Student Success Skills: An Evidence-Based School Counseling Program Grounded in Humanistic Theory

The Student Success Skills program is an evidence-based, counselor-led intervention founded on a variety of humanistic principles. Five studies and a recent meta-analysis provide evidence that integrating human potential practices into the school by teaching students foundational learning skills strengthens the link between school counseling interventions and student achievement. ********** The interventions that school counselors provide must, by their very nature, aim to maximize the human and social potential for each individual involved in a given school community. This assertion is supported by a 2005 Delphi study that ranked the most prominent research questions in the field of school counseling and placed interventions designed to improve student achievement as the top issue facing the field (Dimmitt, Carey, McGannon, & Henningson, 2005). This Delphi study coincides with numerous calls from the literature that challenge school counselors to demonstrate the impact that their programs have on students' academic and behavioral outcomes (Brott, 2006; Lapan, 2005; Paisley & Hayes, 2003; Sink, Akos, Turnbull, & Mvududu, 2008; Sink & Stroh, 2003). More than an end in itself, the achievement-support behaviors of school counselors must be done in such a way to empower the student and community alike, therefore embodying the spirit of humanism. The Student Success Skills (SSS) program is a clear example of a school counseling intervention that supports student academic achievement (Brigman & Campbell, 2003; Brigman, Webb, & Campbell, 2007; Campbell & Brigman, 2005; Webb, Brigman, & Campbell, 2005) and includes intervention strategies specifically designed to maximize the human potential of young learners. As such, the use of SSS intervention can serve to support the efficacy of school counseling services and lend support to the pertinence of humanistic theory as each fosters student development and achievement. The SSS program is a structured school counseling curriculum and training scheme that equips practitioners with relevant and useful activities designed to support achievement and related school behaviors in students Grades 4 through 12. This program, therefore, stands on a philosophic conviction that each student possesses a given potential to achieve, and yet such potential is too often mitigated by myriad factors such as social circumstance, personal misappropriation of skill, or simple happenstance. In this way, SSS coincides with humanistic theory, particularly humanistic applications to education and school counseling (Lemberger, 2010; Patterson, 1973), in that the activities and encouragement of the intervening counselor can maximize the innate capacity of the student to achieve, create personal and social meaning, and become a contributing member of society. If the profession of school counseling is to remain relevant to education systems and students, intervention programs such as SSS must be shown to be efficacious and personally meaningful to the individuals served. To this end, this article describes the relevance of SSS to students and schools, details how this relevance is associated with humanistic principles, and describes the impact of this approach on student achievement and related school behaviors. The SSS program's allegiance to humanism, therefore, should further lend support to an already robust body of literature related to humanistic counseling interventions (Elliott, 2002). Moreover, SSS demonstrates the humanistic agency of young people to achieve when afforded appropriate skills and opportunity. STRUCTURE OF THE SSS PROGRAM Foundational Structure of the SSS Program The SSS program is based on the findings of a series of large reviews of educational research that identified foundational skill sets and attitudes that separate successful and academically competent students from those who struggle and fail (Hattie, Biggs, & Purdie, 1996; Marzano, Pickering, & Pollock, 2001; Masten & Coatsworth, 1998; Wang, Haertel, & Walberg, 1994; Zins, Weissberg, Wang, & Walberg, 2004). …