School Counselors’ Perceptions of Family Systems Perspectives

Abstract

School counselors traditionally have been trained in individual models and often lack the training in a family systems perspective that is necessary to provide a comprehensive school counseling program. One project 10 years ago empirically studied school counselors’™ perceptions of the importance of utilizing a family systems perspective when working with children and families. The present study updated this information, and determined how prepared and competent they felt, and how frequently they use a family systems perspective. A total of 657 school counselors completed 56 online questions about a family systems approach, including its importance, their preparedness, rating of their own competency, frequency of use, how they learned about family systems, and barriers might prevent use. Less than half (39%) reported taking a course in family systems, but more than half (87%) said that such a course should be required. They used family systems daily or at least several times per week. Overall, the more methods they used to learn about family systems, the more important they rated it, the more prepared and competent they rated themselves, and the more frequently they used this approach. Many (79%) responded to the open-ended question about barriers and often mentioned barriers such as lack of training (23%), lack of parental involvement (18%), and time (18%). In both quantitative and qualitative data, most school counselors recognized the importance of requiring a family systems course in their training curriculum. Lack of this kind of course may be leaving counselors unprepared to respond to student needs.

Keywords

Counselor Family School Systems Frequency

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