School Counselor Consultation Preparation: A National Study

Abstract

The authors examined trends in school counselor consultation preparation using data collected from 238 program websites, 73 program survey responses, and 57 syllabi. The results indicated an emphasis on consultation content related to theories, stakeholders, and topics, rather than experiential practice. The findings suggest a need to incorporate and assess more application‐specific consultation activities and assignments.

An Ecological Examination of School Counseling Equity

“…Research has shown that school counselors generally feel their academic training and pre-service counseling work only moderately prepared them to enter the counseling field (Bridgeland & Bruce, 2011;Goodman-Scott, 2015). Many counselors report a disconnect between the skills learned in pre-service training and those needed on the job-specifically, skills in areas like college and career readiness counseling (Gilfillan, 2017;Novakovic et al, 2021); consultation (Cholewa et al, 2020); and using data to support evidence-based decision-making (Young & Kaffenberger, 2015). This partially reflects the fact that many counselor preparation programs do not require coursework in key counseling content areas and that a third of counselor educators do not have previous work experience as school counselors (Pérusse et al, 2015).…”