How School Counselors Can Help Prevent Online Victimization

Although the Internet is a beneficial tool, some youth are at risk for being victimized by Internet predators. School counselors are in a unique position to assist in efforts to prevent online victimizations because of their continual interaction with students, parents, and other school faculty. This article provides school counselors with information about youth Internet use; risk factors associated with online victimizations; and recommendations to assist youth, parents, and families in improving Internet safety practices.     

The School Counselor's Role in School Dropout Prevention

The role of the school counselor has undergone numerous revisions over the past few decades. The current emphasis on accountability and academic performance of students has forced counselors to scrutinize their role in promoting students' academic success and school completion. In this article, the authors review the problem of school dropout from the school counselor's perspective and offer guidelines for how school counselors can deliver empirically supported strategies to address this problem as part of their comprehensive guidance programs.     

Overcoming Adversity: High‐Achieving African American Youth's Perspectives on Educational Resilience

This qualitative multicase research study identified the home, school, and community factors and processes that contributed to the academic success of 8 urban, African American high school graduates from low‐income, single‐parent families. Ten main themes emerged: school‐related parenting practices, personal stories of hardship, positive mother–child relationships, extended family networks, supportive school‐based relationships, school‐oriented peer culture, good teaching, extracurricular school activities, social support networks, and out‐of‐school time activities. Implications for counselors are discussed.     

Expanding Academic and Career Self‐Efficacy: A Family Systems Framework

This article presents 2 theories useful to school counselors: self‐efficacy and family systems. The author advocates the use of a family‐sensitive model when counseling individuals that recognizes and respects the individual's membership in a family culture. Self‐efficacy and family systems interventions for academic and career development are demonstrated in the hope that individual identities in relation to family identities will be strengthened so that youth can access family legacies as they consider their academic and career options.     

Multidimensional assessment of family involvement among urban elementary students

Family involvement in children's education is fundamental for academic success. This study extended the research on the Family Involvement Questionnaire for Early Childhood (FIQ-EC) by further developing the measure and testing its use with low-income urban elementary students. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses affirmed three salient and reliable family involvement dimensions for a large sample of urban first- through fifth-grade students: Home-based Involvement, School-based Involvement, and Home–School Communication. Multivariate analyses demonstrated the significance of caregiver educational background, family characteristics, and child gender to involvement dimensions. Caregiver age or children's grade level did not significantly relate to family involvement dimensions. This study contributes to evidence for a multidimensional understanding of family involvement.     

Strategies for Counselors Working With High School Students With Attention‐Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

Researchers agree early intervention is crucial to prevent academic underachievement and negative effects on the lives of children, adolescents, and adults affected by attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). If counselors, particularly high school counselors, address the needs of students with ADHD, these students may attain their potential and enter into the workplace or postsecondary education. The authors provide counselors with strategies to identify interpersonal, academic, vocational, and life issues that may affect students with ADHD and to help teachers and parents prepare students with ADHD for the transition from high school to postsecondary education or the work environment.     

Systemic Barriers to Family Involvement in Transition Planning for Youth with Disabilities: A Qualitative Metasynthesis

Family involvement is particularly important to the postschool success of young adults with disabilities who typically experience fewer education and employment opportunities after leaving high school than their same age peers without disabilities. Despite mandates for family involvement, school-home partnerships remain elusive, particularly for low-income and culturally and linguistically diverse families. This metasynthesis of findings from 22 qualitative studies examines family perceptions of barriers to transition from school to adulthood and involvement in transition planning. This metasynthesis adds to the literature on family involvement in special education by utilizing Bourdeuian social reproduction theory and Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory to frame the discussion and inform recommendations for research and practice that focus on schools and adult service systems rather than deficiencies in families.     

How immigrant adolescents' self‐views in school and family context relate to academic success in Germany

Immigrants' sense of self can be derived both from being members of their ethnic in‐group and their country of residence. We examined how the ways in which immigrant adolescents integrate these self‐views in relation to academic success in German schools. Students describe themselves at school and when with family. Using a standardized literacy performance test, analyses revealed that immigrants whose school‐related self‐view did not include Germany were less successful: Students who described their self as including both aspects of their ethnic group and Germany, and students who saw themselves predominantly as German, outperformed students with purely ethnic school‐related selves. As expected, though, an ethnic family‐related self‐view did not have a negative impact on scholastic achievements.     

The School Change Feedback Process: Creating a New Role for Counselors in Education Reform

The authors present the results of a multiyear collaborative research project that involved a counselor educator, graduate‐level school counseling students, and school personnel in defining a new role for counselors in education reform. This collaborative effort was based on an innovative conceptual framework that informs school counselors about specific schooling processes that can either enhance or hinder student academic, personal/social, and career development.     

Evaluating a Guidance and Language Arts Unit for High School Juniors

In this study the authors report on the evaluation of a program enhancing both the career development and writing skills of high school juniors. Participants were 166 juniors attending a suburban midwestern high school. School counselors and English teachers worked together to provide an opportunity for students to develop academic skills while exploring relevant career issues. Results indicated that for a wide range of students, participation in the program led to the achievement of specific guidance competencies. Changes in perceived mastery of guidance competencies predicted positive change in vocational identity and attainment of higher English grades for girls. Implications for promoting school counselors' involvement in guidance program evaluation practices are discussed.     

中学生考试活动绩效影响因素模型的初步研究

对573名中学生进行调查研究。根据路径分析结果建立初始模型．通过竞争模型的比较,建立了中学生考试活动绩效影响因素结构方程模型：家庭因素和考试心理素质对考试活动绩效有直接效应,而学校因素、自身因素和考试心理问题与考试活动绩效之间存在间接效应;学校因素、自身因素和考试心理问题互为中介分别通过家庭因素和考试心理素质对考试活动绩效产生间接影响;考试心理素质和家庭因素互为中介对考试活动绩效产生影响。通过对超水平发挥组和发挥失常组进行比较发现,不同组之间的结构方程模型具有一致性,但是变量间的路径系数有所不同。     

The Black Student Experience at Predominantly White Colleges: Implications for School and College Counselors

Research from higher education and cultural studies that has examined the Black college student experience at predominantly White institutions (PWIs) is presented to assist counselors in understanding how Black college students' relationships with faculty, family, friends from home, and peers in Black student organizations can become assets or liabilities to their academic achievement and persistence. Implications are provided for assisting counselors in preparing Black students for, and supporting them while attending, PWIs.     

School Counselor Inclusion: A Collaborative Model to Provide Academic and Social‐Emotional Support in the Classroom Setting

The increasingly diverse student demographics reflect a myriad of needs in the interrelated arenas of educational achievement, social‐behavioral adjustment, and career development, while federal legislation, the ethical standards of the American School Counselor Association (ASCA; 2004a), and the ASCA (2005a) National Model have emphasized academic achievement and success for all students. This article describes a new model of school counselor “inclusion” that involves collaboration with classroom teachers and changes the setting of school counselor interventions to the classroom for small‐group and individual work.     

Psychological Reactance in College Students: Family‐of‐Origin Predictors

This study examined the relationship between psychological reactance and dimensions of functioning in the family of origin. Psychological reactance is the tendency to exhibit resistance in relation to one's freedoms being restricted. Three hundred par ticipants completed the Therapeutic Reactance Scale (E. T. Dowd, C. R. Milne, & S. L. Wise, 1991), the Family Environment Scale (R. H. Moos & B. S. Moos, 1986), and demographic questions. Results showed that 5 family dimensions (i.e., cohesion, conflict, moral‐religious emphasis, independence, and achievement orientation) significantly predicted psychological reactance. Results also showed that college students from divorced families were more psychologically reactant than students from intact families. Implications of these results for counselors and for future researchers are provided.     

Coparenting and Children's School Readiness: A Mediational Model

We examined the long‐term direct and indirect links between coparenting (conflict, communication, and shared decision‐making) and preschoolers' school readiness (math, literacy, and social skills). The study sample consisted of 5,650 children and their biological mothers and fathers who participated in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study‐Birth Cohort. Using structural equation modeling and controlling for background characteristics, we found that our conceptual model of the pathways from coparenting to child outcomes is structurally the same for cohabiting and married families. Controlling for a host of background characteristics, we found that coparenting conflict and shared decision‐making were negatively and positively, respectively, linked to children's academic and social skills and co‐parental communication was indirectly linked to academic and social skills through maternal supportiveness. Coparenting conflict was also indirectly linked to children's social skills through maternal depressive symptoms. The overall findings suggest that for both cohabiting and married families, the context of conflicted coparenting may interfere with the development of children's social competencies and academic skills, whereas collaborative coparenting promotes children's school readiness because mothers are more responsive to their children's needs. These findings have implications for programs aimed at promoting positive family processes in cohabiting and married families.     

Academic Pathways and Children of Immigrant Families

In this study, we examined the relationships between family, school, and community contexts and academic achievement during middle childhood among children of Portuguese, Dominican, and Cambodian immigrant families. We interviewed approximately 350 children from 2 age cohorts spanning first through third and fourth through sixth grades annually across 3 years. Additionally, we collected interviews with parents, measures from teachers, school administrative information, and community ethnographies to understand the various contexts of children's academic achievement. Using a "mixed-methods" approach, we qualitatively coded children's academic success from school records and teacher's responses about the student into 1 of 5 pathways representing children who were "excelling, positive, neutral, negative, or abysmal" across all 3 years of the study. We then used ordinal regression modeling to examine the relationships between child, family, school, and community factors and child academic pathway. Commonalities in findings across the 3 immigrant groups reveal the importance of good school attendance. Divergences between the 3 immigrant groups highlighted family and cultural influences on positive child academic achievement such as synchronicity between child and school values, the children's own academic self-concepts, and academic aspirations. We integrated quantitative findings with the profiles from ethnographic research of the study's communities for an in-depth examination of the mechanisms behind early educational success among children of immigrants.     

Mexican-American High School Students: Educational Aspirations

Acculturation, academic achievement, and parental expectations were shown to predict the educational aspirations of Mexican-American high school students. Acculturation was also shown to mediate Mexican-American student's attitudes concerning the importance they placed on future job security and career success. Implications for counselors and educators are discussed.     

Chinese adolescents' perceptions of family functioning: personal,school-related,and family correlates

The author used two translated measures (Self-Report Family Inventory; D. T. L. Shek, 1998); and Family Assessment Device; N. B. Epstein, L. M. Baldwin, & D. S. Bishop, 1983) and a locally developed scale (Chinese Family Assessment Instrument; D. T. L. Shek, in press-a) to assess 3,649 Chinese adolescents' perceptions of how well their families function. He found that boys perceived their families to function worse than did girls and that younger adolescents perceived their families to function better than did older adolescents. Perceived family functioning was negatively related to grade level; students attending schools with higher academic standards perceived their families to function better than did students attending schools with lower academic standards; and students attending government and aided schools had higher levels of family functioning than did students attending private schools. Family types (intact vs. nonintact families) and the duration of parents' stay in Hong Kong were also related to the adolescents' perceptions of family functioning. Findings for the personal, school-related, and family correlates of perceived family functioning were statistically significant and stable across different measures of family functioning, but the practical significance of the findings was not high.     

Turn the Wheel: Integral School Counseling for Male Adolescents

In the wake of violent episodes committed by male youths in schools, many male adolescents grapple with the traditional norm of masculinity and the role it might play in contributing to such violence. School counselors need to address the developmental needs of all male youth, because schools play a significant role in the construction of male identities. This article formulates an overarching, inclusive model of integral counseling that enables school counselors to help male adolescents challenge the norm of conventional masculinity. The model draws from 3 areas: transpersonal counseling, holistic education, and mindful social action. The aim is to move the students' level of self‐development and identity toward higher and more integrative realms.     

Family,peer, and neighborhood influences on academic achievement among African-American adolescents: One-year prospective effects

Using a 1-year prospective design, this study examined the influence of family status variables (family income, parental education, family structure), parenting variables (maternal support and restrictive control), peer support, and neighborhood risk on the school performance of 120 African American junior high school students. In addition to main effects of these variables, neighborhood risk was examined as a moderator of the effects of parenting and peer support. Family status variables were not predictive of adolescent school performance as indexed by self-reported grade point average. Maternal support at Time 1 was prospectively related to adolescent grades at Time 2. Neighborhood risk was related to lower grades, while peer support predicted better grades in the prospective analyses. Neighborhood risk also moderated the effects of maternal restrictive control and peer support on adolescent grades in prospective analyses. These findings highlight the importance of an ecological approach to the problem of academic underachievement within the African American community.