Here's What to Expect In This Episode:
When you hear the word ‘research’, do you get excited or want to run the other way as fast as you can? I think many school counselors are the latter, and if you’re one of them, you’re going to learn so much in this episode all about research in school counseling!
We all want to create the most effective and comprehensive school counseling program possible, but it can be challenging to incorporate the most up-to-date research based practices and interventions.
Time is not on our side, so where do we go to learn about this research in school counseling? How do we know if a certain intervention is the best fit for our specific school and group of students?
Our guest today, Sara of The Responsive Counselor, is here to answer all of these questions and more.
She is breaking down the differences between best practices, research-based interventions, evidence-based interventions, and evidence-based practice. You’ll walk away with a clearer understanding of these terms, and how you can incorporate them to make the biggest impact possible.
Topics Covered in This Episode:
- An overview of the four categories of research in school counseling
- A reminder that every school is different, and there’s many factors that go into determining which interventions are best
- The importance of asking clarifying questions when evidence based interventions are suggested for your students
- Where you can go to learn about the most up-to-date research in school counseling (for free!)
- What qualifies something to be evidence-based
- Challenges that school counselors are faced with when it comes to implementing evidence-based practices
- How you can tie all of these research-based ideas together when you’re short on time
- A handful of recent findings related to research in school counseling
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Meet Our Guest:
After ten years of working as an elementary school counselor, Sara devotes her time now to serving other school counselors! She is passionate about effective counseling and SEL resources, relevant professional development, research-based practices, and Taco Bell.
When Sara isn’t working in the counseling world, she’s spending time with her husband, two sons, and two dogs… or binge-watching TV, reading, or re-decorating rooms in the house.
Connect with Sara:
Read the transcript for this episode:
Lauren
I’m always looking for ways to bring in different topics to the podcast. In this episode of high school counseling Conversations. I’m bringing on Sara from the Responsive Counselor to talk about research in school counseling. Now, before you run the other way, consider that you may be like me have a lot to learn on this topic. Sara covers four big categories of types of research in school counseling by explaining what they mean and then telling us what implications they can have in school counseling programs.
Lauren
It’s so relevant to the direction that comprehensive school counseling is headed, and I learned so much from our conversation. Let me introduce you to Sara before we get started.
Lauren
After 10 years of working as an elementary school counselor, Sara devotes her time now to serving other school counselors. She’s passionate about effective counseling and SEL resources, relevant professional development, research based practices, and Taco Bell.
Lauren
When Sara isn’t working in the counseling world, she’s spending time with her husband, two sons and two dogs, or you can find her binge watching TV or reading or redecorating rooms in her house. Now, let’s listen in on our conversation.
Lauren
High School Counseling conversations is a podcast where we talk about exactly that. A casual potpourri of school counseling topics intended to grow us as school counselors, but also give us space to enjoy each other’s company. I’m Lauren from counselor click and I’m sharing my experiences and perspectives as a high school counselor.
Lauren
No topic is off limits. And I’m certain we’ll cover it all. I’m your high school counseling hype girl here to help you energize your school counseling program and remind you of how much you love your job. Whether you’re just getting your feet wet as an intern, or you’re nearing retirement, you’ll feel like you’re just popping in to catch up with your school counseling. bestie. Let’s go.
Lauren
Hey, Sara, welcome to the show. I’m so glad that you’re here.
Sara
Hello. Hello. Thank you for having me. I’m really excited to be joining you.
Lauren
I think you’re my first elementary specialist coming in to bring some knowledge to the high school counselor. So that’s a fun difference.
Sara
Represent Elementary!
Lauren
Yes. I’m always trying to think how can I take someone who has an expertise somewhere else and cater it to this audience. So tell us a little bit about your background and schools and working with students and kind of what you’re up to now?
Sara
Sure. I first after grad school started as a school based therapist. So I was contracted by a community mental health agency into an elementary school. And there was a lot that I loved about it. But I very much so wanted to serve the whole school population, and be able to do some preventative work.
Sara
So I transitioned into the role of a school counselor, first briefly at a middle school, which I was terrible at and then finally landed in elementary, which is much more where my strengths lie. So I worked as an elementary school counselor in Metro Nashville Public Schools off and on for eight years. And at some point during that time, I realized that what existed in the world for elementary school counselors to use for groups and individuals and class lessons was not a match for my students, my demographics, the you know, being in this century just wasn’t a fit.
Sara
And so I started creating all of my own resources. And eventually it started blogging and sharing about these things and eventually started putting them on my website and on Teachers Pay Teachers and eventually kind of became the Responsive Counselor. So a lot of people don’t know my first name.
Sara
Hi, I’m the response counselor, my first name is actually Sara. And that is what I spend most of my time doing now is serving other school counselors and teachers through creating social emotional learning and school counseling resources.
Lauren
Awesome. Thanks for that. I have seen you talk a lot about this broader topic of best practice versus research based interventions versus evidence based interventions. And I feel like I don’t have a deep knowledge of all of those things.
Lauren
And so I wanted to bring you on to talk about that, about the research you’ve done with that and how it has played into the way you develop resources for students. And I have lots of questions about it. So will you kind of just give us a brief overview of like those three categories before we get a little deeper?
Sara
Sure. And I will actually throw in a fourth category as well. You know, I think words are important, and a lot of people, including people, and you know, central office and school districts are using these terms interchangeably. So let’s define them. Let’s talk about what each of them means what it doesn’t mean and then also maybe what those actually look like, like some examples of each of them. If that works for you.
Sara
Okay. So, best practice can really be applied to anything by anyone. It is often not rooted in science or theory. But it doesn’t have to be. Because sometimes it’s also just what somebody has personally experienced success with. I would say anything that you see in the monthly ask a magazine that asking members receive, that’s best practices, because that is the leading expert in our field, what they are sharing.
Sara
So those things are considered best practices. Then if you step it up, as you know, a notch a level, we’ve got research based. Research based means that there are components or elements of what we’re talking about, that have been studied and found to be important, effective, valuable. But the exact thing we’re talking about in its entirety, has not been scientifically, rigorously evaluated.
Sara
And then we’ve got evidence based interventions. So that is like the gold standard, the unicorn, the what we really want everything to be, but realistically, it’s not going to be an evidence based intervention is something that has been scientifically evaluated using the scientific process, and found to be statistically significantly effective.
Sara
Oftentimes, we expect those studies to be published in peer reviewed journal articles. But sometimes it might be a dissertation or a thesis that we find it in. There are some organizations also that say, for something to be considered an evidence based intervention, that study also has to be replicated. So it has to happen more than once that somebody researches it and finds it, you can imagine, it’s kind of hard to meet that right.
Sara
And to get that label of being an evidence based intervention when it requires all of that. Yeah, the fourth thing is this idea now of evidence based practice. And that is actually the language that we’re seeing coming out of ASCA, more evidence based practice is putting some of these things together.
Sara
So it’s starting off with information and data about your students and their needs. Taking what we know from the research and taking research based practices, and then implementing an intervention, evaluating it tweaking it deciding did this work for my students? Does it need to have some edits made to it, that is evidence based practice or evidence based school counseling.
Sara
And so that is really what we should be striving for, according to ASCA is using the research to inform what we’re doing, while also collecting some of our own data to determine if it’s working for our case loads our students.
Lauren
Okay, that makes so much more sense to me that you explained it that way. And that you added in that fourth category, because just hearing them all, I think like they all jumbled kind of together in my brain. And I’m like, Okay, this research, this is evidence, like, it sounds a little confusing to me. But you mention is that last term? They wait, did you say evidence based practices? Is that correct?
Sara
Sometimes it’s evidence based practice, like a verb, like what we do we do evidence based practice, or evidence based school counseling.
Lauren
And you said that, that you’re seeing that a lot more now, like ASCA is using that term as like, that is the best practice. We’re taking the data, we’re taking the evidence, we’re taking the research, kind of putting it together, seeing how it goes and using our data and then making making your take your next steps because of like, out of that?
Sara
Absolutely. 100%. And I think it’s because although in an ideal world, everything we do would be an evidence based intervention. The truth is that research is limited. In the school counseling world,
Lauren
I was gonna say, who is who is doing that research? Like there’s not much of it.
Sara
There’s not there’s not a ton that really directly applies. I think, all the time, what I hear and read from school counselors is they’re wanting, hey, I’m looking for some research that says, like, do this not that, okay, that’s what we want. And the truth is, is that that doesn’t really exist, at least not yet. And not as directly.
Sara
So, research in our field, it’s limited. It’s limited, partly because the IRB, the institutional review boards that have to give their seal of approval on studies, they’re going to look a lot closer at any research that’s conducted with minors and in school counseling at all.
Sara
And there’s also logistical issues because we would be talking about a university, school districts and families kind of all having to collaborate together to make a research project work. I don’t think there’s as much funding for school counseling outcome research as we’d like. And also something that I’ve personally noticed is I’ve really tried to dive into the research that exists and doesn’t exist is that faculty who are conducting research in school counseling programs, you know, their interests, what they are choosing to research and might not align with what some of us are really hoping for.
Sara
So a lot of the faculty research coming out of programs is focused on clinical counseling, which is important and valuable just doesn’t always apply to us. There’s a lot of research around counselor education programs and counselor supervision, again, really important, but doesn’t necessarily apply to what I’m doing in my school counseling program,
Lauren
But the person doing that research, though, is probably that professor who’s teaching those students who’s like, well, this is what’s in front of me. So this is what I’m going to do my research, right.
Sara
And then yeah, it’s about their own practices, right, and how they can be their best how they can improve their program, their program is just different. And there’s also a lot of research about school counseling as a profession, you know, how are we perceived by other stakeholders?
Sara
How do we perceive ourselves things around that, and so there’s just not as much that is directly applicable, there’s not then a lot of evidence based interventions that are specific to the work of school counselor. And so some of the power about evidence based school counseling is, hey, we don’t have these EBIs that we can pull from, what can we do to still make sure that what we’re doing is impactful and successful.
Sara
And I think the other piece that’s really valuable about it is acknowledging that schools are different. They vary widely, caseload size, demographics, the languages that your students are speaking, all of these little things can make a difference in whether or not an intervention is effective. And I think evidence based school counseling, evidence based practice really incorporates that, because it’s about looking at your school’s needs, and evaluating after the fact if it was actually a good match.
Lauren
Totally, I was gonna say, like thinking about all those schools being different, even if you took an evidence based intervention that did so well, under this science experiment, basically, you throw in so many more variables when you bring it to your school. I mean, that is nothing is the same about the group that you’re doing that with or like you said, the stakeholders who are or who are not supporting you in that.
Lauren
So it’s like, how could you expect it to the outcome to be this awesome outcome? You couldn’t, you just couldn’t expect to have the same outcome.
Sara
A great example of that is the Olweus bullying prevention program, there was a period of time where all of the schools were talking about, although as well as everybody was doing it, because it was considered an evidence based intervention. And in the country that it was implemented in and it originated in, it was super successful.
Sara
But when they started to research how it actually worked out here in the States, it was not working so well, because there’s just cultural differences that are involved when we’re talking about human behavior, and pre adolescent and adolescent development and all of that.
Sara
So it was an example of something that, you know, even if it was being implemented with fidelity, the population it was being implemented with wasn’t an exact match. And so we can’t necessarily expect to have the same results.
Lauren
Have you seen districts or counselors who run into this where someone says, Hey, you can use interventions, we can pay money for a program, but it has to be an evidence based intervention? And then what do you say to that? Because like you said, it might be just that one that was done in another country that has that stamp on it. And that’s my option, like, what do you do when they say that?
Sara
Part of the thing is, I think making sure that they are on the same page as their supervisor, their administrator, their superintendent, their counseling coordinator about, what do they mean, when they’re saying it needs to be an evidence based curriculum, because I think if they’re looking for an evidence based intervention, a school counselor can say, hey, here is what exists in the world. And let me share with you how that might not be a great fit.
Sara
So for example, a lot of the evidence based group counseling curriculums that exist out there are like 12 to 50 sessions long, and incorporate parents and are 50 minute sessions and have these components that are just not as relevant or just not as feasible or don’t translate so well into the school setting.
Lauren
You mean you don’t do a 50 week group in a school?
Sara
I do not personally! I think a special ed teacher might I think a speech language pathologist might be a school counselor, not as much right? I also think when it comes to tier one core curriculum, things like second step. They are not created for school counselors to implement and the truth is if you don’t implement something with fidelity, the exact way that it was created and studied, we can expect the same results.
Sara
And so when we’re trying to take a program that was created to involve daily reinforcement, daily activities and community meetings. Stanford Harmony is another example. That’s really tricky for a counselor to do. And so I think there is a piece of just going back to that language. Hey, all right, you said that you’d be willing to pay for an evidence based curriculum. What do you mean by evidence based?
Sara
Are we talking about an evidence based intervention? Something that has been studied that I can find in a journal article? Or are you talking about something that is based on research? And that is a match for the needs that I’m seeing in my students? Having that conversation about, what exactly that that looks like to make sure they’re on the same page.
Lauren
Yeah, I imagined that they would just be, I could see somebody just saying those words, because that’s what somebody higher up in the district said, or they read it on a piece of paper that said, this is this is what they’ll pay for. And they’re just kind of the middleman repeating it instead of digging a little deeper.
Lauren
So I think that’s important for counselors to hear that you can ask questions about it, you don’t just have to say, Okay, I’m googling evidence based intervention. And I can only use things on this list because they might not be the best fit for you or your students. So ask the questions to make sure that you’re moving in the right direction, especially if they’re going to spend money on something, or you’re going to be implementing something school wide, you want to make sure it’s a good fit for you and your students.
Lauren
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Lauren
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Lauren
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Lauren
You kind of covered this, like where do you see people using these terms incorrectly? Like is it okay to call something best practice and to do things that are best practice in your school? Like is it okay to not always be doing something that’s evidence based but you’re you’re moving in the direction that you read something in an ASCA magazine? And you’re going to try something that’s best practice?
Sara
I think yes, because I think we don’t have a large enough kind of menu of things that have been labeled evidence based interventions for us to pull from as school counselors. So I think we’re starting a lot of times with what the research says or best practice is.
Sara
I think the piece that is, you know, being responsible or accountable is that if we’re going to do something that hasn’t already been studied, or even if it has is that we do a little check in ourselves and our school, is this being effective, right? So whether or not that’s conducting surveys with students or teachers, or is diving into some of the, you know, assessment or attendance or behavior data before and after.
Sara
I think that’s the piece that is sometimes missing, but is the piece that can also help, as we’re having these conversations with administrators in central office is, hey, you know, this is something that I read about from the leading expert, you know, in school counseling, it hasn’t been studied yet. But I put it into practice here. And here are our results. So for us, this is an evidence based practice.
Lauren
So I’m hearing you say that best practice could kind of be like an inspiration to start your own data collection and evidence based interventions or practices at your school. Like you can be inspired by the best practice that you read somewhere, you’re like, Okay, I’m gonna dig a little deeper. I’m going to find some data around this. We’re gonna see how it works in our school and see how it goes from there.
Sara
Absolutely. I think it’s a starting place. We’re always just starting somewhere, right?
Lauren
Yeah. Yeah, that’s a good point.
Lauren
Okay. You mentioned that with evidence based intervention, there has to be a lot of repetition. It sounds very scientific. So do you have specifics on what qualifies something to be evidence based? It has to be done so many times or in this sort of setting? Or what is what is that all about?
Sara
It depends a lot on who is applying that label. So different organizations have different criteria. The real gold standard would be two or more randomized control trials. So for example, if we were talking about a school wide program, oh, gosh, that’s so tricky with schools, but it would be finding, for example, four schools that all have really similar demographics, really similar baseline data, and randomly assigning two to implement the program and two do not implement the program.
Sara
Doing the program implementation, evaluating fidelity and then collecting all this data that then you are performing statistical analyses of and making a determination as to whether or not there was a significant difference between students at the schools that received the programming or intervention and students who didn’t.
Sara
And then taking that same kind of study the same intervention and doing it again, and getting similar significant positive results. That’s what would give you that like really beautiful, shiny, glittery unicorn stamp evidence based intervention approval.
Sara
But because that is so tough, right? And also really specific, sometimes it can just be any time that a study is conducted scientifically, right. So we’re Collecting Baseline Data we’re looking at before and after, is there a significant difference in the data before and after we implemented this intervention? If yes, then yes, it’s an it’s evidence based.
Lauren
And once somebody has gathered all of that they publish it somewhere like, where do we go to find that information?
Sara
Great questions. So if you are an ASCA member, then you have access to ask us Professional School Counseling journal. And it’s not one that gets mailed to you. But you can log in to your app to ASCA and access it right from that website. So that is a great starting place, right.
Sara
And everything in there is going to be school counseling specific, however, you are going to find a lot that’s about counselor prep programs, supervision and the profession. Although you will find some things that are actual interventions used with students.
Sara
I use Google Scholar to find articles. Honestly, the tricky part is that a lot of us don’t have regular access to, you know, we might not still be connected to our university and might not have access to those databases. But when I was preparing for a conference presentation, and I had lost my own journal access, I actually found a website where they’ve kind of collected scoured all of these journal articles that you can find them for free, which is really, really wonderful.
Sara
So if I’m looking for research for something, I start with Google Scholar, and I’m typing in the words, and I’m finding some articles that I think are a great fit. And then I’m going to a website called sci-hub. That’s SCI-HUB.SE.
Sara
Okay, we’ll include that in the show notes too, just so that people can kind of go through your order of operations follow the same
Sara
Yeah, cool. And then you put into that you put the DOI address, so you can’t put in the journal article. But if you’re on Google Scholar, you find an article you’re like, I really need to read more, this looks really interesting. You just copy the DOI, which is a super long number you paste it into sci-hub. And I’ve had great success, like over 90% of the articles I’ve been looking for, I’ve been able to find there. Okay, this is like a secret
Lauren
like we would I would not know this, I did not know this and no one listening would know this unless you were telling us this hack that you found to find the research this is crazy!
Sara
I did a happy dance when I found it. There was like definite dancing in my office chair that I found a way to be able to actually access this because otherwise, these articles can cost like $35 a piece just to access.
Lauren
And it might not even be what you’re looking for, like you’re trying to figure out like, Is this even the answer to what I’m looking for? Is this, you know, research on the topic I want, you don’t want to pay that if it’s not gonna be worth it.
Sara
I think it’s really tough. I think there is what’s called the research to practice gap where we have this research. And then we have people actually practicing as school counselors. And only some of that research actually trickles down to boots on the ground counselors.
Sara
And sometimes it doesn’t even come down until you know, years and years after the research has been published. So I’m excited for there to be a way now for more of us to be able to access some of this research.
Lauren
That is a huge challenge in helping us have the most, like you said, the evidence based best practices like how do we do that if we can’t access it, that’s a huge challenge. Have there been other challenges that you’ve seen for counselors to to implement this stuff other than being able to find it?
Sara
So another one is that sometimes professors, faculty members of a counseling program, will come up with an intervention or some programming a curriculum, and they will implement it and they’ll do research on it and it will be found to be effective, but then it’s not actually available anywhere.
Sara
So that has been frustrating. I once I once created a list of evidence based group counseling curriculums and someone that I you know, gave to some people and they were asking I can’t find this one. And so then I dove a little deeper. And I found that although it was referenced in these in this journal article, and it did exist, it’s not something that was made available. And so that can be a little bit tricky as well.
Lauren
It’s like, here’s what we’ve said is the best, but nope you can’t have it.
Sara
Right, right. And sometimes they can be costly. So that is a little bit of an issue as well. You know, I find that evidence based interventions, they come at a price and schools may or may not be able to afford those. So that can be tricky as well.
Sara
I just remembered, I want to make sure that I share one other place that you can find some really good research that is related to what we do. So University of Massachusetts, Amherst, they have kind of an organization within them called CSCORE. It stands for Center for School Counseling, Outcome Research and Evaluation is a lengthy mouthful.
Sara
And I will say that their their website can sometimes be not the most user friendly website in the entire world. However, it is absolutely a place to find where professors have taken relevant research. And sometimes you can find PowerPoint slides where they’ve gone through and they’ve shared, you know, kind of a yearly update, here’s some research that might apply. And that also really can spell it out.
Sara
Because I think what’s tricky, as well is if you did not take a lot of statistics and research courses in grad school, sometimes reading these articles, and really understanding what some of the outcomes mean, it can be hard, it can be something like you look, you feel like you’re reading something in a different language.
Sara
And so one of the things that C score does well is that not only do they, you know, actually have and share relevant research, but they also share it in a way that is very understandable. And that helps you to kind of see this immediate application for yourself. Okay, what does that mean, for me? What can be my takeaway?
Lauren
That’s awesome, because I imagine, like you said it feeling like a foreign language. And I mean, statistics wasn’t easy for me when I did it in high school, undergrad or grad school. So I would really need somebody walking me through what does this mean? And why is it important to me?
Lauren
Okay, Sarah, how can we or should we tie all of these together in our comprehensive school counseling program, like, tell listeners who are very busy, how they can incorporate this research based stuff, when they don’t really have time to go be like doing research?
Sara
Alright, here are my recommendations, if you want to take some of these are all of these ideas and kind of put them into play as you are planning and implementing your comprehensive school counseling program?
Sara
I think one is making sure that you are evaluating some of your own practices, programming and interventions, because that is a core component of evidence based school counseling of evidence based practice of what we’re trying to do, right.
Sara
And no counselor has extra time, which means to me that we don’t want to spend our time doing anything that doesn’t have an impact that isn’t actually working. So with that, in mind, at base level, evaluate your own program.
Sara
This does not mean that I think you need to collect data on every single programming or intervention or small group or classroom SEL unit that you do.
Lauren
Like they don’t need to go out and do their own evidence base. No,
Sara
But I do think that for programming or interventions that you either one, feel really strongly about two that you think you might get some pushback about. And you might need some data to back it up. Or that three, you want to repeat year after year.
Sara
I think you collect some data to evaluate, is it working? Was this a good use of my time of my students time of my teachers time, etc? That’s a huge part of evidence based school counseling. So let’s do that. Okay.
Lauren
That was such a good answer. Yeah.
Sara
If you are an ASCA member, then flip through that magazine that you get each month. Now, this is hard because it takes time. Here’s what I think happens to some of us though, as we say, I don’t have time to read this. And so we just don’t read it at all. Because in our minds, we think that reading it means reading it cover to cover, okay, that is a lie. You do not have to read it to cover to cover, right?
Sara
It is a magazine, it is for you to pick and choose what interests you what applies to you. And I think if we shift our mindset a little to just being, I’m going to flip through and see what grabs my eye, we can make time for that. That’s a lot easier for us, right? So if you’re a member, flip through it, see what catches your eye, see if there’s a practice shared in there that was effective in someone else’s building that you think might be effective for you that you want to give a try.
Sara
I also think that a lot of counselors are in positions where we are needing to advocate for our role and for our programs. And I think anytime we have something written and published by someone else that we can share and say, Hey, this is what the American School Counseling Association is saying about XYZ, I think that can be really helpful.
Sara
So when you are, you know, choosing to spend some time to look into research based practices, evidence based interventions, etc. Tell yourself this isn’t just about me and my programming, and coming up with new ideas. This is also about me being able to successfully advocate for my program, and being able to do more of the things that I know actually reach students. So that’s what I would share about for that.
Sara
And three, if you love diving into this research, and you think I know, I want to spend an hour on Saturday on Google Scholar, finding articles that relate to this intervention that I want to plan, and then I’m gonna go to Sci-hub and look them up. Okay, that’s amazing and awesome. And we will probably be best friends, call me.
Sara
But maybe you don’t. And that’s okay. But you still kind of want to be exposed to more of these ideas. There are some of us who think this is fun, and who enjoys spending time finding relevant research and sharing it. And so if you are someone that’s on social media, maybe you want to follow some of us.
Sara
So for example, me Sara, the responsive counselor, I like to share about what the research says what that means for us, and how we can apply that. There’s also a Facebook account called school psyc, your school psychologist, and that account regularly shares, articles that are talking about relevant research that applies to us as well.
Sara
I would also say following NASP, the National Association for school psychology on Facebook, and I think Instagram as well, they share relevant research, I will say school psychology, as a field tends to share a little bit more I think, applied research, a little bit less on the profession and a little bit more like this works, this doesn’t.
Sara
So if you are like, Hey, I think I like research, I think I want to infuse this a little bit more about I don’t know where to start, start by following organizations that are sharing this stuff in verbiage and language that is just more accessible, right and a little bit more like you’re scrolling and you’re like, hey, that applies to me.
Sara
And if you want to take it a little bit of a step further, I do think that CSCORE, that Center for School Counseling, Outcome Research and Evaluation is a great website to just peruse. If you are just feeling really, really hype one day about research.
Lauren
I can tell you, I don’t know that I’m going to feel very hype, like, I’m not going to wake up that morning and want to do that. But you gave us some really good places to go if we want more information, like after this podcast. So I appreciate that.
Lauren
And your answer to the whole last question there. Like how do we tie this all together? And kind of what do we do now? Really just wrap this up with like a perfect little bow. So is there anything else we didn’t talk about that you’re like, This is important for people to know about? All the research and the data?
Sara
First, this will not shock anybody, but as it turns out, school counseling as a whole is effective. So there was a meta analysis of 117 studies that evaluated school counseling outcomes. And they found that overall, students who receive school counseling interventions that included class lessons, group counseling and individual counseling score a third of a standard deviation higher than students who did not receive a school counseling intervention.
Sara
And although a third of a standard deviation does not sound very exciting, actually, in the world of educational interventions, that’s pretty decent. That’s pretty legit. And the research that looked more specifically at caseload sizes, which they only did for high school and not Elementary. Womp, womp. Cool for you High School folk, right?
Sara
They found some pretty important correlations that they said could lead to causation, where smaller case loads, were leading to even more favorable outcomes in the school counseling world. So that’s really exciting.
Lauren
It’s very encouraging to you said that there is more research on that kind of broader scope, is school counseling effective? And it’s kind of just proving what we already know to be true. We’re like, yes, thank you. What we do matters.
Sara
100%. Okay, here’s another finding. So one of the things that we’re seeing become really, really common and a lot of schools is restorative practices, which if it’s something that you’re interested in, you’re probably really excited by but it is an area where We’re putting the cart before the horse.
Sara
So schools have been implementing restorative practices before we really had great research on it. The good news is that school based restorative practices show largely positive outcomes in the research. So it shows improvement in school climate, like increased sense of school safety, increased social, emotional behavioral skills, and reductions in discipline referrals and exclusionary discipline practices. So restorative practices, the research is showing right now it does work and is effective. So that’s exciting.
Lauren
And I bet there will be more research on that as time goes on. Because kind of the same thing. People are saying, Okay, this is working, let’s start doing more research on it too. Because if it’s working well, we want to do more of it.
Sara
Absolutely. Here’s another exciting research finding – the idea of name it to tame, it actually works. So there is science backing up naming and labeling our emotions and how that can have a calming effect, how it can chill out our amygdalas and activate our prefrontal cortexes. So we can think more logically and do some good decision making.
Sara
And that’s something that actually that research was done on young adults, undergrads, I believe. And so very much people in high school, not just those of us working with the babies; having our students label their emotions, and also be able to label the intensity of their emotions is something that is an evidence based, I’m sorry, excuse me, a research based practice, I gotta check my language there. So that’s really important.
Sara
And then the last thing, okay, as much as I love research that is actually about like, do this and not that when it comes to working with children, I think we know that school counselor, burnout is kind of a big deal. Right now, we are seeing more and more leave the field, we’re seeing positions that are not being able to be filled. So I did find a study several months ago that examined school counselor burnout, and I thought it was really important, because this is what they found.
Sara
They found that high affective rumination, aka spending time, ruminating, and sitting in your negative feelings about work. When you do that, and you’re not doing any like problem solving, that leads to higher burnout and turnover, plus lower work satisfaction and engagement. Okay, so as much as like, we want to lean into our feelings and process our feelings, actually just sitting in yucky feelings about work, and not doing any thinking about what we could do to improve things makes things worse. Okay?
Lauren
That makes a lot of sense.
Sara
It does. Here was the other thing, though, that has actually surprised a lot of people. The researchers looked at detachment, this idea of leaving work at work. And they found that it was not predictive of professional well being positive or negative. So this whole idea of like, when you go home, don’t think about work, leave work at work, when you drive home, leave it in the car, you don’t have to do that if you don’t want to. That doesn’t actually lead to lower burnout in any way.
Sara
The idea is, though, is that if you’re going to think about work outside of work, if you are going to be a school counselor in your brain, when you’re at home, it should be around problem solving, or gratitude, instead of just living in the muckety muck.
Lauren
Yeah, that makes so much sense. Like how you could still enjoy your job and be at home, you’re not stressed about it. You’re problem solving. How do I what am I going to do to change this when I get back to school instead of just, you know, like you said, ruminating on the negative things or all those emails. Okay, well, like what am I going to do about it instead of just sitting in it?
Lauren
Well, those were awesome little snippets of what’s going on in research right now. And I like you covered a lot of different kinds of scenarios with this. That was helpful. Sarah, tell me where the listeners can find you if they want to connect with you after this. And I will include all of that in the show notes. But if they’re listening on the go, and they want to find you after this, tell us where,
Sara
Sure. So on Instagram and Facebook, I am @theresponsivecounselor. And you can also email me if this is something you’re super into [email protected] And that’s also my website responsive counselor.com
Lauren
Easy to find, boom. Well, thank you for your time. I know that the listeners are going to find a lot of value in this this is we haven’t had a topic covering this the whole time I’ve had my podcast since January. So I know that you brought a lot of value to the listener so I appreciate you.
Sara
Thank you for having me. This was fun. Awesome.
Lauren
Wasn’t that such a good episode? I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed recording it because like I said, I learned so much from Sara. If you’re looking for somewhere to start collecting some data to incorporate some of that research into your school counseling program, I want you to go do download my high school counseling data collection ideas guide.
Lauren
It has 49 different ideas for places that you can start digging for data in your school counseling program that actually probably exist already. To get that data collection ideas guide. Go to counselorclique.com/dataguide to download yours today. I’ll see you next week.
Lauren
Thanks for listening to today’s episode of high school counseling conversations. All of the links I talked about today can be found in the show notes and also at counselorclique.com/podcast. Be sure to hit follow or subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast so that you never miss a new episode. Connect with me over on Instagram, send me a DM @counselorclique. That’s C-L-I-Q-U-E. Thanks so much for hanging out with me. I’ll see you next time.
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