School counseling for the 21st Century: challenges and opportunities

Professional School Counseling, Dec, 2001 by Pamela O. Paisley, George McMahon

Actually, today the profession has a rather stable yet flexible notion of what school counseling is. Currently, school counseling programs are increasingly anchored in proactive interventions associated with comprehensive, developmental, and collaborative approaches. These frameworks are broad enough to anticipate changes in content as well as emphasis, and flexible enough to incorporate variations in rationale, assumptions, activities, procedures, and even use of counselor time (Gysbers & Henderson, 2001). The addition of the National Standards for School Counseling Programs (Campbell & Dahir, 1997) further strengthens the position that school counseling has a widely accepted agreement concerning program priorities. The standards, as well as other programmatic efforts, at the very least, provide a common vocabulary across models to articulate the purpose, content, and scope of school counseling for a variety of stakeholders.

Partnerships for change. In order to effectively determine priorities to meet the needs of today's students, collaborative efforts between school counselors and other stakeholders are a necessary component of school counseling programs. As school counselors shape their programs for the 21st Century, there will be many exciting, interesting and appropriate interventions and components that could be implemented. It will be critical, however, for school counselors to realize that they cannot do it all, and they can do very little of it alone. One of the most exciting aspects of current initiatives in school counseling has to do with the emphasis on partnerships for change (e.g., Fall & VanZandt, 1997; Hayes, Paisley, Phelps, Pearson, & Salter, 1997; Murphy et al., 1998; Osborne & Collison, 1998; Walsh, Howard, & Buckley, 1999). Collaboration is not new to school counseling; however, it seems to have been vastly underutilized. School counselors, like many human service professionals, were prepared in isolation, with an emphasis on differences between professions and specialties (Osborne & Collison, 1998). While this artificial separation may help prospective counselors to conceptualize differences, it is not a very efficient or effective practice in the real world.

With the ratios that school counselors face, most quickly recognize that they cannot do the work alone. In schools today, there are simply not enough school counselors to handle all the needs of the students (Walsh et al., 1999), and there is no reason to assume this trend will change in the near future. Through collaborative working relationships, school counselors can connect with other school personnel, counselor educators, parents, and community counselors and leaders so that they may combine their efforts and collectively meet the needs of the students.

Boundary setting. An additional consideration for school counselors in developing effective programs is the necessity of setting appropriate professional boundaries within school systems. With the increasing demands placed on school counselors, it is crucial that school counselors focus their role within the school to effectively and efficiently meet the academic, career, and personal/social needs of students. This means school counselors must educate and reeducate those with whom they work concerning the appropriate and inappropriate roles and tasks of school counselors and be able to limit time spent performing noncounseling duties and participating in ineffective or inefficient interventions. As part of this educational process, school counselors must demonstrate to school administrators the cost effectiveness of spending more time performing duties related to counseling and student development. School counselors can utilize systematic and intentional program planning that is supported by data to help clarify those roles and priorities that best meet students' needs. In addition, school counselors will need their best human relations and assertiveness skills to maintain these professional boundaries within what is often a political environment.