School guidance and counseling in the 21st Century: remember the past into the future.

As the 21st Century unfolds, the United States continues to undergo substantial changes in its occupational, social, and economic structures. Occupational and industrial specialization continues to increase dramatically. Increasing company size and complexity is the rule rather than the exception. This often creates job invisibility and makes the transition from school to work, and from work to further education and back to work again, more complex and difficult.

Social structures and social and personal values also continue to change and become more diverse. Emerging social groups are challenging established groups, asking for equality. People are on the move too, from rural to urban areas and vice versa, and from one region of the country to another in search of economic, social, and psychological security. The United States is becoming increasingly diverse.

All of these changes are creating complex challenges for students as they anticipate the future. A rapidly changing work world and labor force; violence in homes, schools, and communities; divorce; teenage suicide; substance abuse; and sexual experimentation are just a few examples of the complex challenges students face today. They are not abstract aberrations. They are real and have and will continue to have substantial impact on the personal/social, career, and academic development of students (Gysbers & Henderson, 2000).

As these and other changes are taking place in society, many organizations and groups of interested and involved individuals are providing programs and services at national, state, and local levels to help students deal effectively with these complex challenges. Within the education community, school counselors have been and continue to be in the forefront of efforts to assist students to respond to these complex challenges through their work within the structure of comprehensive guidance and counseling programs in school districts across the country (Gysbers & Henderson, 2000).

To understand how school counselors are working with students within comprehensive guidance and counseling programs, it is important to first understand how guidance and counseling evolved in schools. The thesis of this article is that much can be learned from the past that will help professional school counselors structure and implement guidance and counseling programs to assist students to deal with the complex challenges they face today and tomorrow. Remember the past into the future.

The first part of this article focuses on the evolution of guidance and counseling in the schools from the beginning of the 20th Century. It describes the contributions of many people, the influence of legislation, and the impact that social and economic changes have had. It is organized around the changing purposes and organizational patterns for guidance and counseling from then until now. The second part of the article analyzes this evolutionary process and highlights some insights from the past, giving specific emphasis to the implications these insights may have for the future work of school counseling. The article closes with a vision for school guidance and counseling programs and the school counselors who work in them.

The Evolution of Guidance and Counseling in the Schools

The Purposes of Guidance and Counseling "Guidance is a coat of many colors" (Miller, 1961, p. 3). In the beginning, the early 1900s, the term for school guidance and counseling was vocational guidance. It had a singular purpose. It was seen as a response to the economic, educational, and social problems of those times and concerned the entrance of young people into the work world and the conditions they might find there. Economic concerns focused on the need to better prepare workers for the workplace while educational concerns arose from a need to increase efforts in schools to help students find purpose for their education as well as their employment. Social concerns emphasized the need for changing school methods and organization as well as exerting more control over conditions of labor in child-employing industries (United States Bureau of Education, 1914).

Two distinctly different perspectives concerning the initial purpose of vocational guidance were present from the very beginning. Wirth (1983) described one perspective, espoused by David Snedden and Charles Prosser, that followed the social efficiency philosophy. According to this perspective, "the task of education was to aid the economy to function as efficiently as possible" (Wirth, 1983, pp. 73-74). Schools were to be designed to prepare individuals for work with vocational guidance being a way to sort individuals according to their various capacities preparing them to obtain a job.

The other perspective of vocational guidance was based on principles of democratic philosophy that emphasized the need to change the conditions of industry as well as assist students to make educational and occupational choices. According to Wirth (1980), "The `Chicago school'--Mead [George Hubert], Dewey [John], and Leavitt [Frank]--brought the perspective of democratic philosophy to the discussion of vocational guidance" (p. 114). Leavitt (1914), in a speech at the founding meeting of the National Vocational Guidance Association (NVGA) in 1913, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, stressed the need to modify the conditions and methods in industry. He stated, "It is well within the range of possibility that vocational guidance, when carried out in a comprehensive, purposeful, and scientific way, may force upon industry many modifications which will be good not only for children but equally for the industry" (p. 80).

Interestingly, both of these perspectives grew out of what was then called the Progressive Movement, a movement that sought to change negative social conditions associated with the Industrial Revolution. According to Stephens (1970),

   These conditions were the unanticipated effects of industrial growth. They
   included the emergence of cities with slums and immigrant-filled ghettos,
   the decline of puritan morality, the eclipse of the individual by
   organizations, corrupt political bossism, and the demise of the
   apprenticeship method of learning a vocation. (pp. 148-149)

It is also important to understand the close relationship between vocational guidance and vocational education during these early years. Vocational education and its companion vocational guidance were seen as ways to change education and industry. According to Bloomfield (1916), vocational education and vocational guidance were directly concerned with conserving natural and human resources. He stated, "Vocational guidance aims to lay down the specifications for a life career, vocational education, to supply the best methods for working them out" (p. 118).

Because of this close relationship the two distinctly different perspectives concerning the purpose of vocational guidance also applied to vocational education. According to Wirth (1980), Snedden and Prosser also applied their philosophy of social efficiency to vocational education. To them the purpose of vocational education was to prepare workers for specific occupations. Dewey's (1915) conception of the purpose of vocational education differed sharply from that of Snedden and Prosser. He stated that:

   The kind of vocational education in which I am interested in is not one
   which will "adapt" workers to the existing industrial regime; I am not
   sufficiently in love with the regime for that. It seems to me that the
   business of all who would not be educational time servers is to resist
   every move in this direction, and to strive for a kind of vocational
   education which will first alter the existing industrial system and
   ultimately transform it. (p. 41)

From the late teens and early 1920s on, however, there was less emphasis on guidance for vocation (vocational guidance) and more on education as guidance (educational guidance). This shift in emphasis in the purpose of guidance occurred partly because of newer leadership, particularly on the part of people such as John Brewer, who were more educationally oriented. In the late teens, Brewer (1918) defined educational guidance "as a conscious effort to assist in the intellectual growth of an individual.... Anything that has to do with instruction or with learning may come under the term educational guidance" (p. 14). According to Myers (1935b), this view of educational guidance "practically identifies educational guidance with organized education" (p. 7).

During this same time period the National Education Association's Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education (CRSE) "had so broadened the definition of vocation as to soften it, if not to virtually eliminate it as a cardinal principle of secondary education" (Stephens, 1970, p. 113). This move by the CRSE, together with the more educational-oriented leadership of guidance served to separate the companion reform movements of education--vocational education and vocational guidance--leaving vocational guidance to struggle with its own identity. Johnson (1972) underscored this point by stating that "the once-correlated responsibility of vocational guidance lost its historical anchorage to vocational education and was set adrift in the public school system to be redefined by the logic of the education subculture" (p. 204).

By the early 1920s, then, the focus for and hence the purpose of guidance had begun to shift. There was less attention to social and industrial issues, whereas considerably more attention was being given to the personal and educational aspects of individuals. More specifically, at least within the school setting, there was a "displacement of the traditional, socioeconomic, and political concerns from the culture at large to the student of the educational subculture whose vocational socialization problems were reinterpreted as educational and psychological problems of personal adjustment" (Johnson, 1972, p. 221).

The change in the purpose of guidance in the 1920s can be attributed in part to a number of movements that were influencing education at that time. These included the mental hygiene and measurement movements, developmental studies of children, the introduction of the cumulative records, and progressive education. Vocational guidance was continuing to take on a new vocabulary present in education--the language of mental health, progressive education, child development, and measurement (Johnson, 1972). As a result, a more clinical model of guidance began to emerge.

In the 1930s, as a result of the mental health movement and the beginning of the clinical model of guidance, personal counseling began to dominate professional theory and practice. Rudy (1965) stressed this point when he stated:

   Up to 1930 ... not much progress had been made in differentiating this
   function [personal counseling] from the preexisting programs of vocational
   and educational guidance. After that date, more and more of a separation
   appeared as guidance workers in the high schools became aware of
   increasingly large numbers of students who were troubled by personal
   problems involving hostility to authority, sex relationships, unfortunate
   home situations, and financial stringencies. (p. 25)

Increasingly too, the term guidance was seen as an all-inclusive term focusing on "problems of adjustment to health, religion, recreation, to family and friends, to school and to work" (Campbell, 1932, p. 4). Vocational guidance remained, but it continued to be defined more narrowly as occupational choice, preparing for it, entering into it, and progressing in it.

The 1930s also showed an emphasis on education as guidance. Efforts were made by some to interpret much, if not all of education as guidance. Miller (1961), somewhat sarcastically noted that "through the 1930s guidance was in danger of being so absorbed into curriculum revision in particular and into the educational effort in general, that even a congressional investigating committee would not be able to recognize it as a function existing in its own right" (p. 6). Jones and Hand (1938), for example, felt that guidance was an inseparable part of education. At the same time personal counseling with its emphasis on personal adjustment continued to be emphasized as well.

While the clinical model for guidance continued in the 1930s into the 1940s, the vocational emphasis also showed strength. This was evident in provisions of An Act to Provide for the Further Development of Vocational Education passed in 1936 and the Vocational Education Act of 1946. These two acts but particularly the Act of 1946 provided funds for a federal office and for state supervision of guidance as well as support for vocational counselors in the schools.

In the 1940s, Carl Rogers published his book Counseling and Psychotherapy (Rogers, 1942). According to Super (1955), "The years following its publication in 1942 saw a growth of interest in psychotherapeutic procedures which soon became even greater than interest in psychometrics. This movement, and the numerous research and theoretical contributions which have accompanied it, has had its impact on vocational guidance" (p. 5).

A major piece of federal legislation in the 1950s that was to have substantial impact on how the purpose of guidance in the schools was framed was the National Defense Education Act of 1958. The purpose of guidance according to this act was the "identification and counseling of scientifically talented students" (Herr, 2001, p. 238). The college-bound student became a priority.

As the decades of the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s unfolded, guidance in the schools continued to respond to national needs and concerns. Social problems including substance abuse, violence in the schools, mental health issues, and changing family patterns all pulled and tugged at defining the purpose of guidance in the schools and role of school counselors. At the same time, economic issues dealing with changing labor force needs and globalization of industry were also present. The changing labor force and globalization of industry renewed interest in vocational guidance as expressed in federal vocational education legislation, the Carl D. Perkins Vocational Education Act of 1984, the Carl D. Perkins Vocational Education and Applied Technology Education Act Amendments of 1990, and the Carl D. Perkins Vocational-Technical Education Act Amendments of 1998.

The 1990 and 1998 Acts are interesting because of the change in definition from the 1990 Act to the 1998 Act for career guidance. In the 1990 Act, the following definition was provided:

   The term "career guidance and counseling" means programs (A) Which pertain
   to the body of subject matter and related techniques and methods organized
   for the development in individuals of career awareness, career planning,
   career decision making, placement skills, and knowledge and understanding
   of local, state, and national occupational, educational and labor market
   needs, trends, and opportunities; and (B) Which assist such individuals in
   making and implementing informed educational and occupational choices.
   (104, Part 2, Stat. 753)

In the 1998 amendments the direction for career guidance had changed substantially. The new definition was as follows:

   Career guidance and academic counseling means providing individual with
   information access on career awareness and planning for their occupational
   and academic future which shall involve career options, financial aid, and
   postsecondary options. (112, Part 1, Stat. 3076)

Gone from the 1990 Act is the notion of an organized program based on a body of subject matter. In the 1998 Act career guidance and "academic" counseling focused only on providing individuals with information. This was a dramatic change in purpose for guidance and counseling conceptually and operationally. It narrowed the purpose of guidance and counseling considerably.

The Organization of Guidance and Counseling

The first organizational structure for guidance and counseling in the schools was a position. Teachers were appointed to the position of vocational counselor (Ginn, 1924). The structure they worked in was a list of duties to be performed along with their regular teaching duties. As a result, the early work of vocational counselors was carried out by teachers with no formal training or organizational structure in which to work other than a list of duties.

By the 1920s, concern was being expressed about the position approach. Myers (1923) stated that there was tendency to "load the vocational counselor with so many duties foreign to the office that little real counseling can be done" (p. 141). The same point was made again in the 1930s. Fitch (1936) expressed concern about the undesirable expansion of the tasks assigned to counselors. He stated, "there is always danger that the counselor may come to be regarded as a handy man on whom may be unloaded any sort of task that no one else has time to do" (p. 761).

In the 1930s, a new organizational structure for guidance and counseling was introduced. It was called pupil personnel work (Myers, 1935a). The personnel included in this new structure were attendance officers, visiting teachers, school nurses, school physicians, and vocational counselors. Guidance and counseling had become one of the services available in schools. This organizational structure continued to flourish in the 1940s and 1950s. By the 1960s it had become the dominant organizing structure for guidance and counseling in the schools. Only by the 1960s, it had become pupil personnel services. According to the Council of Chief State School Officers (1960), pupil personnel services included guidance, health, psychological services, school social work, and attendance.

With the passage of the National Defense Education Act of 1958, funds were available to prepare large numbers of individuals to become school counselors. The dominant way of organizing guidance and counseling in schools was to make it a part of pupil personnel services. Many state departments of education and local school districts placed guidance and the positions of school counselors administratively under the pupil personnel services umbrella. In addition, textbooks written in the 1960s on the organizational and administration of guidance adopted the pupil personnel services model as the way to organize guidance in the schools.

The pupil personnel services model fits nicely with the clinical model of guidance and its position orientation that had been evolving since the 1920s. As a result, guidance became a subset of services to be delivered by school counselors who occupied positions within the broader framework of pupil personnel services. The number of these guidance services varied depending up the authority quoted, but usually there were six, including orientation, individual inventory or appraisal, counseling, information, placement, and follow-up. Also, as a result of the clinical model of guidance, the counseling service emerged as the central service of guidance.

Stripling and Lane (1966) stressed the centrality of counseling, both individual and group, in guidance services. A second priority area was consultation with parents and teachers. Other traditional guidance functions such as appraisal, placement, and evaluation were seen as supplementary and supportive to counseling, group procedures, and consultation. Ferguson (1963) emphasized the same theme that counseling was the core service: "No longer is it viewed merely as a technique and limited to vocational and educational matters; counseling is regarded as the central service in the guidance program" (p. 40).

By the close of the 1960s into the 1970s and 1980s, the common organizational structure for guidance was pupil personnel services. Only by this time, "student services" was being used more often. The American Personnel and Guidance Association (1977) conducted a project to survey the status of guidance and counseling in the nation's schools. The issue papers written as discussion stimulators for the project noted that there were differences of opinion concerning the role of school counselors and confusion as to the best way to organize the delivery of services. More and more questions were being asked about "the role of the school counselor." During this time period, the organizational pattern for the practice of guidance and counseling was the position orientation with school counselors carrying out roles organized by a set of services.

During the 1960s to the 1980s, guidance remained as an undefined program. School counselors continued to find themselves in mainly supportive remedial roles within a pupil personnel (student) services framework. Because of the role confusion and role conflict that continued to occur, concern was expressed about the potency of the services concept. Sprinthall (1971) stated:

   It is probably not an understatement to say that the service concept has so
   dominated guidance and counseling that more basic and significant questions
   are not even acknowledged, let alone answered. Instead, the counselor
   assumes a service orientation that limits and defines his [or her] role to
   minor administrative procedures. (p. 20)

Thus, by the 1970s, concern was being expressed about the services model of the position of school counselors in the schools. It was increasingly apparent that there was a need to reorient guidance and counseling from what was a set of services delivered by an individual in the position of school counselor. It was time to consider an organizational structure that could focus on the career, personal-social, and academic development of students. As a result, the comprehensive developmental program approach began to emerge. The work of putting comprehensive developmental programs into place continued in the 1980s and 1990s. Increasingly sophisticated models were translated into practical, workable programs. As the 21st Century begins to unfold, comprehensive developmental guidance and counseling programs are replacing the traditional position/services structure (Sink & MacDonald, 1998).

In the 1970s and 1980s, three program models were under development. Myrick (1997) described a developmental guidance and counseling model in the 1980s. According to Paisley (2001), Myrick's developmental model emphasized:

1. A focus on provision of programs for all students

2. The recognition that the guidance curriculum must be organized, planned, sequential, yet flexible

3. The need for an integrated approach involving all school personnel. (p. 273)

The second model, developed by Johnson and Johnson (1991) in the 1980s, is called competency-based guidance. They described their approach as "a total pupil services program developed with the student as the primary client" (p. 6). They emphasized that the program focused on all students acquiring competencies to become successful in school, in the transition from school to higher education, or to employment.

The third model was developed in the 1970s by Gysbers and Moore (1981) and later refined and enhanced over a 15-year period by Gysbers and Henderson (2000). It focuses on results and emphasizes an organizational structure consisting of content (competencies), organizational framework (structural components and program components), and resources (human, financial, and political). School counselor time is allocated across the program components of guidance curriculum, individual planning, responsive services, and system support.

By the close of the 20th Century, comprehensive guidance programs increasingly were being implemented as a result of the work of guidance leaders at the national and state level as well as school counselors, administrators, and boards of education at the local level (Sink & MacDonald, 1998). What began with the appointment of teachers to the position of vocational counselor has now become a program. Organizationally, comprehensive guidance programs incorporated the position/services model and have become the major way of organizing and managing guidance in the schools of the United States.

Insights for Theory and Practice from the Past

As can be seen, guidance (vocational guidance) at the beginning of the past century, had a singular purpose, even though there were sharply different perspectives about what that purpose was. However, soon and continuing over the rest of the century, the purposes for guidance multiplied. As Miller (1961) indicated, guidance had "become a coat of many colors" (p. 3). The multiple purposes for guidance occurred, according to Herr (2001), because "school counseling has been seen to have different types of relevance to schools depending on the needs of the nation in different historical periods" (p. 239).

What insights can be gained from the changing purposes for and organizational patterns of guidance and counseling that have occurred during the past century? How can these insights help the profession to continue to strengthen the work of school counselors into the future? This section of the article presents several insights that I have gained from reading the profession's history that may help continue to propel the profession forward to further enhance the theory and practice of guidance and counseling in schools.

The Need for a Clear Purpose/Mission

One message that emerges from a review of the past is that there have been and there continues to be a wide variety of purposes put forward for guidance and counseling by many different groups. Even at the very beginning, when there was only one title for guidance, vocational guidance, its purpose was perceived differently by the early writers and practitioners. The economic, political, and social conditions during particular time periods and the interpretations by various individuals as well as the personal and societal challenges that may have been present during those times for students, all played a part in how various groups interpreted the purpose of guidance and counseling.

What could the continued occurrence of a wide variety of purposes for guidance and counseling mean for present and future practice? It could mean unfulfilled expectations. It could mean role conflict for school counselors as they struggle to respond to differing expectations created by different understandings of purposes. It could mean fragmentation as some school counselors attempt to respond to career issues, while others focus on mental health issues, while still others emphasize educational concerns.

Because of these possibilities, I believe it is time for the profession, working collaboratively with interested parties in and out of education, to begin discussion concerning the purpose/mission of guidance and counseling for the 21st century. Since it is in the best interests of students, their parents, and other stakeholders that school counselors have a clear purpose/mission for their work within a program framework, I recommend that the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) assume a leadership role in this important task at the national, state, and local levels.

The Need to Understand that Guidance and Counseling is an Integral Part of Education

What should be the place of guidance and counseling within education in the 21st Century? The position/services model of the past century often placed guidance and counseling in an ancillary position; not as an integral part of education. Concern about this was expressed as early as the 1920s by Myers (1923) when he stated:

   The first development to which I wish to call attention is a growing
   recognition of vocational guidance as integral part of organized education,
   not as something different and apart from education that is being wished
   upon the schools by a group of enthusiasts because there is no other agency
   to handle it. (p. 139)

During the same year, Payne (1923) asked, "Is guidance an integral part of our educational system or is it something just tacked on?" (p. 62). Yet, over the next decades, guidance and counseling continued to be organized and practiced as a position within a set of services, placing school counselors in an ancillary position to the rest of education.

I believe that if guidance and counseling is going to make the contributions it can and should make to assist all students to achieve success in school academically and reach their goals personally and occupationally, the program of guidance and counseling and the work of school counselors within it must be seen and practiced as an integral part of education. That was the point that Myers (1923) and Payne (1923) made many years ago. It is time to put into practice their words of wisdom.

The Need for Comprehensive Guidance and Counseling Framework

Even though the words organized and centralized program were used many years ago, the organizational pattern of a position within a set of services prevailed. While good work was done by the practitioners involved, the organizational structure provided by the position/services orientation led them in a direction that caused many of them to be more management/administratively focused than student focused. The work done in the 1970s and the 1980s toward the development and implementation of comprehensive guidance and counseling programs that tied directly to the mission of education makes it imperative that school counselors spend full time working with all students in close collaboration with parents, teachers, and administrators, and other stakeholders in the community. I believe that this is the direction that the profession needs to follow, and, while full program implementation in all schools across the country has not yet been reached, substantial progress is being made. This work must continue as the century unfolds.

The Need for Accountability

In the last decades of the past century, the profession of guidance and counseling began to focus on the issue of accountability. That is not to say that the issue of accountability had not been raised before. Payne (1923) raised it early in the development of guidance and counseling in the schools when he asked:

   What method do we have of checking the results of guidance? For particular
   groups was it guidance, misguidance, or merely a contributing experience?
   We simply must work out some definite method of testing and checking the
   results of our work. If we do not, some other group will, with possibly
   disastrous results for our work. (p. 63)

Later, in the 1940s and 1950s, one of the major studies completed concerning the impact of guidance and counseling was conducted in the state of Wisconsin by Rothney (1958). He found differences 5 years after graduation in favor of the group of students who received guidance and counseling. In concluding his report of the findings, he stated that:

   When so many small and a few large differences in the directions
   hypothesized by guidance workers can be obtained under representative high
   school counseling conditions, it seems likely that greater differences
   would appear if counseling were done under more ideal circumstances. Such
   circumstances would seem to require more acceptance of counseling as a
   regular part of secondary school experience, more enthusiastic support from
   parents and school personnel, and better techniques of evaluation. (pp.
   482-483)

A major focus for accountability for guidance and counseling today is on student academic achievement/ success as well as on personal/social and career development. Because of the organizational structure of comprehensive results-based guidance and counseling programs, in which many school counselors now work, results have begun to be seen. For example, empirical research conducted in the states of Missouri and Utah during the past 5 years has shown that when certified professional school counselors have the time, the resources, and the structure of a comprehensive guidance program in which to work, they contribute to positive student academic and career development as well as the development of positive and safe learning climates in schools (Lapan, Gysbers, & Petroski, in press; Lapan, Gysbers, & Sun, 1997; Nelson & Gardner, 1998). This work must continue.

The Need for Advocacy

Guidance and counseling in the schools at the turn of the past century was seen as one way to respond to conditions in society, work, and education. According to Stephens (1970), "guidance purposes were formulated initially as correctives to social ills, correctives that people were willing to pay for" (p. 160). But then for a number of reasons, as Stephens pointed out, that the zeal for reform diminished as the decades of the 1900s unfolded. He wondered if guidance had "become so concerned about becoming professionally acceptable and so involved in maintaining its own organization that the reform of industrial occupations and the support of human values have been lost as goals" (p. 161).

Stephens' (1970) statement about the profession turning inward was made in the 1970s. Today some may disagree and say that the school counseling profession has spoken out directly and strongly on societal work, and education issues. While that may be the case, I believe it is good to be reminded about the need for advocacy, about the need to be actively involved in social, work, and education reform, particularly because such reform efforts can benefit directly from the expertise of school counselors. And, after all it is the heritage of the profession. If the profession chooses an inactive stance, it could lead to what Haley (1969) many years ago called "the five Be's that will guarantee dynamic failure--be passive, be inactive, be reflective, be silent, beware" (p. 695).

The Need to Serve all Students

It is clear from a review of the guidance and counseling literature of the past three decades of the past century that guidance and counseling programs were being designed to serve all students. An often stated goal was that "although immediate and crisis needs of students are to be met, a major focus of a developmental program is to provide all students with experiences to help them grow and develop" (Gysbers & Henderson, 2000, p. 26). This goal was based on the assumption that all students can and should profit from the activities and services of comprehensive guidance and counseling programs to facilitate their academic, personal/ social, and career development.

What does serving all students mean today? It means that comprehensive guidance programs serve equally all students, parents, teachers, and other recipients regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, cultural background, sexual orientation, disability, family structure and functionality, socioeconomic status, learning-ability level, language, level of school involvement, or other special characteristics. It means understanding students' cultural, sociological, psychological economic, and family backgrounds. This is critical because as Martin and House (2001) stated:

   School counselors are ideally positioned in schools to serve as conductors
   and transmitters of information to promote school-wide success for all
   students. When school counselors aggressively perform actions that support
   entitlement to quality education for all students, they create a school
   climate where access and support for rigorous preparation is expected. (p.
   4)

A Vision for Guidance and Counseling

My vision for guidance and counseling in the 21st Century is fully implemented comprehensive guidance and counseling programs in every school district in the United States, serving all students and their parents, staffed by active, involved school counselors. When guidance and counseling is conceptualized, organized, and implemented as a program, it places school counselors conceptually and structurally in the center of education and makes it possible for them to be active and involved. As a result, guidance and counseling becomes an integral and transformative program, not a marginal and supplemental activity. It provides school counselors with the structure, time, and resources to fully use their expertise.

Being active, involved school counselors extends beyond their providing direct services to students and their parents, however. It means that school counselors fulfill their obligation to take part in shaping education policy at the local, state, and national levels. It also means that they fulfill their obligation to continue to work toward developing and expanding legislative authority for guidance and counseling at the state and federal levels. Ultimately, there is a need for national and state comprehensive guidance and counseling program legislation that recognizes guidance and counseling as a program that is equal with and complementary to other programs in education.

While current research evidence supports the concept of comprehensive guidance and counseling programs and active, involved school counselors, it is important to understand that the profession is only at the very beginning of seeing the benefits of organized and fully implemented guidance and counseling programs in schools. Our mission then is to use the wisdom of the past to further strengthen the work of school counselors within a comprehensive guidance and counseling program framework for today and tomorrow. Remember the past into the future.

References

American Personnel and Guidance Association. (1977). The status of guidance and counseling in the nation's schools: A series of issue papers. Washington, DC: Author.

Bloomfield, M. (1916). Relation between vocational education and vocational guidance. U.S. Bureau of Education Bulletin, No. 21. Washington DC: Government Printing Office.

Brewer, J. M. (1918). The vocational guidance movement. New York: Macmillan.

Campbell, M. E. (1932). Vocational guidance committee on vocational guidance and child labor. Section III Education and training (White House Conference on Child Health and Protection). New York: Century.

Carl D. Perkins Vocational Education Act of 1984, Pub. L. No. 98-524, Part I, Stat. 2433. (1984).

Carl D. Perkins Vocational Education and Applied Technology Education Act Amendments of 1990, Pub. L. No. 101-392, 104, Part 2, Stat. 753. (1990).

Carl D. Perkins Vocational-Technical Education Act Amendments of 1998, Pub. L. No. 105-332, 112, Part 1, Stat. 3076. (1998).

Council of Chief State School Officers. (1960). Responsibilities of state departments of education for pupil personnel services. Washington, DC: Author.

Dewey, J. (1915). Letters. The New Republic, 3, 40-42.

Ferguson, D. G. (1963). Pupil personnel services. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Research in Education.

Fitch, J. A. (1936). Professional standards in guidance. Occupations, 14, 761-762.

Ginn, S. J. (1924, March). Vocational guidance in Boston public schools. The Vocational Guidance Magazine, 3, pp. 3-7.

Gysbers, N. C., & Henderson, P. (2000). Developing and managing your school guidance program (3rd ed.). Alexandria, VA: American Counseling Association.

Gysbers, N. C., & Moore, E. J. (1981). Improving guidance programs. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Haley, J. (1969). The art of being a failure as a therapist. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 39, 691-695.

Herr, E. L. (2001). The impact of national policies, economics, and school reform on comprehensive guidance programs. Professional School Counseling, 4, 236-245.

Johnson, A. H. (1972). Changing conceptions of vocational guidance and concomitant value-orientations 1920-30. Dissertation Abstracts International, 33, 3292A. University Microfilms No. 7231, 933.

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Norman C. Gysbers, Ph.D., is a professor, Department of Educational and Counseling Psychology, University of Missouri-Columbia.