Abstract
Inducting
students into the school counselor role is an important process in
counselor education. The assumptions, beliefs, and knowledge that
students bring to school counselor preparation programs about the school
counselor role may be most influential to this process. This research
examined students’ assumptions, beliefs, and knowledge through analyses
of a variety of media representations of school counselors. This method
of inquiry that was used also demonstrates a compelling pedagogical
practice of engaging students in the induction process. Research results
and implications for school counselor education are presented.
The shifting role of the school counselor is
an important and recurring theme throughout the history of school
counseling. For example, the launch of Sputnik in the 1950s essentially
centered school counseling on promoting math and science careers. The
next few decades included emphasis on person-centered counseling
(1960s), comprehensive developmental guidance programs (1970s-1980s),
and school safety (1990s). Recently, No Child Left Behind and related
educational reforms have led to a renewed debate about the role of the
school counselor. For example, two recent special issues of
Professional School Counseling were devoted to this debate. In
different articles about the school counselor role, authors addressed
multiple expectations related to evidence-based practice (Whiston,
2002), cutting-edge social action and advocacy (Sears & Granello, 2002),
systemic-ecological frameworks (Green & Keys, 2001), and comprehensive
programs (Gysbers, 2001; Kurantz, 2002).
This list is by no means exhaustive, as cultural competence, technology,
developmental needs, and many additional factors have influenced the
school counselor role. This recurring and presently burgeoning debate
suggests that a role definition or clarity problem (who we are) exists
in the field (Sears & Granello, 2002). For the purpose of this manuscript, the school
counselor role is utilized as a broad concept that centers on, but
is not limited to, school counselor professional identity and the ways
school counselors function (what we do).
The debate about the role of the school
counselor is of primary concern to school counselor educators. In
particular, school counselor educators should be engaged in a purposeful
induction process on role and identity for preservice school counselors.
Brott and Myers (1999) suggested that the professional identity of
school counselors evolves over time, moving from an externally
influenced one (influences such as graduate training) to an internal
conceptualization of role.
Jackson et al. (2002) advised that the school
counselor role concept is ultimately determined by individual personal
guidelines emerging on the job. These authors have highlighted the
importance of intentional induction processes (e.g., mentoring,
professional development), and several have suggested that the early
stages of induction are critical (Borders & Leddick, 1987;
VanZandt &
Perry, 1992). Even so, Peace (1995) highlighted that at present, a
dearth of induction programs exists for school counselors.
House and Sears (2002) suggested that
induction to the counseling profession starts when students apply for
the graduate program. Although preservice school counselors are inducted
into the role and function of counseling through their experiences in a
school counseling program and as novice counselors in the field, they
also enter training programs with preconceived notions of school
counseling. Life experiences, including direct contact with school
counselors, have shaped the students’ views and impressions of the
school counselor role prior to their enrollment in counselor preparation
programs. Uncovering preconceived notions of school counseling and the
school counselor role specifically can be one of the “critical
experiences…needed during the preparation program” (House & Sears, 2002,
p. 158).
Media Representations as an Induction
Tool
One method that can be used to discover
students' knowledge, beliefs, and assumptions is to engage students' in
examinations of media representations of counselors. Films have been used as pedagogical texts in sociology
(Demerath, 1981) and educational administration (English & Steffy, 1997)
and coupled with academic texts as part of counselor education training
programs. For example, Toman and Rak (2000) discussed how they have
drawn upon media representations in their work with preservice
counselors for the purpose of “teaching diagnosis, counseling theories,
interventions, and ethics” (p. 105).
Koch and Dollarhide (2000) utilized
film to help students articulate theory in context, and
Tyler and Renoylds (1998) used films as advanced organizers for teaching group
work. Similarly, others (Baird, 2003;
Pinterits & Atkinson, 1998;
Tyler
& Guth, 1999) have used movie clips to facilitate discussion on
multicultural counseling (e.g., enhance diversity sensitivity,
experiential learning) and human development (e.g., identity, parental
expectations).
Higgins and Dermer (2001) suggested that
films can expose students to counseling modalities and introduce
students to complex information in a concise and engaging manner. They
also advocated for the use of film to demonstrate
“difficult-to-teach-concepts” (p. 183) where students use their personal
reactions as information about the counseling system. In addition to all
of these usages of film in counselor education, film can also be used to
discover the assumptions, beliefs, and knowledge that preservice school
counselors hold upon entering preparation programs. In this study,our
method of inquiry into the assumptions, beliefs, and knowledge of
preservice counselors derives from various fields, including the work of
a few researchers in teacher education (Giroux, 1993;
Brunner, 1994; Trier, 2001a,
2001b).
Within the field of teacher education, Trier
has engaged preservice teachers in examining media representations of
teachers, students, and schools for the purpose of discovering the
preservice teachers’ assumptions, beliefs, and knowledge about a wide
range of educational issues. This line of research has involved taking
up many “school films,” defined as films that are in some way, even
incidentally, about an educator or a student (e.g., Dead Poets
Society, Dangerous Minds, and Lean on Me). In one such
project, Trier (2001a) used the school film Teachers (1984) to
discover how one cohort of preservice teachers conceptualized
“literacy,” and how these discussions were used to challenge students’
“autonomous,” traditional views of literacy (Street, 1995) with a
sociolinguistic conceptualization (Gee, 1996). Another project involved
having preservice teachers analyze how certain school films, such as
Waterland and To Sir, with Love, represent the personal and
professional lives of teachers (Trier, 2001b).
The purpose of this article is to describe
the process and findings (assumptions, beliefs, and knowledge about the
role of school counselors) as constructed by one cohort of preservice
school counselors. This process is an important pedagogical practice
that can also be utilized for assessment and for understanding the
students’ constructions of the school counselor role. These discoveries
can subsequently become valuable in examining student self awareness,
and in determining seminar topics, assigned readings, research projects,
and other pedagogical activities. The findings, while limited to the
sample, provide provocative and meaningful insights into the discourse
revolving around the role of school counselor.
Methods
Sample
A cohort of preservice school counselors
during their first semester in a school counseling program in the
Southeastern United States served as the sample. This project involved
20 preservice school counselors (four males, two minority students).
Description of Media Texts and Procedures
The research described in this article
utilized a video compilation of scenes depicting school counselors from
three films (the comedy 10 Things I Hate About You,
1999; the drama Up the Down
Staircase, 1967; and the documentary
High School,1968), a popular animated program (South Park,
1997-present), and a popular
television drama (Boston Public, 2000-2004).
Each scene was purposefully selected for a close approximation of roles
currently described in the school counseling literature (e.g.,
Baker,
2001). The traditional roles of classroom guidance, consultation,
individual counseling, and the more contemporary role of advocacy, are
represented in the selected scenes. A fuller description of each video
clip is presented within the results section for clarity.
Students viewed each scene (approximately
3-8 minutes) during a session of class and then wrote a reaction to the
representation of the school counselor. Students were not given any
particular instructions on what they might focus on or any information
about the media clip (e.g. the purported role represented). Students
were shown each clip in succession and were asked to write a “response”
(approximately 10-12 minutes to each). These written responses are the
data source in this study.
Analysis of Data Sources
Students’ written responses to the media
representations were analyzed for articulations of the students’
assumptions, beliefs, and knowledge about the role of school counselors.
In particular, the written texts were analyzed for what
Gee (1996) calls
the situated meanings of words, phrases, or other expressions: “A
situated meaning is an image or pattern that we assemble ‘on the spot’
as we communicate in a given context, based on our construal of that
context and on our past experiences” (Gee, 1996, p. 47). The context of
this activity is an introductory counselor education course, and
students assembled “on the spot” meanings about the school counselor
representations based on their (the students’) past experiences. The
students’ meanings also derive from what
Weber and Mitchell (1995) called
the cumulative cultural text, which is to say the cultural model or
schema that we have acquired based on years of exposure to a variety of
texts (film, television, novels, social situations) that represent that
phenomena.
Weber and Mitchell explain that a cumulative
cultural text is not really one specific text (a movie, a novel, a news
story, an academic journal article, etc.) but the image or meaning that
makes its way into specific texts through an accumulative process that
circulates residues and sedimentary elements. For example, there is the
cumulative cultural text (also called cultural models and cultural
schemas) of good cop/bad cop, the love of your life, the underdog, and
so on. Individual texts activate in various ways these images and
ideas, and because these images and ideas have been at the center of so
many cultural texts for so long, we actually engage them all the time.
Therefore, the media representations of school counselors seem familiar
to us, even though we may not have had many (if any) direct experiences
with school counselors, and our interpretations of these representations
reveal our situated meanings about school counselors.
Gee (1996) explains that a situated meaning
“is a ‘thinking device’ that guides us to ask certain sorts of
questions. Faced with a piece of oral or written language, we consider a
certain key word or a family of words, that is, words we hypothesize are
important to understanding the language we wish to analyze” (p. 53). In
analyzing the written responses of student preservice school counselors,
the analysis specifically focused on the key terms or family of words
that related to the role of school counselors. Both the preconceived
roles (e.g., individual counseling, classroom guidance) and emergent
terms and/or themes were listed in context for demonstration of what
they articulated about the students’ cultural models of school
counselors.
Results and Discussion
Classroom Guidance, Consultation, and
Individual Counseling
Collectively, the four clips
from South Park, Up the Down Staircase, High School, and 10 Things I
Hate About You provided participants with a traditional portrayal of
school counselor roles. Although three of the four clips are satire,
they still stimulated participants to seriously think about the role of
school counselors (because the students recognized the actual
characteristics and qualities that the satire was meant to make fun of)
From the animated comedy
South Park, we selected a scene from an episode in which the school
counselor—a common source of parody and sarcasm on the program—allows
the marijuana joint he passed around in class during an anti-drug
classroom guidance session to mysteriously disappear, which results in
his being fired. Most participants accurately identified the clip from
South Park as an example of classroom guidance. They bemoaned the
lack of planning, lack of student participation, lack of control over
the class, lack of facilitation skills, absence of a connection to
students, and lack of ethics. While many students found the depiction
humorous and comical, they too delineated important aspects of effective
classroom guidance: e.g., planning, engaging students, teaching
knowledge and skills. Interestingly, many of the participants suggested
this satirical representation is a “typical” depiction of a school
counselor.
From the dramatic film Up the
Down Staircase, we selected a scene in which a young, first-year
teacher listens to a veteran female school counselor who explains that
she has a folder for every student, and that every student has a
psychological profile, which she updates regularly. In reading from the
folders, the school counselor reveals the Freudian/psychoanalytical
discourse used to describe the students (i.e., “repressed homosexual
tendencies,” “mother-hatred complex”). This portrayal of consultation
with a teacher in Up the Down Staircase provoked mainly negative
responses. Participants noted her judging, assuming, labeling, and lack
of genuine interest in students. The participants also noted the breach
of ethics demonstrated by the lack of confidentiality that the school
counselor displayed. The lack of developmental focus and reliance on
psychopathology (some suggested this was beyond her professional level),
testing, and records rather than “really knowing kids” were other
complaints made by the participants. The participants felt this
representation was dated and not an accurate portrayal of school
counselors today. One participant noted: “Wow! Things have really
changed. Children did not seem to be respected at this time in history,
they didn’t have many rights.”
From the documentary film High School,
filmed in 1968, we selected some rather chilling “Adults Are Always
Right, So Do As We Advise (Tell) You to Do” footage of actual
counseling sessions. Many of the participants noted the inappropriate
actions by school counselors in counseling and consultation about career
development. A lack of listening (e.g., lecturing, advising, controlling),
caring, or supportiveness (e.g., disciplinarian) was noted. Further,
participants noted that it was inappropriate for school counselors to
“push their own beliefs” and “impose choices” on clients. One
participant noted, “[E]verything done in this clip is everything I would
not do as a counselor.” As this clip is of a dated (1968)
documentary, participants noted that “things are different now.” In
fact, one participant noted “confrontation and intimidation may have
worked in 1968, but you’ll get chewed up as a counselor by parents
nowadays.”
From the movie comedy 10 Things I Hate
about You, we selected two scenes in which an oversexed, provocative
female school counselor, too busy writing her juicy soft-porn novel on
her laptop in her office, engages in a no-nonsense, cut-to-the-chase,
dismissive brand of truth-telling and advice-giving to the students
“sent” to her for disciplinary reasons.
In both High School and 10 Things I Hate About You,
participants primarily noted weaknesses displayed by the school
counselor in individual counseling or consultation
Participants noted the lack of
ethics/professionalism, lack of relationship, lack of caring, engagement
in her own personal matters, and representation of the school counselor
as a disciplinarian (in a negative tone). Although a few participants
suggested this fit the stereotype of school counselors, others indicated
she was “terrible” and suggested she “leave the ‘excellent guidance’ to
someone who really cares about the student’s well-being.”
In total, the participants’
responses from the four clips evoked powerful feelings about the
appropriate role of the school counselor. Participants were able to
highlight necessary planning and skills to conduct effective classroom
guidance. They highlighted many of Rogers’ core conditions for helping,
namely listening, genuine interest in students, and the importance of a
relationship. Another notable element in the participants’ responses is
the attention to developmental needs and to confidentiality. The
representations and the responses by participants exposed beliefs,
assumptions, and knowledge that became rich material for classroom
discussion about their own emerging identities as school counselors. For
example, participants were sensitive to the history and evolution of
school counseling, seeing many of the representations as realistic and
stereotypical, but outdated. The responses provoked opportunities for
dialogue about debatable topics such as the role of discipline in school
counseling, the role of advice and testing, and a focus on development
versus pathology. Overall discussion about stereotypes of school
counselors led to exploration how one’s own experiences with school
counseling have shaped the construction they have made for their own
practice.
Advocacy
Advocacy is a primary concern for both the
Transforming School Counseling Initiative (Education Trust, 1999) and
the American School Counselor Association National Model of School
Counseling (ASCA, 2003). The participants’ analyses of the scenes from
Boston Public also included a set of related situated meanings
around the issue of advocacy. While the previous clips provoked cogent
responses on school counselor roles and functions, the Boston Public
scenes stimulated the most in-depth analyses and included strong
affective reactions, ranging from positive to negative extremes. The
Boston Public responses also exhibited the most diverse group of
personal reactions and thoughts about professional behavior. A more
complete description of this media representation is provided below:
This prompt is comprised of two scenes
from an episode (March 11, 2002) of the television series Boston
Public. Both scenes involve the school counselor. The narrative
“set up” of the scenes is that a female student was found sitting in a
corner, crying and in a panic. She was eventually hospitalized.
Eventually, it was learned that she was suffering not from a reaction
to taking drugs, but from “stress.” A teacher meets with the
principal and accuses two other teachers—Lauren Davis and Marilyn
Sudor—of putting undue stress on their A.P. students by pushing them
too hard.
In the first scene, the principal appears
in the doorway of the counselor’s office, where the counselor is
seated at his desk and writing on a document. The principal asks the
counselor about student stress. The counselor explains without having
to hesitate that stress is “a big cause of teen suicide, maybe more
than depression.” Elaborating, the counselor explains that most
student stress is academic related: “With more and more kids going to
college, it starts getting tougher and tougher to get in. Kids start
pushing themselves beyond their limits. It’s actually worse in private
schools.” He also explains that parents are often responsible for
adding to students’ stress. When asked what the school can do to help
students who are suffering from stress, the counselor suggests holding
seminars to teach students to deal with stress because most students
don’t have strategies to do so.
At one point, the principal asks the
counselor if he’s aware of any teachers in the school who put an
inordinate amount of stress on students, and the counselor replies,
“We’ve got two that I’m keeping an eye on—Lauren Davis and Marilyn
Sudor.” The principal then leaves. The “set up” for the next scene is
that the principal calls the two teachers into his office and
reprimands them for being too hard on their students, causing anxiety
in them. The principal then calls a meeting with Ms. Davis, Ms. Sudor,
the school counselor, and himself. During the meeting, Marilyn and the
school counselor exchange words. At one point, she says to Steven (the
principal), “This man doesn’t have to deal with accountability issues.
We do.” Then, she says to the counselor, “And I’m angry at you. . . .
Keeping a little score card on what teachers cause stress. If you have
a problem with me, come to me. Don’t go running to Steven [the
principal].” To this, the counselor responds, “First of all, Steven
came to me. Second of all, I’m doing my job.” When Marilyn asks why
he’s singled her and Lauren out to be watched, the counselor replies,
“Because more of your students are getting sick, Marilyn.” Marilyn
replies, “And more are getting into college.” The counselor argues,
“But the best teachers—they get their students into college, without
fear, without causing stress.” To this, Marilyn asks rhetorically,
“You want to teach A.P. English, Bob [the counselor’s name]? You
think it’s easy getting kids to read three books a week without
pushing them?” The counselor then says, “There’s a difference between
pushing and punishing them,” to which Marilyn angrily responds, “I
don’t punish them!” The scene ends shortly thereafter.
Many of the
preservice school counselors had rather extreme negative affective
reactions to the representation of the school counselor. Some of these
reactions addressed the counselor’s demeanor and interpersonal style
when talking to the principal, as in this statement: he “wasn’t being
very attentive”--he kept writing rather than looking at the
principal), and during the meeting with the teachers--“He did too much
talking [and] not enough listening.” Another student criticized the
counselor for not establishing a good “counselor-teacher
relationship.” Her criticism echoed the same reasons used by the
(television) teachers in the scene. The student felt that the
counselor accused the teachers of bad teaching practices, and this
probably resulted because he “wasn’t viewing the teachers’ position”
and he “may not even understand their situation.” Another major
criticism was that the counselor had breached an ethic of
confidentiality. One student thought the counselor “violated
confidentiality when he gave teachers’ names to the principal,” and
this student added that a more effective approach would have been to
talk with the teachers “in private rather than with the principal.”
This was echoed by another student who stated that the counselor
“attacked the teachers” by naming them to the principal, Many
students also criticized the counselor for not acting in a proactive
way concerning the issue of student stress. For example, one student
believed the counselor had not done his job because if he had actually
been “an advocate for students’ best interests,” he would “have come
up with a plan for the high stress students and discussed the issue
with the teacher[s]” rather than waiting for the principal to raise
the issue of stress and then putting the teachers “on the defensive”
by naming them as the “worst offenders.”
Of course, not every student saw the
counselor in a negative light. For example, one student saw the
counselor as being “portrayed positively because he knows information
about the student body generally when prompted.” The student makes the
astute observation that the counselor is represented in a role that goes
beyond “simply counseling individual clients, which is a common
stereotype” that people have about counselors. The student also observed
that the counselor “is viewed differently by the different members of
the school faculty—[the] principal [is] very supportive . . . whereas
[the] teachers believe he is not ‘accountable.’” The counselor “is held
in high esteem by [the] principal,” who “takes his advice seriously.”
This positive interpretation of the counselor was, however, one of the
few.
Along with these negative and positive
affective reactions, students also articulated rather insightful
observations. For example, one student suggested, in reaction to
analyzing the scenes, that counselors must be careful not to allow
administrators to put them into divisive situations that can make
collaboration with teachers impossible. For example, the student noted
that the principal put the counselor on the spot by asking him to
identify “the worst offenders” among the teachers, and the student
disagreed with the counselor’s “method of implicating the teachers,”
which “didn’t sit well [with] the teachers.”
Another insight concerned the issue of
respect for counselors within a school. One participant noted that
conflict with teachers is “very real, often because they don’t respect a
counselor.” In fact, one participant was “struck by the disdain the
teachers had for the counselor” and the perceptions that his job was
unimportant and that he was less intelligent. More than one participant
made comparisons between the job difficulty of teachers and school
counselors, as when one student noted that “it is impossible for a
counselor to criticize a teacher no matter how right or constructive
without the teacher throwing it in the counselors face [by asking], ‘How
would you like to teach’.” Further, one participant noted that teachers
in the clip felt the school counselor was “out of line (out of his role
as a counselor).” One participant with experience as a teacher
indicated, “Shows counselor in a tattle tale position. Shows counselor
as caring and concerned but as a person within the school
without accountability.”
Almost each response provided suggestions
for better ways for school counselors to advocate. Even those preservice
school counselors who liked the school counselor’s stance indicated
disagreement with the methods of implicating teachers. Most of these
reactions centered on the need to empathize with teachers, on the degree
of viewing teachers as collaborators, or on the need to act as a
consultant with teachers. Some participants made suggestions to meet
with teachers prior to advocating, or to run small groups for students
on stress management. Regardless of the cause of the stress, several of
the participants believed that the school counselor should focus on ways
to minimize student stress (apparently in direct service), rather than
taking on various systems (e.g., classroom, school wide).
The representation of advocacy in Boston
Public is by no means a textbook example for advocacy, but it
highlights relevant challenges of advocating in a school system. As the
profession moves more toward advocacy as an appropriate school counselor
role, traditional descriptors of school counselors, such as that they
are “certified nice people” (P. Paisley, personal communication,
September 4, 2003), may conflict with new
visions for school counseling (House & Sears, 2002). The contemporary
themes of leadership, advocacy, and systemic change emphasized in the
new ASCA National Model (2003) may challenge new
preservice school
counselors’ beliefs and assumptions of the school counselor role. While
ASCA (2003) suggests that school counselors should serve as advocates
for all students, and should work cooperatively with others to promote
development, it also seems that advocacy at times will require engaging
in political actions. Specifically, political means “anything and
anyplace where human social interactions and relationships have
implications for how ‘social goods’ are or ought to be distributed. By
‘social goods’ I mean anything that a group of people believes to be a
source of power, status, or worth (whether this be ‘street smarts,’
academic intelligence, money, control, possessions, verbal abilities,
‘looks,’ age, wisdom, knowledge, technology, literacy, morality, ‘common
sense,’ and so on and so forth through a very long list indeed)” (Gee,
1999, p. 2).
Engaging political actions may very well
create tensions within the school system, tensions that in turn may lead
to moving systems to change. This issue of potentially creating tensions
within the system through actions of advocacy on behalf of students is
an issue that the preservice counselors spoke to in differing ways in
their interpretations of the actions of the counselor in Boston
Public. For example, one student viewed the counselor in a positive
light, seeing him as working to “solve a major school problem” by
involving “students, faculty, etc.” Though he is “a headstrong
individual,” the student expressed the opinion that such firm
stance-taking (i.e., a stance that can create tensions) is often
necessary for counselors: “A counselor cannot be afraid to receive
flack from others if he/she is to do her/his job correctly.” On the
other hand, another student thought the counselor “attacked the
teachers” by naming them to the principal, and she believed the
counselor had been “quick to judge the [two] teachers” by relying “on
limited information” about the situation concerning student stress. She
felt he should have done “more research before passing judgment and
blaming the teachers for causing too much student stress.” In effect,
this student interpreted what could be construed as the counselor’s
caring, political advocacy for the stressed students to be a negative
action. Along with these two students, others made statements such as
the counselor’s actions “caused tension within the school, which needs
to be avoided” and that there sometimes would be a need to advocate for
students’ best interest by being “assertive but not so confrontational.”
As students engage in the process of developing a conceptualization
about the role of advocacy in school counseling, they must continually
make distinctions between actions that are, on the one hand, assertive
and helpful and, on the other hand, actions that are adversarial and
accusatory (terms used by the participants in their responses). More
than anything, students must acknowledge and think through their own
feelings about conflict and their assumptions and beliefs about being
effective school counselors.
Implications for School Counselor Educators
While previous research has
investigated what parents and related school personnel assume, believe,
and know about the role and function of a school counselor (Coll &
Freeman, 1997; Paulson & Edwards, 1997), research that directly examines
students’ perceptions of role and function are rare. This method of
investigating the assumptions, beliefs, and knowledge that preservice
counselors hold is unique within the discourse of school counseling.
Just as media representations may serve as compelling pedagogical
strategies, they too can be utilized for inquiry.
The findings suggest that
students enter school counseling programs with awareness, knowledge, and
strong affective beliefs about the school counselor role and appropriate
function. Participants in our sample were able to provide
supervisory-like critique of classroom guidance and counseling
representations by pointing out skill deficits and suggesting techniques
that would reflect a more effective counseling practice.
Two aspects in particular stand
out in the data for pedagogical use. First, students overwhelmingly had
negative reactions to the media representations of school counselors.
Although this may well be reflective of the media prompts chosen, these
negative reactions were coupled with the beliefs that the
representations were “typical,” “stereotypical,” and “very real.” One
might assume a student starting a school counselor training program
would have a more favorable construction of school counseling--why else
would he or she wish to become a counselor?. At the very least, these
data demonstrate that participants felt that most others have negative
stereotypes of school counselors. The struggle for a clear and
consistent professional identity will obviously need to confront these
stereotypical notions.
The other weighty issue that
emerged from the data is preservice school counselors’ feelings about
advocacy. Kurpius and Rozecki (1992) conceptualize the main purpose of
advocacy as the pleading of the cause for those unable to do so
themselves, and Brown (1988) has distinguished various types of advocacy
(e.g., student, teacher, school-wide). Current conceptions of advocacy
in school counseling have also included Developmental Advocacy (Galassi
& Akos, 2004), social justice (Portman & Portman, 2000), and advocacy
for LGBTQ students (Stone, 2003) among others. This advocacy role has
been in the professional literature for decades, and
Borders (2002)
suggests that “one might go so far as to treat school counselors and
advocacy as synonymous” (p. 181). While the nature of advocacy in school
counseling is diverse and perhaps still emerging, ASCA suggests that
advocating for the academic success for all students is the key role of
counselors and places them at the center of school reform (Dahir et al.,
1998). Further, House and Hayes (2002) suggest school counselors will
“need to work proactively to remove barriers . . . [and to] teach
students and their families how to successfully manage the bureaucracy
of the system” (p. 252).
House and Sears (2002) suggested
that “school counselors often serve as maintainers of status quo,
advocating for the school system rather than students and marginalized
groups” (p. 155). Inadequate preservice training, conflicting roles,
pliable and overly accommodating counselor behavior, and overt and
covert pressures from school, community, and parent special interest
groups may limit advocacy efforts (Walz, 1997). Additionally, although
many have suggested working collaboratively (House & Hayes, 2002) to
advocate, it seems inevitable that advocating will also require
confrontation and struggles with politics, policy, and power in the
school system. Advocacy and counseling share some common skill sets
(e.g., attending, listening, empathizing, confronting, data gathering),
but advocacy also requires negotiation and persuasion skills, and an
ability to work with media or legislators (Brown, 1988). The data
responses from the Boston Public clip reveal that these
preservice school counselors affectively feel more comfortable with
direct service (“provide a test taking group”) over advocacy for
systemic change that may involve power struggles. In addition, the
challenges put forth by Walz (1997) imply that school counselor
educators will need to engage students’ assumptions, beliefs, and
affective feelings about advocacy and add instruction and training in
advocacy competencies.
Discovering and challenging
preservice counselors’ assumptions and beliefs can inform and shape
instruction concerning social and systems change, political climate, and
the inevitable power struggles of schools and communities, an approach
endorsed by House and Sears (2002). In reality, “[P]olitics are present
both in the large domain of the special interests we represent as
professional counselors and the smaller domains of how we wield the
power of our expertise in counseling sessions and the everyday decisions
we make, or that are made for us, about allocation of time in the
performance of our work” (Rowell, 2002, p. 248). Engaging student
beliefs and providing instruction on school politics may prepare
preservice school counselors to be both student and system advocates who
can potentially bring about real and lasting change that promotes
student development. Ultimately, this type of process in preparation
programs lends clarity to the induction process and school counselor role
clarity.
Conclusions
The purposeful selection of the sample and
media representations limits the explanatory power of the results. The
findings, in fact, have the most utility for pedagogical purposes.
Engaging preservice school counselors in media representations is one
purposeful way to direct the induction process toward the school
counselor role. School counselor educators can develop seminar
discussions and research activities as a result of analyzing and
understanding the preconceived notions of school counseling surfaced
through an engagement with the media representations of school
counselors. This type of guided reflection, support, and challenge has
been recommended to promote growth during the induction process (Peace,
1995).
Future research may seek to explore either
the process or the results of this inquiry. This process can be
replicated with other samples (e.g., additional school counseling
programs or community counselors) and with a variety of other media
representations (e.g., different selection of clips, video role-plays).
Future replications may provide additional information about the utility
for introductory courses and more data or reflections about how this
process may enhance, inform, or make more explicit the induction process
in counselor education. Future research might also seek larger, more
diverse samples to determine if students’ responses might be analyzed to
suggest “best practices” for teaching knowledge and skills related to
advocacy or the various school counselor roles. In this one inquiry, we
have found that media representations of school counselors engage
students in articulating their assumptions, beliefs, and knowledge and
allow school counseling faculty to engage, guide, and challenge
students’ emerging notions of school counselor role.
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Authors' Biography
Patrick Akos is an Assistant Professor of School Counseling in the
School of Education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
He is a former elementary and middle school counselor and was recognized
in 2004 as the American School Counselor Association’s Counselor
Educator of the Year. Dr. Akos’s research focuses on school transitions,
middle school counseling, and Developmental Advocacy. Currently, his
research continues on how school personnel can promote successful
transitions into and out of middle school (and the assorted
configurations found in school districts) and how school counselors can
intervene and advocate for optimal development of early adolescents.
More information can be located at:
http://www.unc.edu/depts/ed/med_sch_counseling/faculty.html
James
Trier is an assistant
professor of English Education who works with secondary English
preservice teachers in the Master of Arts in Teaching program and with
doctoral students in the Culture, Curriculum, and Change program. A former English teacher, he directs
the High School Literacy project at UNC-CH. His research centers on
cultural studies and how media and in particular, school films impact
preservice teachers. More information can be located at:
http://www.unc.edu/depts/ed/med_sch_counseling/faculty.htm
