• Personal factors that are particularly relevant
for minority students and enable them to
become resilient are intellective competence,
social skills, cultural identity, and bicultural
competence.
• Intellective competence is defined as
• systematic ways of reasoning, of inferring patterns
from one’s environment, and using them to
maintain practices and to invent new ones; highly
adaptive, rich habits of thinking; engagement in
meaningful problem solving. Academic intellective
competence is a highly specialized set of abilities
that should be acquired as the result of particular
kinds of experience over long periods of time in
schooling.
• Skills, Abilities, and Dispositions of Intellective
Competence
• Skills: Literacy and numeracy; Mathematical and
verbal reasoning; Creating, recognizing, and resolving
relationships; Problem solving from both abstract and
concrete situations, as in deductive and inductive
reasoning; Sensitivity to multiple contexts and
perspectives; Skill in accessing and managing
disparate bodies and chunks of information; Resource
recognition and utilization; and Self regulation
• Abilities and Dispositions: Perceive critically;
Explore widely; Bring rational order to chaos;
Bring knowledge and techniques to bear on
problem; Test ideas against explicit and
implicit assumptions; Value and use empirical
data; Recognize and create relationships
between concrete and abstract phenomena;
and Channel ideas and energy into productive
and prosocial activity.
• Social Skills: the better a child’s social skills,
the more effectively he or she will be able to
negotiate an ecological niche and reach
developmental milestones.
• In many cases, social skills are seen as playing
a central role in a child’s emotional health and
well-being, which also translates into positive
academic performance.
• Discussion Points
• Discuss about emotional intelligence and how
it may contribute to students’ development.
• What do you understand about cultural
identity? How relevant is it in students’
development in Ethiopia? Discuss
• Implications for School Counseling
• What works for minority students?
• Family/Parental involvement: Helping parents
learn how to be involved in schools so that
they can support their children is an important
function of a school counseling program.
• Community involvement: Effective schools
have high levels of community involvement. In
fact, schools become a focal point of a
community. Full-service schools that provide
multiple services to the community enhance
students’ accomplishments.
• Nonacademic opportunities for involvement
and success: The more students are availed
the opportunity to have success within a
school, the more they will value and
participate within the core functions of a
school.
• How do you think this can be done?
• Quality teachers with a focus on
accomplishment: Teachers who are deeply
committed to the accomplishments of
students are effective teachers with a diverse
array of learners.
• Culturally competent teachers (counselors):
Being able to differentiate teaching or
counseling services based on the context of a
child’s life allows teachers to effectively work
with a culturally diverse array of students.
• Mastery learning: Teachers who focus on the
development of intellective competence and
the mastery of context are more effective with
a diverse array of students than teachers who
teach to a theory of ability.
• Respect: It was found that students are very
responsive to levels of perceived respect.
When students feel respected and cared for,
they will actively engage in adult-mediated
activities, such as school.
• Being known: Students who feel known by the
adults in their environment are more likely to
aspire to success in that context than students
who have a sense of being anonymous.
• Facilitation of bicultural competence:
Negotiating multiple social contexts is difficult
and taxing. Schools that help students learn
and practice these skills are more effective
than those that do not.
• Physical Health and Emotional Development
• Largely children and adolescents are healthy as literatures show
and most of the health problems adolescents and children
encounter can be prevented.
• The top causes of mortality in children and adolescents were
found to be accidents, homicide and suicide.
• How do you think this condition looks like in Ethiopia? Discuss
how to prevent these problems if they prevail in the country.
• What are the physical and psychological health concerns of
children and adolescents in Ethiopia and what do you think the
role of school counselors in this regard?
• Discuss the current state of adolescents sexual behavior.
• Individual Reading Assignment
– School Based Interventions
– Working With Socio-emotional Challenges