Comprehensive guidance and counseling programs and the development of multicultural student-citizens

Professional School Counseling, Dec, 2002 by Christopher Sink

The ultimate responsibility for education is a civic not a private one. (Selbourne, 1994, p. 216)

Education not only makes democracy possible; it also makes it essential. (Galbraith, 1997, p. 71)

There is a chronic failure to provide reasoning and citizenship skills among all students. (Fraser, 2001, p. 330)

A consistent element in the social-moral montage of U.S. schooling is the attempt to cultivate "good" student-citizens (Anderson, Avery, Pederson, Smith, & Sullivan, 1997; Pangle & Pangle, 2000). For instance, notable 18th-century pundits such as John Adams, Benjamin Rush, and Noah Webster (see, e.g., Fraser, 2001, for a historical perspective) strongly promoted this goal. Even though the external impetus for citizenship education appeared to wane during the turbulent 1960s and 70s, contemporary authors and policymakers on all sides of the political spectrum remain convinced that school curriculum and pedagogy should, in part, aid students to engage in and contribute to society's democratic processes (Gutmann, 2000; National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983). Similarly, in a recent article on the future direction of the school counseling profession, Sink (2002) recommended that counselors should be more closely involved in this agenda.

This article addresses the valuable role comprehensive guidance and counseling programs (CGCP) can play in developing multicultural student-citizens. More specifically, after contextualizing citizenship education in relationship to the advancement of the school counseling profession, I provide a rationale for including this domain within CGCPs. Second, the concept of multicultural citizenship is defined and clarified. Third, various characteristics of multicultural student-citizens are enumerated. Finally, I offer practical implementation strategies for school counselors.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT--SCHOOL COUNSELING AND CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION

Reminiscent of various disciplines over the past century, school counseling in the United States has gradually evolved in three general stages (e.g., Gysbers & Henderson, 2000, 2001; Herr, 2001; Myrick, 1997). Summarized briefly, the initial phase (1910s to 1950s) deployed a "position" approach, whereby guidance personnel (i.e., mostly vocational and classroom teachers) dispensed vocational and career information to high school students with the goal focused largely on job preparation and maintenance (Gysbers & Henderson). Interestingly, while citizenship education was not a component of the guidance curriculum and students' psychosocial and psychoeducational concerns received only minimal attention in schools, moral "fitness," patriotism, and civic duties were overtly fostered primarily by social studies teachers through school-wide and classroom rituals (Anderson et al., 1997; Risinger, 1996). Furthermore, during the two world wars and the Korean conflict, school personnel encouraged students to be good citizens, but school counselors' specific roles in the process appear to be undocumented.

During the second stage (approximately 1960s to 1980s), a "services" or pupil-personnel model was instituted (Gysbers & Henderson, 2001; Herr, 2001). Secondary-level counselors and other guidance personnel (e.g., nurses, attendance officers, teachers) provided psychoeducational support and reactive services to students at risk for school failure or those experiencing personal-social difficulties. While school counselors were also offering educational and career guidance to the college- or university-bound, social studies teachers continued to provide civics lessons in their classrooms (Riley, 1997, Risinger, 1996). As in the previous stage, since classroom guidance did not target citizenship formation, school counselors presumably had little influence on nurturing these skills in students.

By the late 1970s and early 1980s, several prominent school counseling and career education researchers (e.g., Norman Gysbers, Donald Dinkmeyer, Edwin Herr) maintained that a philosophical reorientation in the profession was badly needed. The antecedents for these clarion calls are well documented in multiple publications (e.g., Dinkmeyer & Caldwell, 1970; Gysbers & Henderson, 2000, 2001; Herr, 2001; Myrick, 1997; Paisley & Borders, 1995; VanZandt & Hayslip, 2001). As a result, the CGCP movement emerged as a viable alternative to a "services" orientation.

For those who are unacquainted with this programmatic approach, a CGCP is a competency-based programmatic approach (Johnson & Whitfield, 1991) which attempts to be multisystemic, collaborative, developmental, prevention-minded, and educative (Borders & Drury, 1992; Campbell & Dahir, 1997; Clark & Stone, 2000; Gysbers & Henderson, 2000, 2001; Henderson & Gysbers, 1998; Keys & Lockhart, 1999; Myrick, 1997; Neukrug, Barr, Hoffman, & Kaplan, 1993; Olson & Perrone, 1991; Paisley, 2001; Paisley & Benshoff, 1996; Paisley & Hubbard, 1994; Paisley & Peace, 1995; Thompson, 2002). By the late 1990s, this programmatic view had become the most widely used organizational framework for the profession (Sink & MacDonald, 1998), endorsed by the American School Counselor Association (ASCA, 1997, 1999a, 1999b; Campbell & Dahir; Dahir, 2001; Dahir, Sheldon, & Valiga, 1999; Wittmer, 2000a, 2000b) and numerous state school counseling organizations. Despite the paucity of nationwide efficacy studies, empirical research conducted in Missouri (Gysbers & Henderson, 2000; Lapan, 2001; Lapan, Gysbers, & Petroski, 2001) and Washington (Sink & Robinson, 2002) has yielded promising results. Other recent studies on CGCPs revealed that the program implementation poses major challenges for K-12 counselors (Sink & Yillik-Downer, 2001) and numerous state models lack credible documentation of their theoretical underpinnings (MacDonald & Sink, 1999).