Day-to-day activities of school counselors: alignment with new directions in the field and the ASCA National Model®

Professional School Counseling, April, 2007 by Mary E. Walsh, James G. Barrett, Jillian DePaul

Role changes in the profession of school counseling take considerable time to be enacted in practice. The purpose of the study in this article is to examine whether newly hired elementary school counselors working in urban settings can implement (a) new directions for practice that have emerged in the recent school counseling literature (i.e., a programmatic, collaborative, and preventive approach), and (b) the components that reflected these new directions embedded in the Delivery System of the ASCA National Model[R].

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Role changes in any profession take considerable time to be enacted in practice. In elementary school counseling, new directions for practice have been signaled in the professional literature over the past several years (Adelman & Taylor, 2002b; Bemak, 2000; Borders, 2002; Green & Keys, 2001; Gysbers, 2001; Lapan, 2001; Myrick, 2003; Paisley & McMahon, 2001) and have been recently promulgated in the guidelines for the profession, such as Campbell and Dahir's (1997) National Standards for School Counseling Programs and the ASCA National Model[R] (American School Counselor Association, 2005). However, there is little evidence to date about how these new directions and models of practice have been or can be implemented in the day-to-day practice of elementary school counselors.

The purpose of this article is to examine whether newly hired elementary school counselors working in urban settings can engage in best practices by implementing the new directions for practice that have emerged in the recent school counseling literature and that have been operationalized in the Delivery System of the ASCA National Model. School counselors in this study work in schools that are members of an established university-community agency partnership called Boston Connects, whose mission is to develop coordinated, comprehensive, and systemic approaches to student support in urban schools. The work of the school counselors is informed by the partnership's mission and is shaped by ongoing professional development provided by the partnership. The school counselors' salaries are paid for primarily by government and foundation grants secured by the administration of the partnership with small but growing contributions from schools and community agencies. In the schools, the school counselors report directly to the principal.

CONTEXT FOR ROLE SHIFT

Changes in the roles of school counselors have not occurred in a vacuum; they have been shaped by the context of the American educational system. Education reform's concern for accountability and outcomes has led educators to a laser-like focus on improvements in teaching and learning (Marshak, 2003; Monty, 2003; U.S. Department of Education, 2001). However, despite the best efforts of teachers, a significant achievement gap remains between students from upper- and middle-class families and their counterparts from families living below the poverty line, particularly students of color (Barton, 2001, 2003; Isaacs, 2003; Newsom, 2003). It is apparent that closing the achievement gap and attaining high academic standards will require more than new instructional approaches. A review of recent research (Darling-Hammond, 2000) has indicated that improved teaching and learning practices account for only about 40-60% of the gap, while class size accounts for an additional 8%. Family and community issues are estimated to account for the significant remainder of the achievement gap. The emergence of the "new morbidities" (e.g., sexual abuse, domestic and community violence, poverty, drug abuse, and homelessness) in family and community environments poses significant threats to children's well-being and constitutes significant barriers to learning (Becker & Luthar, 2002; Bemak, 2000; Center for Mental Health in Schools, 2003; Dryfoos, 1990; Greenberg et al., 2003; Urban Institute, 2000; Walsh & Murphy, 2003).

Increasing recognition of the impact of nonacademic barriers to learning has important implications for the role of school counselors. By examining the day-to-day activities of urban school counselors in a school-community-university partnership, this study will demonstrate that the work of newly hired, urban, elementary school counselors can be aligned with (a) new directions emerging in the field of school counseling as well as (b) the ASCA National Model.

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR SCHOOL COUNSELING IN RECENT LITERATURE

Among the significant emerging trends in the school counseling literature, three were selected for this study because they appear to be particularly relevant to the work of school counselors in urban settings: (a) the implementation of programmatic approaches to school counseling, (b) the development of collaborative practice, and (c) a focus on prevention and advocacy. These trends also reflect education reform's focus on systemic approaches to whole school change, collaboration with family and community agencies, and its core belief that all children have strength and all children can learn (Adelman & Taylor, 2002b; Borders, 2002; Gysbers, 2001; Myrick, 2003; Osborne & Collison, 1998; Paisley & McMahon, 2001; U.S. Department of Education, 2001; Walsh, Howard, & Buckley, 1999; Weissberg & O'Brien, 2004).