Date of Award
Summer 2025
Document Type
Open Access Dissertation
Department
Educational Studies
First Advisor
Kathleen Cunningham
Abstract
This problem of practice addresses increasing Professional School Counselor (PSC) advocacy skills for the practicing secondary school counselor. Improvement science is the framework used to help solve this problem. The PSC improvement team consisted of a team of seven licensed professional school counselors, all with career experience in the secondary school setting. The team began their work with the goal of understanding the current system by participating in an initial empathy interview. Immediately after the empathy interview was concluded, each committee member completed an initial assessment of the School Counselor Self Advocacy Questionnaire (SCSAQ) to be used as an initial baseline of the measurement of self-advocacy for each improvement team member. Using several improvement science strategies to include the fishbone diagram process. Potential change ideas were selected based on how they directly impact the stakeholders' understanding and perceptions of the PSC roles and responsibilities; as well as how efficiently the change idea could potentially increase the level of PSC advocacy skills. The major change ideas explored included creating a PSC Hub or web resource, PSC professional development, the creation of a PSC support team and developing a conversation starter protocol aimed at blending current and relevant research studies, along with practical knowledge and experience. Based on what the PSC improvement team learned about their local system in combination with published resources and research, they determined that developing a conversation starter protocol offered the potential opportunity to increase PSC advocacy, while also increasing universal awareness of the role and opportunities to strengthen overall utilization of the PSC at the secondary school level. This problem of practice outlines the process and opportunities of utilizing improvement science to increase PSC advocacy and conviction to advocate for the role and position.
Rights
© 2025, Beverly Denise McCullough
Recommended Citation
McCullough, B. D.(2025). Increasing Professional School Counseling Advocacy Skills for the Practicing Secondary School Counselor. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/8392