The Influence of Efficacy Beliefs on Teacher Performance and Student Success: Implications for Student Support Services

The influence of teachers’ efficacy beliefs on student achievement is well documented in educational literature. Efficacy beliefs are derived from sources of information teachers obtain from professional experiences. This article provides student support services personnel with an overview of efficacy beliefs and their impact on teachers’ thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. A cognitive behavioral framework, rational emotive behavior therapy, is used to conceptualize ways efficacy beliefs may hinder teacher performance and student success. Implications for student support services and research are provided.     

Student personnel services in the university without walls

With the growth of the university without walls, or the open university, a new and expanded role can be in the making for the student personnel professional. This professional's expanded functions should center around outreach services that are necessary for the special groups the open university can serve. An active role for the student personnel professional should become a reality within the nontraditional university.     

Outcome Assessment of Student Competence: Issues and Implications

Outcome assessment of student competence is an increasingly important area of direct relevance to special services. With the growing attention being given to this challenging task has come recognition by practitioners of the need to more fully understand what constitutes the area. As a response to this need, a conceptualization of outcome assessment of student competence is provided in this article, while pertinent issues and implications are also discussed.     

Fidelity Assessment to Improve Teacher Instruction and School Decision Making

Teachers must provide high-quality instruction based on evidence-based practices to provide students meaningful opportunities to learn and to improve school outcomes. Although teachers have access to a variety of resources on evidence-based practices, poor implementation may limit the effectiveness of teacher practices, as indicated by low levels of student achievement and flat rates of progress. However, inadequate student response to instruction or intervention may also be due to a mismatch between teacher practices and student needs such as when students require more intensive support. As a result, school teams must determine the degree to which teachers provide instruction and intervention as intended (i.e., fidelity of implementation) to determine if an inadequate student response is due to poor implementation of practices that match student needs or due to a need for more intensive support. The authors report the necessity of including contingencies for measuring fidelity within school-wide assessment practices. Methods for assessing fidelity that can be used by school administrators, school psychologists, and teachers are discussed. Examples of recommended methods are provided for both academic and behavioral practices.     

Building Effective Teams and Groups

In this article, important and emerging issues are described that pertain to development of effective teams and groups in schools. Relatedly, guidelines are delineated about how school special services practitioners can collaborate to develop effective teams and work groups.     

Examining the Efficacy of School-Based Consultation: Recommendations for Improving Outcomes

SUMMARY

Schools are faced with the difficult task of educating students who present diverse learning and behavioral challenges. To meet student needs, schools tap the expertise of a variety of specialists who provide services through “pull-out” programs or consultation to general educators. Unfortunately, neither strategy has proved effective to date with respect to children and youth who present significant social behavior problems. A brief review of the literature points to the shortcomings as linked to multiple treatments with varying outcomes and inconsistent implementation of best practices. One option to address the challenges schools face in light of ineffective practices to date is the development of school-wide systems of positive behavior support (PBS). Effective implementation of school-wide systems of PBS will require moving the consultation process from individual cases to working with teams of educators. Key skills and possible measurement strategies to develop and sustain school-wide consultation efforts are discussed.     

The Evaluation of Student Counselling: A Review of the Literature 1962-86

A critical review of studies examining the efficacy of student counselling is presented, together with suggestions for how the design of such research might be improved. Complementary investigations of client and employer attitudes towards and expectations of student counselling services are also described. The need to evaluate student counselling in the face of economic cutbacks is discussed.     

Harming high performers: a social comparison perspective on interpersonal harming in work teams

This study developed a multilevel model of the interpersonal harming behavior associated with social comparison processes in work teams. We tested this model using temporally lagged data from a sample of student teams (Study 1) and cross-sectional data from a sample of work teams in a telecommunication services company (Study 2). In both studies, social relations analyses revealed that in teams with less cooperative goals, comparison to a higher performing team member was positively associated with interpersonal harming behavior, but only when expectations of future performance similarity to that member were low. The interactive relationship of social comparison and expected future performance similarity with interpersonal harming was buffered, however, in teams with more cooperative goals.     

Student responses to a reflexive course evaluation

Simple surveys are the predominant tool for course evaluations in most universities, but their validity has been questioned. They have been criticized for being a ritual way of complying with administrative regulations rather than a way of improving educational quality. Moreover, there is often a focus on student satisfaction, where the complexity of learning processes and the development of learner identities are lost. As an alternative approach, a qualitative course evaluation was tested that consisted of a single question: What could have been done in this course in order to better support your learning? Twenty-one second-year psychology students completed the evaluation at the end of a course. They provided rich answers describing learning activities and communication, and they described both teachers and students as agents. Going beyond merely reporting possible improvements, the students saw their learning processes in a context of academic demands and social mechanisms. It is argued that qualitative course evaluations can provide information about students’ understanding of their own learning that is difficult to uncover in a traditional survey. It is concluded that qualitative course evaluations would support the development of a student learner identity and help create a role for students as co-producers of knowledge.     

Support for students with mental health difficulties in higher education: the students' perspective

A massive expansion in student numbers in higher education, coupled with an overall reduction in funding, has led to higher staff-student ratios and a reduction in the amount of staff time available to support students. This has been linked to rising demands being placed on student support services. This article draws on case studies of five students experiencing mental health difficulties, to provide insight into these issues from the student perspective. The students confirmed that aspects of the higher education environment had exacerbated their difficulties. An innovative model of support is described. Traditionally interventions for students with mental health difficulties have focused at the individual level. We argue that attention also needs to be paid to changing aspects of the environment and that this would improve the learning experience for all students.     

An Analysis of Student Privacy Rights in the Use of Plagiarism Detection Systems

Plagiarism detection services are a powerful tool to help encourage academic integrity. Adoption of these services has proven to be controversial due to ethical concerns about students’ rights. Central to these concerns is the fact that most such systems make permanent archives of student work to be re-used in plagiarism detection. This computerization and automation of plagiarism detection is changing the relationships of trust and responsibility between students, educators, educational institutions, and private corporations. Educators must respect student privacy rights when implementing such systems. Student work is personal information, not the property of the educator or institution. The student has the right to be fully informed about how plagiarism detection works, and the fact that their work will be permanently archived as a result. Furthermore, plagiarism detection should not be used if the permanent archiving of a student’s work may expose him or her to future harm.     

The Forgotten Facilitators: Human Relations Training for Support Personnel

Lamb and Rapin's (1976) ecological model for categorizing and evaluating student development services emphasizes the total environment of the student service as critical to the students' receptivity to and ultimate success in counseling. The adjunct role of the support staff in the creation and maintenance of a generally positive milieu is often assumed or ignored. To remedy this situation, a staff development program was implemented to (a) provide recognition of the support personnel's necessary involvement in and contribution to the division's mission, (b) develop human relations skills, and (c) facilitate increased understanding and communication between the professional staff and the support staff.     

Student Patterns of Financing Education at a Land-Grant University

A financial aid survey was administered to the entire student body (10,185) at a land-grant university. The data showed that parental assistance was the main source of financial support, but that it declined in importance each year, while student employment by the university increased each year. Legislation providing increased opportunities for student employment appears to be appropriate and desirable. A wide variety of individual solutions to financial planning were noted.     

The Role of Interdisciplinary Teams in the Promotion of Physical and Mental Health

This article delineates important issues to be considered using special services professionals to develop and implement health promotion programs by means of a school-based interdisciplinary team approach. The current status of interdisciplinary teams is discussed and an expanded role for such teams in health promotion activities is advocated. Specific issues pertaining to interdisciplinary team organization and integration into school systems are reviewed in the context of health promotion program development.     

University Support for Student Volunteering in England: Historical Development and Contemporary Value

This article draws on a major study of student volunteering based on case studies of six Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) selected to represent the diversity of the higher education sector in England. The study finds that students contribute significantly to university life and to the wider community through both formal and informal volunteering. However in this paper we consider the challenges and problems with the organisation of student volunteering. Our research finds that students who were supported by their university to volunteer reported better experiences of volunteering and identified greater impacts on their personal development, soft skills, employability and community awareness. In this paper we challenge the tendency of some policy makers and practitioners to view student volunteering as an automatic ‘win, win, win’—for students, for universities and for communities. Rather we explore how without adequate support, management and opportunities for reflection and placing volunteering in wider social context, student volunteering can fail to benefit any of these groups. The paper outlines the development of institutional support for volunteering by students before assessing the value such support has for student volunteers today.     

Student Voice for School‐Climate Improvement: A Case Study of an Urban Middle School

This case study used a student voice program in an urban middle school in the southeastern United States to examine the validity of three theoretically derived pathways through which student voice may affect positive school climate. First, using a youth participatory action research process to identify barriers to learning, analyse their root causes, and advocate for solutions to school administration allowed students to influence minor school policies and implement anti‐bullying, classroom‐behaviour‐monitoring, and experiential‐learning initiatives. However, there were challenges to making these policy and practice changes systemic. Second, relationships were formed and strengthened as a byproduct of student participant and staff collaboration in program activities. However, the program may have contributed to an ingroup–outgroup dynamic between participants and other peers. Third, students who participated in the program developed citizenship competencies, and their development may have promoted broader prosocial norms among the student body, though evidence was inconsistent. Study findings suggest that future research examine how variations in the implementation of student voice initiatives can maximize the contribution to a positive school climate in urban schools. Findings also suggest that practitioners should ensure that student teams be representative of a multitude of student identities. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Student Counseling Virtual Pamphlet Collection: An innovative resource

Many university student counseling centers are now adapting pamphlets for the World-Wide Web, creating what the author refers to as virtual pamphlets. The author searched 52 university student counseling center Web sites, uncovered 200 virtual pamphlets, and brought them together as the Student Counseling Virtual Pamphlet Collection. In just a few months, there are already multiple indications that this innovative resource is considered valuable. Moreover, this paradigm can be applied, and different virtual pamphlet collections developed, to promote the education of clients who receive other mental health, general medical, or even non-health-related services.     

Learning and understanding in virtual teams.

There are sufficient reasons to conclude that virtual education is not just hype. There are, among others, economic motivations such as bringing one learning module to a larger audience of learners, and pragmatic reasons such as achieving flexibility in time and space for learning, which is especially important for adult learners. However, from a pedagogic point of view there are some doubts. Current technologies meant for learning and working in teams are often designed for functional collaboration (e.g., sharing documents, communicating), but fail to support learning, understanding and team forming (e.g., carrying out pedagogically adequate tasks, understanding each other's work and group dynamic processes) in virtual teams. In order to understand virtual teams, we need to know how we can study learning and understanding in virtual teams. Interesting research questions are: Which concepts are important in understanding virtual teams? How can we measure those concepts, and in what type of setting (e.g., experimental study, case study)? The aim of this special issue is to provide and discuss concepts and pragmatic insights in research on learning and understanding in virtual teams. The aim of this article is to set the stage for those articles.     

Student Services for Athletes: A Model for Enhancing the Student-Athlete Experience

A comprehensive outreach program for providing student services to college athletes is described. Sponsored by the Center for Counseling and Student Development, the program attends to the developmental needs of student-athletes. Services include academic monitoring, consultation, workshops, and personal counseling. Benefits and suggestions for implementation of the program are addressed.     

Psychosocial Characteristics of Student Veterans with Service-Related Disabilities: Implications for Further Research and Occupational Therapy Involvement

The purpose of this study was to assess how post-9/11 university student veterans differ from nonveteran university students on four mental health indicators. In comparison to a demographically matched sample of nonveteran students, it was found that veterans in this study had significantly higher levels of depression and post-traumatic stress symptomatology and non-significantly lower levels of engagement in meaningful activities and meaning in life. This non-experimental study indicates that mental health differences between student veterans and their nonveteran peers do exist, and argues for the inclusion of occupational therapy services for student veterans.