Students with disabilities: school counselor involvement and preparation

Professional School Counseling, June, 2002 by Amy S. Milsom

* What activities do school counselors perform for students with disabilities?

* How prepared do school counselors feel to perform activities for students with disabilities?

* What education do school counselors receive related to students with disabilities?

* What is the relationship between the education school counselors receive to work with students with disabilities and how prepared they feel overall to provide services to those students?

Method

Participants

A random sample of 400 members of the American Counseling Association (ACA) who indicated that they were employed in schools (elementary; middle, or high) and had joined the organization after 1995 was generated by and obtained directly from ACA. Because ACA was unable to generate a sample based on graduation year, the author requested a sample based on the year the member joined ACA. It was assumed that a significant number of these individuals had joined the organization during either graduate school or the year after completing their graduate work.

Employment as a school counselor and completion of graduate work between 1994 and 2000 were established as selection criteria. These criteria were established in order for participants to have completed their graduate work after passage of IDEA and to provide time for the integration of relevant content with respect to students with disabilities into the school counselor education programs. Of the 400 surveys mailed, 9 were returned as undeliverable, reducing the total sample size to 391. Of those, 224 (57%) were returned and 100 (26%) were practicing school counselors who completed their graduate work between 1994 and 2000.

The age of the 100 participants ranged from 24 to 60, with a mean of 37.19 (SD = 9.82). Eighty-four percent were female and 16% were male. The ethnic distribution of the participants included African American (3.0%), Asian/Pacific Islander (1.0%), Latino/a or Hispanic (3.0%), Native American (2.0%), White (90.0%), and other (1.0%). Participants worked in elementary schools (28.0%), middle/junior high schools (38.0%), and high schools (34.0%). The years of school counseling experience of the participants ranged from 0 to 9, with a mean of 2.63 (SD = 1.85). Fifty-five percent of the participants were former teachers, and 16% of the participants indicated that they had been special education teachers. Seven percent of participants indicated that they had a disability, and 36% indicated that one of their immediate family members had a disability.

Procedure

A packet consisting of an introductory letter including a description of the study, a coded survey booklet, and a return envelope was mailed to each member of the sample. A reminder postcard was mailed one week later Two weeks after postcards were sent, a follow-up letter and a second survey booklet were mailed to all members of the original sample who had not responded. Participants indicated their informed consent by returning the survey.

Instrument

The School Counselor Preparation Survey-Revised (SCPS-R) is an instrument created by the author to assess the activities school counselors perform for students with disabilities, how prepared they feel to perform those activities, and the education (coursework, practical experiences, or workshops) they received to work with students with disabilities. In order to determine if survey questions were ambiguous, a pilot study was conducted with a random sample of 200 members of the school counseling association of a mid-Atlantic state. The SCPS-R was the end result of modifications that were made based on results of that pilot study.