Volume_4_Issue_5_Digest

TPC D igest 73 Competing Professional Identity Models in School Counseling: A Historical Perspective and Commentary – DIGEST Daniel Cinotti Daniel Cinotti is an assistant professor at the New York Institute of Technology. Correspondence can be addressed to Daniel Cinotti, Department of School Counseling, NYIT, 1855 Broadway, New York, NY 10023-7692, dcinotti@nyit.edu . P racticing school counselors are counseling professionals working within an educational setting. As such, they are faced with the challenge of creating and maintaining a professional identity while receiving competing messages about their roles and responsibilities. School counselors receive training from counselor educators that most often includes knowledge and skill building in theory, techniques, assessment, and individual and group counseling, and are often trained alongside mental health counselors, addictions counselors, higher-education counselors and art therapists. However, once school counselors enter the field, they immediately encounter a different professional identity model: that of an educator. In fact, in their professional environment, school counselors are often the only counseling professionals among primarily educators. The result is an often confusing and stressful process of identity formation. A look back at the history of the counseling profession shows that competing professional identity constructs have inhibited the growth of school counseling almost since its inception. Since the days when school counseling was known as vocational guidance , there has been a lack of standardized duties and appropriate supervision resulting from conflicting messages about the role of the counselor. This article provides a historical context for the debate between those who consider school counseling an ancillary support service to the learning occurring in the classroom, and those who view school counseling as a distinct set of services directed at enhancing not only academic development, but career and personal/social development as well. Today, although counselors have a preferred service orientation (comprehensive school counseling) and a National Model, school counselors continue to work very differently from region to region, state to state, district to district and even school to school. This article includes a discussion of three strategies to combat the role stress created by competing