Hands-on, Practical Guidance for Educators

From math, literacy, equity, multilingual learners, and SEL, to assessment, school counseling, and education leadership, our books are research-based and authored by experts on topics most relevant to what educators are facing today.

Look Inside

Thinking and Acting Like a Solution-Focused School Counselor

By: Richard D. Parsons

Learn how to emphasize students' strengths to help them resolve problems!

This concise guide provides the knowledge and skills needed to establish collaborative student relationships, identify student skills and abilities, and help students reframe problems into attainable goals. Emphasizing practice and feedback, the author includes actual session transcripts to help new and less-experienced school counselors apply concepts directly to their own practice. Benefits of this book include:

A reflective, meaning-making model as a basis for effective school counseling
An introduction to the fundamental principles of solution-focused counseling
Clinical illustrations of solution identification and implementation strategies
In-depth case studies and guided practice exercises

Full description

Look Inside

Product Details

Grade Level: K-12
ISBN: 9781412966450
Published By: Corwin
Year: 2009
Page Count: 160
Publication date: November 23, 2012

Select Format:

Review Copies

Review copies may be requested by individuals planning to purchase 10 or more copies for a team or considering a book for adoption in a higher ed course. To request a review copy, contact sales@corwin.com.

Description

"This should be a required text for a school counseling degree."
—Jill R. Boyd, Counselor and Olweus Bullying Prevention Trainer
John Bullen Middle School, Kenosha, WI

"The author knows solution-focused counseling inside and out. He describes in excellent detail how to use this technique with multiple problems and multiple ages. The examples are spot on."
—Cynthia Knowles, Prevention Specialist
Livonia Central School District, NY

Learn how to emphasize students' strengths to help them resolve problems!

This book helps new and experienced school counselors engage with students using a solution-focused approach that stresses cooperation and highlights positive attributes to facilitate goal achievement.

Thinking and Acting Like a Solution-Focused School Counselor provides the background and expertise needed to establish collaborative student relationships, identify student skills and abilities, and reframe problems into attainable goals. Emphasizing practice and feedback, the author includes actual session transcripts to help new and less-experienced counselors apply concepts directly to their own practice. Benefits of this book include:

A reflective, meaning-making model as a basis for effective school counseling
An introduction to the fundamental principles of solution-focused counseling
Clinical illustrations of solution identification and implementation strategies
In-depth case studies and guided practice exercises

Like the companion books on behavioral, cognitive, and eclectic school counseling, this concise guide offers the knowledge and skills necessary to help troubled students in need of encouragement and hope.

Key features

Practice and feedback are central to this text. Case illustrations, case presentations with analyses of counselor actions, and the decision making processes underlying them, along with guided practice activities are used as 'teaching tools' throughout. The book is organized around the following sections:

Thinking and acting like an expert
Core constructs of cognitive counseling
Clinical illustrations of intervention strategies
In depth case verbatim (with "counselor thinking" superimposed )
Guided practice exercises to assist the reader in thinking and acting like an expert

Author(s)

Richard D. Parsons

Richard D. Parsons, Ph.D. is a Full Professor in the Counselor Education Department at West Chester University. Dr. Parsons has over 45 years of university teaching in counselor preparation programs. Prior to his University teaching Dr. Parsons spent 9 years as a school counselor in an inner-city high school.

Table of Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Introduction to Book Series

Part I. Solution Focus: A Model Guiding Reflective Practice

1. The School Counselor as Reflective Practitioner

2. The Fundamentals of a Solution-Focused Organizational Framework

Part II. Solution-Focused Discourse and the Strategies Employed

3. Highlighting the Possibility and Process of Change

4. Solutions Identification and Implementation

5. Identifying and Implementing Goal Attainment Strategies

Part III. From the Eyes of the Solution-Focused Expert

6. Solution-Focused School Counselor: Reflection In and On Practice

7. Practice in Procedural Thinking

References

Index

Reviews

"This book does make a distinct contribution to the field. This approach is one that school counselors can use. Many may be using a form of this and not even know it."

Diane Smith, School Counselor
Smethport Area School District, PA

"The author knows solution-focused counseling inside and out. He describes in excellent detail how to use this technique with multiple problems and multiple ages. The examples are spot on."

Cynthia Knowles, Prevention Specialist
Livonia Central School District, NY

"This should be a required text for a school counseling degree."

Jill R. Boyd, Counselor and Olweus Bullying Prevention Trainer
John Bullen Middle School, Kenosha, WI

Other Titles in: School Counseling

Select Format: