Utilizing Individual Counseling in Conjunction with Disciplinary Actions

This study was conducted in a Rochester area school. The purpose of the study was to observe the effect of individual counseling sessions on student referrals. The individual counseling frameworks utilized include person-centered and Adlerian perspectives. Person centered theory was used to establish a connection with the students in the first sessions. Thereafter Adlerian concepts of assessing and setting goals were incorporated. Upon completion of the study, students who received treatment were compared to a control group in regard to the number of disciplinary referrals. UTILIZING INDIVIDUAL COUNSELING 6 Utilizing Individual Counseling in Conjunction with Disciplinary Actions The following research project takes a different approach in addressing office disciplinary referrals (ODRs) in a high school setting. ODRs have historically been used as indicators for different types of behavioral interventions needed to encourage academic success (Spaulding et al., 2010). Referral data also can be used as an indicator of future problems for students in juvenile courts, which is a concern to society as a whole (Krezmien, Leone, Zablocki, & Wells, 2010). Typical school interventions focus on punishment via detentions, suspensions, or expulsions from school. All of these actions do not address the problem behavior, but focus on taking something away from the student. The current study proposes to implement a new way of thinking by not simply punishing a student, but giving them a chance to tell their story. Hearing a student’s story helps to get at the reason behind an action instead of simply punishing the student for poor behavior. Getting at the reason behind a student’s behavior may help to curtail problematic and possibly dangerous outcomes common to students who are repeatedly disciplined. Sixty seven percent of high school students have been shown to have zero or one ODR (Spaulding et al. 2010), which suggests that 33% of students have 2 or more ODRs and are subject to repeated disciplinary actions in school. Minority and male students tend to have more ODRs than other students (Kaufman et al., 2010; Tenebaum & Ruck, 2007). Emotional and behavioral problems have been identified as mitigating factors in the suspension of middle school students (Stanley, Canham, & Cureton, 2006). Middle school students’ emotional and behavioral problems typically persist through high school. A shocking trend is referrals from schools directly to juvenile courts (Krezmien et al., 2010). Numbers of these direct court referrals increased from 1995 to 2004. UTILIZING INDIVIDUAL COUNSELING 7 Before reviewing the interventions utilized in this study, it is essential to look at policies and procedures that schools implement now. Most schools in the United States have adopted zero tolerance policies that assign punishment for severe offenses including fighting or bringing weapons to school. Zero tolerance has increasingly included severe punishments for infractions such as disruption, smoking, and truancy (Teske, 2011). Policies such as zero tolerance are consistent with conventional disciplinary policies because they do not address the behavior, but instead punish students. Schools also employ policies that are directed at specific problem areas. Active supervision is an example of one of these policies. The policies target tardiness and hallway behavior by increasing supervision (Johnson-Gros, Lyons, & Griffin, 2008). Targeted policies have been shown to be effective at times. The scope of their focus however, may be too narrow to address all factors that lead to ODRs. Positive behavior supports (PBS) is a proactive approach that targets a wide range of behavior problems (Bohanon, et al. 2012; Sherrod, Getch, & Ziomek-Daigle, 2009). PBS is implemented school-wide in three different levels. The last of these levels is the most individualized intervention and targets individual students who have not responded to the first two levels of intervention (Sherrod et al., 2009). Proactive approaches that are more individually targeted appear to be the most effective in changing problem behaviors. Person-centered theoretical perspectives have been shown to improve behavior with aggressive youth in a school setting (Cochran, Fauth, Cochran, Spurgeon, Pierce, 2010). Personcentered approaches have also been shown to be effective in establishing a close relationship with clients through congruence, empathetic understanding, and unconditional positive regard. For the purposes of this study, the person-centered approach was used to establish a working relationship with students. Adlerian perspectives were also used in this research. In particular, the perspectives of phenomenology and goal setting. Phenomenology refers to each student’s UTILIZING INDIVIDUAL COUNSELING 8 subjective worldview (Ziomek-Daigle, McMahon, & Paisley, 2008). Once a relationship was built through person-centered principles, the worldview for each student was assessed. Then the values and goals the student has constructed within that worldview were explored. When these goals and values had been established, a discussion took place about how clients’ current actions align or diverge with the values and goals inherent in their worldview. The literature shows global interventions are the ones most commonly used in schools today. The one on one interventions used in this study has not been fully explored, which makes the results significant to the field of school counseling. The study was a between-groups experimental design. Number of counseling sessions was the independent variable and number of referrals was the dependent variable. The individuals in the control and treatment groups all attained at least 4 referrals in the 2011-2012 school year, which was the basis for inclusion in the study. After the treatment group completed a minimum of three counseling sessions (between January and March 2013), referrals occurring during the study for treatment and control groups were observed. Students who decided to participate were entered into a drawing to win one of three $20 movie gift certificates. During sessions person-centered and Adlerian perspectives were utilized. In the first sessions person centered principles were the primarily focus. The main aspects of personcentered theory used were congruence, empathetic understanding, and unconditional positive regard. After a connection had been established through using person-centered principles, Adlerian aspects of phenomenology and goal setting were utilized. This study was designed on the assumption that students, who were referred four or more times the previous year, would be more likely to obtain referrals the next year. It was also UTILIZING INDIVIDUAL COUNSELING 9 assumed that three sessions would be a sufficient number of sessions to effect participants’ future behavior. The main limitation of the study was the sample size that was obtained for the treatment group. Having a small sample impacts the power and generalizability of the study. The fact that students could only participate in sessions during study hall, lunch, or after school was also an identified limitation. In future studies using a similar framework, assessing how to address these aforementioned limitations will be paramount. Disciplinary referral is defined, for the purposes of this study, as a student being sent to the principal for discipline due to misbehavior in school. In school suspension (ISS) refers to a student being taken out of classes for a day, while still in the school building. Out of school suspension (OSS) is when a student is taken out of the school and building because of misbehavior. There were two research questions for the current study: (a) will individual counseling techniques affect the recidivism of students who have been referred more than four times the past school year? and (b) will students who receive treatment be able to fully assess their current actions and set goals for themselves? The literature indicated that there is a gap in the utilization of individualized interventions for chronically referred students. Emotional problems have been identified in middle school students and these problems only get magnified when they enter high school. Current high school policies look to punish students for bad behavior. The punishment that these students receive does not address the underlying problems that they have. This study assessed if personcentered and Adlerian theoretical frameworks and individual counseling sessions were effective in impacting these students. The study addressed the two research questions, stated above, UTILIZING INDIVIDUAL COUNSELING 10 through data analysis in order to observe if these interventions have practical use in the future. Specifically independent and paired t-tests were conducted. UTILIZING INDIVIDUAL COUNSELING 11 Literature Review An estimated 20% of students have mental health needs with 10% having a mental illness severe enough to affect emotional, behavioral, and developmental needs (Satcher, 2004; U. S. Public Health Service, 2001). For adolescents, emotional issues show themselves in a variety of ways in a school setting, and many behaviors caused by emotional issues often result in some form of discipline (Stanley, et al., 2006). The goal of these disciplinary actions is to punish the behavior, but it does not address the reason behind the behavior. Along with emotional and behavioral problems, students also have to deal with many school and life transitions, which can contribute to problem behaviors (Desocio & Hootman, 2004). This gap in assessing the reason behind a behavior is looked to be addressed in the proposed study. Stanley et al. (2006) looked to assess the prevalence of behavior problems with a student behavior survey (SBS) developed by Wingenfeld and colleagues (1998). This survey allows teachers to assess individual student emotional and behavioral problems in a school setting