Preparing Entry‐Level Counselors for Collaboration

Over a period of 5 years, faculty members from the North Carolina State University's Counselor Education Program have integrated a curriculum enhancement to promote collaboration behaviors among program graduates across the master's degree options for training school, college, and community counselors. The School–College–Community Collaboration (SC3) idea was integrated into a 48‐credit master's degree curriculum accredited by the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs. The authors present the rationale for the training program, historical background, program enhancement content, evaluation findings and faculty responses, and future plans for the SC3 enhancement program.     

School Counselors as Supervisors: An Integrated Approach for Supervising School Counseling Interns

This article proposes an approach for supervising school counseling interns. The approach integrates supervisor roles, intern skills, and stages of the supervision process.     

Preparing School Counselors to Promote Academic Development

Reform in school counseling over the last decade has focused on how school counselors can contribute to the academic development of K–12 students. Consensus in this matter has yet to be achieved, and recommendations about how best to prepare preservice K–12 school counselors for this objective have been incomplete. The authors describe content and supervised experiences from a preservice course designed to prepare school counselors to promote student academic development.     

Collaboration between Faculty Members and School Counselors: An Experience from a Case-based Course

This article describes the experience in Spain of a specific collaboration between university teachers and school counselors, which used case-based approaches in a teacher training program. The collaboration ran for four years and involved 300 graduate students, two university teachers, and six school counselors. Three basic features enabled this collaboration: a) horizontal relationships, b) a spirit of mutual help and confidence, and c) autonomy. The outcome of the experience can be evaluated in terms of both the case-based teaching process itself and its impact on student learning and the professional development of teachers and counselors involved.     

A Social Constructivist Approach to Preparing School Counselors to Work Effectively in Urban Schools

In this article a social construction framework is used to improve the capacity of school counselors and trainees to work effectively with African American and Latina/o students in urban schools. Three key theoretical tenets of the social construction worldview are presented as a new lens for thinking about the meaning-making process of students in an urban school setting and how school counselors can support it. We offer activities to operationalize this theoretical point of view and implications for school counselor training and practice.     

Mandatory Teaching Experience for School Counselors: An Impediment to Uniform Certification Standards for School Counselors

A review of the research on the effects of teaching experience on success as a school counselor led to a conclusion that it is an unfair and unwise certification criterion.     

Counselor Educators' Experiences Preparing Preservice School Counselors: A Phenomenological Study

The authors conducted a phenomenological study to explore the experiences of 32 school counselor educators preparing preservice school counselors. Analysis of data from 3 focus groups revealed 3 themes: breadth versus depth, balancing specialties and professor partiality, and preparation versus practice. These results highlight the need for collaboration across counseling specialties at the preservice level.     

Mock Interdisciplinary Staffing: Educating for Interprofessional Collaboration

Training for interprofessional collaboration is important because professionals are increasingly required to work together in a coordinated and collaborative manner to meet the complex needs of clients. However, few published reports exist on interprofessional training for community counselors and marriage and family therapists. The authors discuss the use of a mock interdisciplinary staffing with students who are training to be counselors and marriage and family therapists. This method of instruction holds promise as an effective means of introducing students to a range of issues, including the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed for interprofessional practice.     

Preparing School Counselors to Work With Students With Disabilities

Recent literature has demonstrated increasing roles for school counselors who work with students with disabilities, but it has also suggested that school counselors are not being adequately prepared to work with these students. In this research study, the authors investigated current courses and experiences focusing on disabilities offered in school counselor education programs. Results from the 137 participants suggest that school counselor education programs are incorporating more disability content into their training programs than they were in the past. Some disability content areas are included significantly more frequently in disability courses than in counseling program courses. Conclusions and implications are discussed.     

Engaging Preservice School Counselors and Principals in Dialogue and Collaboration

School counselors should be prepared to address student concerns and school problems in collaborative ways and to work cooperatively with school principals. The authors describe an innovative seminar designed to help students in school counseling and in school administration to develop a greater appreciation of the roles, responsibilities, and perspectives of each other in their respective professions.     

Preparation for Future Collaboration: Cognitively Preparing for Learning From Collaboration

In a study investigating different ways to engage students in an individual preparation activity, we assessed learning from collaboration with a peer. Learning was measured at pretest, individual preparation, collaboration, and posttest. Two conditions were compared: generative preparation and nongenerative preparation. With no differences in knowledge at pretest, we found that students who prepared by engaging in the generative compared to the nongenerative preparation task performed worse to a statistically significant degree in both the preparation and collaboration phases. However, in a postactivity transfer task, the students performed to a similar degree as the comparison group evidencing productive failure. In addition, students in the generative condition showed greater learning gains from the preparation to the collaboration phase. We introduce the notion that generative preparation may better invoke learning mechanisms that help students to learn from subsequent collaboration.     

Developing Positive Attitudes Toward Interprofessional Collaboration Among Students in the Health Care Professions

This study examined whether attitudes toward interprofessional collaboration (Physician-Nurse, Physician-Social Worker, Nurse-Social Worker) held by medical, social work, and nursing students changed after completing an interprofessional curriculum consisting of (a) Interprofessional Education Development Session and (b) the Senior Aging and Geriatrics Educator mentoring program. The 15-item original and two modified versions of the Jefferson School of Attitudes Toward Physician-Nurse Collaboration (JSAPNC) were administered as pretest/posttest. Of the 186 participants who completed the pretest, 156 (84%) completed the posttest. Results showed that the medical students (n = 52) reported the most positive change in attitude toward all three pairs of interprofessional collaboration. Social work students (n = 55) reported the least positive attitudes toward Physician-Social Worker collaboration and nursing students (n = 49) reported the least positive attitudes toward Physician-Nurse collaboration. It is recommended to evaluate the interprofessional curriculum and other factors, such as the possible influence of the facilitator in group discussions, and that future studies include a rigorous design that monitors content of each educational session to ensure integrity across groups. Postgraduate follow-up measures could be used to enhance positive attitudes toward interprofessional collaboration.     

One School, Many Differences: An Assessment Tool for School Counselors and Multicultural Counseling

Multicultural counseling competencies (MCCs) have typically been measured with instruments designed for and normed on mental health professionals – for example, MCCTS-R; Holcomb-McCoy (Professional School Counseling 4:195–208, 2001); MCI; Sodowsky et al. (Journal of Counseling and Development 41:137–148, 1994); D’Andrea et al. (Journal of Counseling & Development 70:143–150, 1991). One published instrument specifically assesses school counselor MCCs – MCCTS-R; Holcomb-McCoy (Professional School Counseling 4:195–208, 2001) – but it does not conform to ASCA standards (2010, E.2). Following a set of validation procedures, an instrument designed to specifically assess school counselors’ multicultural counseling competencies was created that conforms to American School Counselor Association and Association for Multicultural Counseling and Development standards. Its creation is detailed here and the resulting instrument is presented for examination and consideration.     

Preparing Counselors for Work with Older People

Several indicators suggest that older persons have been accepted as one of the special populations in U.S. society with whom counselors may appropriately work and for whom counselors need special preparation. Various approaches to providing such preparation are identified, including the integrated, separate course, concentration, and interdisciplinary models. Advantages and limitations of each model are discussed. The basic competencies described in the Accreditation Manual of the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (1982) are proposed as an appropriate guide for the content of gerontological counseling curricula. Examples of how gerontological counseling topics can relate to the basic competencies are provided.     

Continuing Education for School Counselors

Recently, changes have occurred in American society and in the focus of education. Women's liberation, career education, and single-parent families are three important examples. Each example presents the counselor with expectations and problems that were not present in earlier times. Counselors who received their training 20, 10, 5, and even 3 years ago are probably not meeting present challenges as effectively as they might. Counselors need to learn new skills to meet changing conditions or run the risk of becoming ineffective or irrelevant. One model for the continuing education of counselors was described by Pulvino and Perrone (1973). This article reports on seven years of experience with that model at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.     

Preparing Counselors to Advocate for Social Justice: A Liberation Model

There are few pedagogical resources that describe how counselor educators can prepare counseling students to advocate for social justice. This article highlights a constructivist approach to social justice advocacy training called the Liberation Model. The principles of the Liberation Model are discussed, and recommendations for implementing the model in graduate counseling courses are provided. The purpose of the model is to help students develop the knowledge, awareness, and skills necessary for social justice advocacy.     

A Leadership Approach for Counselors

A leadership approach applicable for counselors and guidance directors is presented. Videotapes of groups that were given leadership problems were informally studied and a number of dimensions identified that would help counselors in developing a leadership approach appropriate for their situations. The importance of counselors recognizing that leadership skills are different from counseling skills is key to department or unit accomplishments. The importance of first estimating the maturity of the group to accomplish the task is essential in using the correct combination of task-oriented behavior and relationship-oriented behavior. A situational life-cycle approach to leadership is presented as an appropriate option for counselors to consider when they are in leadership roles.