Use of the Collaborative Drawing Technique in School Counseling Practicum: An Illustration of Family Systems

According to the extant school consultation literature, counselors can effectively use brief family interventions and family assessment procedures in schools as part of a collaborative consultation approach. School counselors, however, often lack training in family systems theory, because counselor training programs tend to use individual counseling models. When used in a school counselor practicum course, the Collaborative Drawing Technique (CDT; G. M. Smith, 1985) introduces counselors‐in‐training to family systems concepts and lays the foundation for postgraduate training in family systems. The authors use a case illustration to explore paradigmatic shifts in trainees' case conceptualizations as a function of their use of the CDT with a family.