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In this article we present results from a pilotresearch study of school counseling students playing aleadership role in school reform. This is followed by adiscussion of how knowledge and skills used bycounseling students in our study relate to schoolcounselor advocacy competencies (Trusty & Brown,2005).

Although advocacy has been a common theme incounseling throughout its history, there has been arenewal of this concept in the school counselingliterature (Baker & Gerler, 2004). This new focus onschool counselor advocacy reflects the currenttransforming school counseling initiative (Bemak &Chung, 2005; Pérusse & Goodnough, 2004) and theAmerican School Counselor Association’s (ASCA)National Model (ASCA, 2003). However, neitherASCA nor the literature has articulated the knowledgeand skills school counselors need to be effectiveadvocates in today’s schools. By delineating a specificset of competencies for school counselors’ role inadvocacy, Trusty and Brown (2005) have providedguidelines for research, training, and practice of 21st

century school counselor advocates. Trusty andBrown’s school counselor advocacy competencies areorganized into three categories: disposition, knowledge,and skills. Briefly, disposition refers to those personalqualities that school counselors must have in order togain the knowledge and skills needed to becomeeffective advocates. For example, school counselorswith an advocacy disposition are autonomous in theirthinking and behavior; altruistic, with student well-being their major concern; and willing to take risks tohelp students meet their needs (Trusty & Brown, 2005,p. 260). Advocates need to have knowledge of resources,parameters of practice, dispute resolution mechanisms,advocacy models, and systems change. Skill areasinclude communications, collaborations, problemassessment, problem solving, organizational, and self-care (Trusty & Brown, 2005, p. 261).

Our pilot study depicts what some of thesecompetencies look like when school counselors

advocate for the academic success of every studentwithin the context of school reform. First, however, wepresent the theoretical foundation of our research.

Theoretical Foundation of the Research

The Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM)is one means to get a handle on the teachers’/staffs’communications about school innovation/reformthrough the “concept of concern” (Hall, George, &Rutherford, 1979). According to this model (van denberg, Sleegers, Geijsel. & Vandenberghe, 2000), threetypes of concerns, which can emerge within theimplementation of education reform initiatives, standout: self-concerns, task concerns, and impact concerns.Initially, individuals tend to reflect on exactly what thereform initiative means for them. This type of concernis referred to as self-concern. As self-concern decreases,people begin to consider what the initiative entails forthe daily operation of a task. This form of concern iscalled task concern. When teachers are more focusedon their students and colleagues than themselves or thetask, this is called impact concern. Impact concernsoccur when teachers who understand the impact of aprogram, along with their colleagues, institute a reforminitiative and become ready to actually implement thereform task. The specific focus of our study has beenon school counselors playing a collaborative leadershiprole in identifying and communicating teacher/staffconcerns about their role in the school reform initiativereferred to as advisories.

Advisories consist of a small group of students(12 to15) assigned to a staff member of the school whoregularly meets with his or her group for a designatedperiod of time. The purpose of the advisories variesand can include group guidance lessons, exploringcareer options, developing an individual education plan,learning conflict resolution skills, and participating ina community and/or school governance (Sinner, 2004).The school district under study, an urban center in thenortheast region of the United States with

Developing School Counselor Advocacy Competencies Within aLeadership Role in Education Reform

Robert D. Colbert, Rachelle Pérusse, Tamisha Bouknight, and Dawn Ballard

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predominately African American and Hispanic studentsfrom lower socioeconomic-level families, hasimplemented advisories in all three comprehensive highschools. Our pilot study was conducted in one of theseurban high schools.

In the next sections of this article, we present arationale for why it is important for school counselorsto play a leadership role in helping teachers/staffmembers increase their capacities to implementadvisories. This is followed by a description of theintervention (utilizing school counselors in acollaborative leadership role), and then theidentification of specific advocacy competenciesarticulated by Trusty and Brown (2005) that are usedin counselors’ leadership role in advisories.

Rationale for School Counselor Leadership Rolein Advisories

Advisories have been found to be a successful wayto improve student academic achievement (Hess, 2003).Advisories can improve student achievement throughthe delivery of guidance lessons that address studentacademic, career, and social developmental needs(ASCA, 2003). Research has shown guidance programparticipation to be related to positive student outcomessuch as higher grades, more positive relationships withteachers, and specific postsecondary school career plans(Lapan, Gysbers, & Petroski, 2003). However, manyschools that have adopted advisories are not seeingpositive student outcomes due to low teacher buy-infor teacher/staff implementation and lack of teacherwillingness to conduct guidance lessons (Hess, 2003).This means that large amounts of human and fiscalresources for education innovation are not beingoptimally utilized.

Description of a Pilot Study of School CounselorsPlaying a Leadership Role in Advisories

In a pilot study investigating the feasibility ofschool counselors’ role in increasing teachers’/staffs’capacities to implement advisories, we paired master’slevel school counseling students with teachers in chargeof advisories. The graduate students collected data onthe School Counseling Program Evaluation Scale(SCoPES; Whiston, 2002) instrument, and designedguidance lessons based on students’ needs.Simultaneously, the Stages of Concerns (SOC)questionnaire (Hall, George, & Rutherford, 1979) wasadministered to teachers to identify teacher concernsabout their role in advisories. Results from the SOCwere shared with teachers and the principal who usedit to make changes in operational procedures in

advisories as well as staff development to addressteachers’ concerns (Hall, George, & Rutherford, 1979).After only 1 year of the intervention, it was found thatthose teachers who had been paired with a student (for6 weeks) and received the SOC sharing and subsequentactivities to address concerns (for 1 school year) hadstatistically significantly fewer self-concerns than thosewho were not similarly paired or received theintervention for addressing teachers’ advisory concerns.While lower self-concerns do not automatically lead togreater task and impact concerns, these findings are inthe right (theoretical) direction. Therefore, we areencouraged that school counseling studentscollaborating with teachers as in our pilot study wouldhelp more teachers implement their advisory role, thusextending the benefits to greater number of students.

Given the short time period of only 6 weeks, wedid not collect posttest SCoPES’ data from the highschool students who participated in the advisoriesguidance lessons. In the future, however, we plan tocollect pretest and posttest data using the SCoPES sothat we can determine whether advisory guidancelessons over an extended period of time will affectstudents’ academic, career, and personal/socialdevelopmental competencies. Posttest content andprocess data were collected, and examples of students’comments are as follows:

• Students’ favorite part of advisory guidancelessons

“Getting to know other people.”—ninthgrader

“Drawing what I like ‘cause it helped medraw a future.”—ninth grader

• Students’ general comments about advisoryguidance lessons

“It was the best time in the class.”—ninthgrader

“Thank you for being here.”—ninth grader

Additionally we collected posttest data fromteachers to find out their views of the graduate studentsserving in the role as just mentioned.

• Comments about the experience fromteachers who collaborated with graduateschool counseling students

“…..occupied every minute of their time andevery student participated, even more sothan when I taught lessons alone.”

“good connections with students, kept theirattentions, not a moment wasted.”

“I have used some of the lessons the students(school counseling graduate students)

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developed and I plan to use others nextyear.”

• Comments from teachers in general aboutthe schools’ school counselors collaboratingin advisories as the graduate students’ did

“It would be very useful because theguidance counselors have much moreexpertise in the field.”

“Would be useful to have their assistance,but the counselors won’t like it.”

“Guidance counselors could help overseethe vehicle of advisory.”

We are encouraged by the teachers’ and students’comments indicating satisfaction with graduate studentsparticipating in advisories in a collaborative andleadership role. Additionally, we are optimistic aboutour continued research in this area, especially becauseteachers’ comments support our future research plansto include the actual schools’ school counselors in thecollaborative leadership role in advisories. In the nextsection, we discuss how the leadership collaborativerole in our study demonstrated advocacy competenciesarticulated in the Trusty and Brown model (2005).

Specific Advocacy Competencies

Our focus here is on advocacy knowledge andskills (Trusty & Brown, 2005). Specific knowledgeareas discussed are resources and system change (Trusty& Brown, 2005, pp. 260–261). Specific skill areas arecollaboration and problem assessment.

Knowledge AreasResource knowledge pertained to human and

material regarding guidance lessons in our research.Many teachers rejected their guidance role due to theirconcerns that they did not have the knowledge and skillsto conduct guidance lessons. School counselors aretrained to develop and implement guidance lessons;therefore, they have access to resources to implementthis role. In the case of our pilot study, these resourcesincluded written material on how to develop andimplement guidance lessons. Also, students accessedtheir own knowledge and skills regarding guidancelessons; thus students themselves were resources. Theprincipal was used as a resource when graduate studentshelped facilitate the identifying and addressing ofteachers’ concerns about their advisory roles. Theprincipal provided access to the monetary resourcesneeded to implement specific staff development toaddress teachers’ concerns about their advisory roles.

Systems change knowledge in our researchcentered on the concept of teacher concerns as

conceptualized in the CBAM model (Hall, George, &Rutherford, 1979; van den berg et al., 2000). Studentsunderstood that by helping teachers and the principalidentify and address teachers’ concerns about their rolein advisories, the chance that greater numbers ofteachers in the school would implement guidancelessons during advisories increased, thus more studentsin the school would gain benefits of participating in aschool counseling program activity. School change hererefers to the graduate students getting personnel withinthe whole school to change how they interacted withone another to gain desired student outcomes.Specifically, teachers and the principal worked togetherand formed consensus for staff development about theschool reform initiative advisories.

Skill AreasCollaboration skills were basic in graduate

students’ work with teachers and the principal. Studentshad to go into a situation wherein most teachers werenot feeling positive about their roles in advisories.Students had to work hard to establish a trustingworking/collaborative relationship with teachers andthe principal, and convince them that they would benefitby collaborating with the students.

Problem-assessment skills were demonstratedwhen students administered the Stages of Concernsquestionnaire to teachers to find out their concerns aboutimplementing advisories. The problem assessed waswhat could be done to get more teachers to actuallyimplement their role in advisories. This led to theircollaboration with teachers and the principal foraddressing teachers’ advisory concerns. Additionally,by assessing students’ academic, career, and personal/social developmental needs using the SCoPES, graduatestudents demonstrated problem-assessment skills.

Implications and Conclusion

This work provides counselor educators withaccess to research and training for school counseloradvocacy. In those settings where counselor educatorshave partnerships or are trying to find a partnershipfocus with local school districts, this research providesone. For a more detailed account of how to develop aschool-university partnership for this line of research,the reader is referred to Colbert and Bouknight (2005).Moreover, this focus allows counselor educators toinclude their graduate students in the research/partnership, which gives them a field setting to applyadvocacy knowledge and skills learned in theclassroom. Lastly, practicing school counselors inschools where counselor educators and graduatestudents collaborate with teachers and principals have

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access to developing these advocacy knowledge andskills.

References

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Baker, S. B., & Gerler, E. R., Jr. (2004). Schoolcounseling for the 21st century (4th ed.). Upper SaddleRiver, NJ: Pearson Education.

Bemak, F., & Chung, R. C-Y. (2005). Advocacy as acritical role for urban school counselors: Workingtoward equity and social justice. Professional SchoolCounseling, 8(3), 196–202.

Colbert, R. D., & Bouknight, T. (2005). Schoolcounselors and teachers collaborate to implementeducation reform in an urban high school. In G. R.Waltz & R. K. Yep (Eds.), VISTAS: Compellingperspectives on counseling 2005 (pp. 1999–2002).Alexandria, VA: American Counseling Association.

Goodnough, G., Pérusse, R., & Erford, B. T. (2003).Developmental classroom guidance. In B. T. Erford(Ed.), Transforming the school counseling profession(pp. 121–151). Columbus, OH: Merrill Prentice-Hall.

Hall, G. E., George, A. A., & Rutherford, W. A. (1979).Measuring stages of concern about innovation: Amanual for use of the SoC Questionnaire. Austin,TX:Southwest Educational Development Laboratory.

Hess, G. A., Jr. (2003). Reconstitution—Three yearslate: Monitoring the effects of sanctions on Chicagoschools. Education in Urban Society, 35(3), 300–327.

Lapan, R. T., Gysbers, N. C., & Petroski, G. F. (2003).Helping seventh graders be safe and successful: Astatewide study of the impact of comprehensiveguidance and counseling programs. ProfessionalSchool Counseling, 6, 186–197.

Pérusse, R., & Goodnough, G. E. (2004). Leadership,advocacy, and direct service strategies forprofessional school counselors. Pacific Grove, CA:Brooks/Cole.

Sinner, G. (2004). Home sweet home. PrincipalLeadership, 4(7), 37–41.

Trusty, J., & Brown, D. (2005). Advocacy competenciesfor professional school counselors. ProfessionalSchool Counseling, 8(3), 259–265.

van den berg, R., Sleegers, P., Geijsel, F., &Vandenberghe, R. (2000). Implementation of aninnovation: Meeting the concerns of teachers. Studiesin Educational Evaluation, 26, 231–250.

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