School counselor roles, school counseling program framework and ethics

Professional school counselors ideally implement a school counseling program that promotes and enhances student achievement. A framework for appropriate and inappropriate school counselor responsibilities and roles is outlined in the ASCA National Model. School counselors, in most USA states, usually have a Master's degree in school counseling from a Counselor Education graduate program. In Canada, they must be licensed teachers with additional school counseling training and focus on academic, career, and personal/social issues. China requires at least three years of college experience. In Japan, school counselors were added in the mid-1990s, part-time, primarily focused on behavioral issues. In Taiwan, they are often teachers with recent legislation requiring school counseling licensure focused on individual and group counseling for academic, career, and personal issues. In Korea, school counselors are mandated in middle and high schools.

School counselors are employed in elementary, middle, and high schools, and in district supervisory settings and in counselor education faculty positions (usually with an earned Ph.D. in Counselor Education in the USA or related graduate doctorates abroad), and post-secondary settings doing academic, career, college readiness, and personal/social counseling, consultation, and program coordination. Their work includes a focus on developmental stages of student growth, including the needs, tasks, and student interests related to those stages(Schmidt 2003).
Professional school counselors meet the needs of student in three basic domains: academic development, career development, and personal/social development (Dahir & Campbell, 1997; ASCA, 2005) with an increased emphasis on college access. Knowledge, understanding and skill in these domains are developed through classroom instruction, appraisal, consultation, counseling, coordination, and collaboration. For example, in appraisal, school counselors may use a variety of personality and career assessment methods (such as the or (based on the) to help students explore career and college needs and interests.
School counselor interventions include individual and group counseling for some students. For example, if a student's behavior is interfering with his or her achievement, the school counselor may observe that student in a class, provide consultation to teachers and other stakeholders to develop (with the student) a plan to address the behavioral issue(s), and then collaborate to implement and evaluate the plan. They also provide consultation services to family members such as college access, career development, parenting skills, study skills, child and adolescent development, and help with school-home transitions.
School counselor interventions for all students include annual academic/career/college access planning K-12 and leading classroom developmental lessons on academic, career/college, and personal/social topics. The topics of character education, diversity and multiculturalism (Portman, 2009), and school safety are important areas of focus for school counselors. Often school counselors will coordinate outside groups that wish to help with student needs such as academics, or coordinate a program that teaches about child abuse or drugs, through on-stage drama (Schmidt, 2003).
School counselor interventions for all students include annual academic/career/college access planning K-12 and leading classroom developmental lessons on academic, career/college, and personal/social topics. The topics of character education, diversity and multiculturalism (Portman, 2009), and school safety are important areas of focus for school counselors. Often school counselors will coordinate outside groups that wish to help with student needs such as academics, or coordinate a program that teaches about child abuse or drugs, through on-stage drama (Schmidt, 2003).
School counselors develop, implement, and evaluate school counseling programs that deliver academic, career, college access, and personal/social competencies to all students in their schools. For example, the ASCA National Model includes the following four main areas:

• Foundation - a written school counseling program mission statement, a beliefs and philosophy statement, and a focus on the ASCA standards and competencies and how they are implemented for every student;
• Delivery System - how lessons and individual and group counseling are delivered;
• Management System (use of calendars, time, building leader-school counselor role agreements, creation of action plans); and
• Accountability System - use of a School Counseling program audit, results reports, and school counselor performance evaluations based on 13 key competencies.

The model is implemented using key skills from the Education Trust's Transforming School Counseling Initiative: Advocacy, Leadership, Teaming and Collaboration, and Systemic Change.