The Effect of Strengths-Based School Counseling Model on Career Development and Academic Well-Being of Students

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 MA in School Counseling, University of Isfehan, Isfehan, Iran

2 Associate professor, Faculty of Education and Psychology, Department of Counseling

Abstract

Abstract
 The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of strengths-based school counseling model on students' career development and academic well-being. The research method is quasi-experimental pre-test-post-test with two control groups and the statistical population included all high school male students in Isfahan in the 2016-2017 academic year who were randomly selected from schools. One area was selected and placed in three experimental groups, control 1, and control 2. The results of analysis of covariance showed that the growth rate of career path of students in the experimental group increased significantly compared to both control groups, but this increase was not significant in academic well-being.
Introduction
One of the issues and concerns of students is their job concerns. Properly responding to these concerns can affect the success of students at higher levels as well as their working lives, which will be one of the most important parts of their lives. Career growth is the part of a person's overall growth that focuses on learning in order to prepare for the world of work and to progress and advance in that work (Michelle and Gibson, 2007). Another variable that plays a major role in students' academic issues is academic well-being or academic satisfaction. In recent years, attention to positive psychology has given rise to various approaches to counseling. Strengths-based counseling is a model based on the principles of counseling psychology, prevention, positive psychology, positive youth development, help, counseling therapy, and narrative therapy (Smith, 2006). Therefore, due to the importance of career development and academic well-being as two influential variables in relation to students, more research is needed in this regard. On the other hand, by studying the background, it is observed that coherent research has not been done on the effects of school counseling based on strengths. Also, in relation to academic well-being, most studies have examined the student community, and although the importance of career development in relation to students who have received the most important education during their studies and a large part of their time it is clear that students have not been well studied in research. Therefore, there is clearly a research gap in this regard. For this purpose, the aim of this study was to determine the effect of strengths-based school counseling on career development and students' academic well-being and compare it with the common approach of school counseling in education.
Hypotheses: The strengths-based school counseling model is effective on students' career development and academic well-being.
Methodology
The present study is applied in terms of purpose and in terms of method, is a quasi-experimental pre-test-post-test with two control groups. Research question: Does the strengths-based school counseling model affect students' career development and academic well-being?
Population, sample, and sampling method: The participants of the study consists of all male high school students in Isfahan. Among the six education districts of Isfahan, one district was randomly selected and three schools from this district that were willing to cooperate were selected. Two schools without counselors, one to implement the model and the other as a control group, and one school that benefited from the counselor and the usual education counseling program were also designated as the second control group. Then, in order to select the experimental group, one school was randomly selected from two schools without counselors. The total number of students in the experimental group (school) was 80, of which 43 students participated in the pre-test and post-test voluntarily. The same number of students were randomly selected from two control groups (schools) and participated in this study.
 
Career development inventory (Creed and Patton’s, 2004)
CDI-A-SF has 33 items, and is designed for students in grades 8–12. Four subscales are typically calculated include Career Planning (10 items), Career Exploration (8 items), World of Work Information (8 items) and Career Decision Making (7 items). Creed and Patton (2004) assessed construct validity using factor analysis and testing the scale’s association with other career variables, and reported satisfactory internal reliability coefficients for all subscales (ranging from .70 to .87) and examined the inventory’s internal reliability and found the reliability coefficient for 4 subscales to be 0.87, 0.73, 0.73 and 0.70 respectively. In Iran, Sadeghi, Baghban, Bahrami, Ahmadi and Creed (2011) examined the internal reliability of the inventory for first two subscales applied Cronbach’s Alpha and for the third and fourth subscales utilized the split-half method. The obtained reliability coefficients for 4 subscales were 0.82, 0.66, 0.66 and 0.64 respectively.
Academic Well-being Questionnaire (Lent, Single, Shaw, Schmidt & Schmidt, 2007).
Lent et al. (2005) reported internal consistency of 0.86 and 0.87. The alpha coefficient has also been reported to be 0.94. Mikaelimnia (2013) calculated the reliability of the test by alpha method and reported the reliability of the first part 0.76, the second part 0.79 and the whole scale 0.84.
Results
According to the mean scores of pre-test and post-test, it is determined that the average scores of both career development and academic well-being of the students in the experimental group has increased in post-test.
In order to perform analysis of variance, first the assumptions of this test were examined. These assumptions, namely the normality and uniformity of the variance of the dependent variable, were tested by Levin test. Given that the significance level of the calculated Levin value is greater than 0.05 (career development 0.40 and academic well-being 0.14), the data did not call into question the assumption of equal variance error.
There is a significant difference between the post-test scores of the three groups of students in career development at the level (P≤0.05). But their post-test score on academic well-being at the level (P≤0.05) is not significantly different.
The results of this study showed that the rate of career development of the experimental group was significantly different from the two control groups, but there was no significant difference between the two control groups. This means that only strengths-based school counseling has increased the career development of students, and the current school counseling program implemented in schools has not made a significant difference in the students' career development.
Discussion and conclusion
According to the research results, it can be said that stimulating the dimensions of career development (planning, exploration, world of work information and decision making) Super (1957), under the title of strengths-based school counseling program, to improve students' career development. It seems that the implementation of classroom guidance programs, individual and group counseling, university visit program and distribution of brochures with the topics of targeting, providing job information and introducing jobs, in stimulating the dimensions of career development (planning, exploration, world of work information and decision making) has been effective. Given that the effectiveness of the strengths-based school counseling model on career development has been significant, so it is suggested to the Department of Education and school counselors to consider this model and in the future, it will be more the basis of work, Put in schools. The lack of significant promotion of students' academic well-being, despite the implementation of the programs mentioned under the headings of academic motivation, emotional intelligence and learning and study methods, may be due to several possibilities. Lent, Dosio Tavira, Shaw, and Singley (2009) state that academic satisfaction is considered as a realm of overall life satisfaction, which seems to be partly determined by personality factors. This means that people with certain personality traits are more likely to feel satisfied in a certain area of ​​life, such as education and work. Gender can also be an influential factor in this regard that in the present study only the gender of the boy was present. In this regard, it is suggested that other researchers interested in this field cover this limitation.
In general, it can be concluded from the findings of the present study that the strengths-based school counseling as a comprehensive and inclusive model, can be well based on the practice of school counselors in an academic year that the present study It was done in one semester and in one school. Therefore, it is suggested that school counselors use this model in several schools from different areas of education by changing their perspective from harm-oriented to empowerment-oriented vision, and try as much as possible to implement this model comprehensively. And of course, go beyond that. This means that they should not be satisfied with only the mentioned strengths and put more strengths as the top priority of working with students in different levels.

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References

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