An editor's Top Ten Wish List.

I would like to take this opportunity to do three things. First, I want to briefly update you on how the journal is doing. Second, I want to introduce you to a new section of the journal that you will see in this issue and possibly some future issues. And last, I would like to talk to you about a serious shortage in the kinds of research studies that practicing professional school counselors need and what we should do about it. I will briefly discuss a process and make specific suggestions in outlining a Top Ten Wish List for increasing certain types of studies that could add much to our field.

Professional School Counseling is in very good shape. We are receiving many good manuscripts that address a wide range of issues important to the training and practice of school counselors. With the invaluable assistance of Kathleen Rakestraw, managing editor, our turnaround time on manuscripts is approximately 3 months (from initial submission, through the editorial review, and to a decision letter from the editor). Our acceptance rate is close to 25% on all submitted manuscripts. I have really tried to make a special effort to work with practicing school counselors who submit manuscripts. We have four special issues in various stages of completion. I would like to thank the members of our Editorial Board who consistently provide an invaluable service to the journal and assistance to mc in malting Professional School Counseling a very high-quality, scholarly publication.

In this issue you will find a new section to our journal. I have titled it "Extended Discussion." One of the difficulties with journals is that articles often are unrelated to each other. One author may present a provocative idea or set of findings and the next article goes off in an unrelated direction. One strategy for increasing the coherence of the journal for readers and pushing our field to take a more in-depth look at critical issues is to have an extended discussion in the journal about topics of paramount importance for professional school counselors.

In this issue of the journal, Bemak, Chung, and Siroskey-Sabdo present a strategy for providing group counseling services to African American girls who are at risk for dropping out of high school. After receiving this submission, I felt that we would all benefit from having an extended discussion on this topic. I then asked several of your colleagues to read this paper and write a critical reaction to it. I tried to give them the latitude that would allow them to add their own unique perspective to this topic. After receiving these critiques, I sent them to Dr. Bemak and his colleagues. They then wrote a reaction to the critiques.

I hope that what you find is a coherent discussion of a critical issue that our profession faces. As you will see, the authors do not agree. This, I think, is a good thing. It introduces debate and discussion into the journal about a fundamental problem of practice that school counselors face. I hope that in this small way, Professional School Counseling would serve as a forum for discussions that position school counselors to be part of the solution to the critical challenges facing our ever-diversifying pluralistic democracy.

AN EDITOR'S TOP TEN WISH LIST

Having now reviewed all of the manuscripts submitted to Professional School Counseling over the past year, I would like to draw your attention to both a serious and significant gap in the knowledge base that practicing school counselors need and a shortage in the kinds of studies that could be of real assistance to them. I present this to you as nay Top Ten Wish List that we could work together to realize.

10. Moratorium 

We should call for a temporary moratorium on articles that only expound on what practicing school counselors ought to be doing. Speaking for myself, it is relatively easy to sit in my faculty office and generate a manuscript that sounds good, has an internal logic to it, and makes suggestions for counselor practice that from a university perspective seem reasonable. Of course, the first thing that practicing counselors would say upon reading this is how can this be done within the contexts and constraints of a public school setting, their current job descriptions, existing student-to-counselor ratios, and varying levels of administrative support?

Instead, we (counselor educators and related university researchers) need to work directly (in a partnership) with school counselors to investigate, measure, and describe the good things that happen for all children when school counselors engage in critical counseling activities that are at the heart of a comprehensive counseling program approach. This kind of applied evaluation research can greatly assist us to improve the counseling services that are provided to all students and to advocate with policymakers to support school counseling approaches that have been shown to work. By working together with practicing school counselors, we can more closely align our practice, research, and theories.

9. Systematic Observations

We need many more studies that emphasize systematic observations (both qualitative and quantitative) of school counselors attempting to deal with critical national problems. The use of survey data isn't enough. We really need more studies that take the time to more closely examine the actual interactions among school counselors, students, teachers, and parents. This is much more time-consuming research to do. However, such observations would put us in a much better position to connect the actions of counselors to better outcomes for students.

8. Better Designs

We need a school counseling research community that routinely implements state-of-the-art research design elements into its investigations. I am not advocating for more sophisticated multivariate statistics. We need more studies that are intentionally constructed to address the fundamental validity issues inherent in good research designs--that is, statistical conclusion, internal, construct, and external validity (Shadish, Cook, & Campbell, 2002).

7. Pretext/Control Groups

Our research studies should at least meet the standards of good quasi-experimental control group studies, with multiple pretests, a measurement of possible treatment outcomes, and a follow-up assessment of gains that hold over a period of time. Good single-subject designs and qualitative investigations would be ever so welcome. In fact, in the past year I have only reviewed a very small handful of studies that have even attempted to do something like this.

6. Using Existing School Data

We need studies that use existing data that are already being collected, coded, and saved by schools. School counselors are being pushed to carry out evaluations of their efforts to see whether they are making a difference for students. Data collection should not become another "add-on" duty for school counselors to perform. Outcomes that school administrators and policymakers care about (e.g., grades, test scores, attendance, classroom behavior, and office referrals) are already available. It is time to clearly demonstrate that what practicing school counselors do can greatly contribute to improving these valued outcomes.

5. Examining Validity

After a study has been carried out, authors should more systematically use both qualitative and quantitative analyses to assess the validity of their investigations (i.e., statistical conclusion, internal, construct, and external validity). This is rarely done. The "Limitations" section of our research articles should provide the reader with a detailed accounting of how other plausible explanations could be operating in a way that would explain the results that were found. This should not be an afterthought in a paper. It gives the reader a way to evaluate how seriously they should take the findings advocated for in the study. Given the ambiguity and complexity inherent in the area we are working in, skepticism is a very good thing.

4. Construct Validity 

Our research studies must start to seriously address the construct validity issues related to the implementation of school counseling "treatments." In my opinion, this is the single biggest weakness in our research studies. We need specific information that provides the reader some sense of certainty that there is a very close match between the constructs we are attempting to address and the specific operations that have been put into place in this specific study. For example, if a study is about at-risk high school students, we need to have a better idea as to whether the selection of students actually achieved a sample that represents the diversity and heterogeneity characteristic of students categorized under this broad construct. In addition, if we are to make more accurate assessments of the effectiveness of counseling interventions in promoting valued outcomes, researchers need to better inform us about how their intervention was delivered, received by students, and then adhered to by students.

Recently, I was collecting data with a very effective elementary school counselor. After taking the time to have several extended discussions about her work with a behaviorally disruptive third grader, it was very clear to me that what she was saying she was doing with this child and what she was actually doing were (in some very important ways) two very different things. She came up with a creative strategy that engaged this boy as a positive role model for other students. Without a more in-depth look at the construct validity of the treatments she was actually providing to this young person, our efforts to identity, key elements that promote real change would not have been successful. However, this takes a lot more of the researcher's time.

3. Partnerships

To do these kinds of research studies, practicing counselors and counselor educators should form collaborative research partnerships and engage in high-quality action-outcome research. The American School Counselor Association's new National School Counseling Research Center could coordinate and help to maintain such partnerships across the country.

2. Let's Each Do One

Each one of us should commit to carrying out at least one of these collaborative research studies during the upcoming year. These collaborative research projects then could be shared at a research forum at the 2006 ASCA national conference.

1. Publishing Them

These research studies then could be published in special sections of Professional School Counseling. We could identify several colleagues to perform a meta-analysis of these studies to identify common factors across studies that promote positive change for students. These articles would have multiple practicing school counselors as coauthors and would contain information that counselors would find critical to their practice.

I offer this challenge to you in the spirit of colleagueship and recognition that this is a great adventure that we are engaged in together. The stakes are very high. School counselors can play a vital role in the positive development of all students. Now is the time for us to dig in deeply and do the kind of focused, high-quality research that our profession both needs and deserves. Professional School Counseling is a natural outlet and advocate for this kind of scholarship. Thank you and I hope to see you at the ASCA convention in Orlando this summer!

Reference

Shadish, W. R., Cook, T. D., & Campbell, D. T. (2002). Experimental and quasi-experimental designs for generalized causal inference. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Richard T. Lapan, Ph.D., is a professor with the Department of Educational, School, and Counseling Paychology, University of Missouri at Columbia. E-mail: [e-mail]