There is a rise in calls for counselors to be advocates for social justice. Counselors can meet the growing need to expand their roles to include advocacy by using the ACA (American Counseling Association) Advocacy Competencies (J. A. Lewis, M. S. Arnold, R. House, & R. L. Toporek, 2002). This article operationalizes the client/student level of…

While politicians and other pundits may not agree on how to improve schools, there is agreement that many areas require attention from improving student achievement, to ensuring effective instruction. As school districts struggle with these and other complex issues, there is a growing demand for executive level leaders who have knowledge and…

Despite evidence that First Nations people experience a disproportionate degree of mental health concerns relative to other Canadians, many within this population do not access Western-based mental health services. In this article we extend a socio-political and historical rationale for attending to key cultural differences when working with First…

Independent school environments offer relatively small faculty-to-student ratios that afford significant time and opportunity for quality interactions with students. Beyond the standard expectations of shepherding students through a course of study, encouraging them to participate in extracurricular activities aligned with their interests, and…

This response discusses the importance of "privilege talk" and relates the concept of privilege to group counseling research. The impact of "colorblindness" on the dynamics of groups is discussed. The importance of understanding social privilege and its influence on counseling groups is emphasized.

Counseling psychology has a historical commitment to enhancing human strengths, a focus that has enjoyed broader interest with the recent emergence of positive psychology. However, theory and evidence linking strength enhancement to counseling goals are still relatively nascent. The authors outline rationales and practical strategies for…

Burton Clark's proposition concerning the "cooling out" of underprepared students in community colleges has a controversial history and remains a point of contention. Central to Clark's description of the "cooling out" process is the academic counselor, whose job it is to dissuade underprepared students from goals perceived to…

To be able to connect the school counseling program to standards-based reform, school counseling initiatives such as The Education Trust's Transforming the School Counseling Initiative and The American School Counseling Association (ASCA) have called for a paradigm shift in the understanding of the school counselor's role, from a service provider…

HIV-prevention intervention effectiveness depends on understanding whether clients with highest need for HIV-prevention counseling accept it. With this objective, a field study with a high-risk community sample from the southeastern United States (N = 350) investigated whether initial knowledge about HIV, motivation to use condoms,…

Based on common aspects of recent models of career decision making (CDM), a six-phase model of CDM for secondary students is presented and empirically evaluated. The study tests the hypothesis that students who are in later phases possess more career-choice readiness and consider different numbers of career alternatives. Two hundred sixty-six…

A counselor's academic guidance is critical because student stress levels are high due to increased levels of expectations that they perform at their best (Campbell & Dahir, 1997; Gysbers & Henderson, 2000). In the last decade, education reform has moved towards more standards-driven curriculum/a, basic skills acquisition, and…

With the significant growth of the Muslim population in the United States, there has been a corresponding increase in the need for mental health services. The author discusses techniques for incorporating Islamic beliefs and practices in the counseling process. The fundamental goal is to ensure ethical and effective treatment for Muslim clients.

The American School Counseling Association (ASCA) National Model (2003) indicates a paradigm shift in school counseling programs from service-centered for some of the students to program-centered for every student. The main question is how students are different as a result of participating in school counseling programs. As a result professional…

In contrast to Freud's later and revised view of the etiology of hysterical, or dissociative, symptoms, it is now known that real, and not fantasized, sexual experiences in childhood are experienced in disociative symptomatology. It is useful to understand that incest involves both traumatic events, that is, incidents of sexual violation per se,…

This paper discusses several factors that contribute to running away, characteristics of runaways, and approaches to dealing with runaway youth. The decision of a youth to run away is usually the climax of several smaller events that have built over time and contribute to the youth's feeling out-of-control at home, in school, and in society. Peers…