TPC-Journal-V3-Issue3

182 The Professional Counselor \Volume 3, Issue 3 Recommendations for Professional School Counselors and Counselor Educators Given the persistence of role ambiguity and role stress among school counselors, addressing role diffusion at the individual school, district, state and national levels may significantly strengthen the professional identity of school counselors. Thus, school counselors must regularly and systematically advocate for their professional identity by proactively informing key constituents about the counseling services the school counselor provides to students. Furthermore, state and national professional school counseling organizations must find ways to promote the unique counseling skill set of their members and must help elevate the work of professional school counselors by emphasizing their graduate-level counseling training, rather than developing models and standards that lead school counselors to focus on duties that other school personnel are qualified to perform. Kaplan and Gladding (2011) stressed the need for all counseling specialties to converge around a common counseling identity as a means for helping the public to understand the appropriate roles of professional counselors. In light of the results of this study, their call seems especially significant for school counselors who have struggled for decades to establish a consistent professional identity. Counselor education programs may need to critically assess the utility of training future school counselors in models, including the ASCA (2012) National Model, which do not support school counselors providing direct counseling services and which may consequently foster role diffusion and role ambiguity. The development of Comprehensive School Based Counseling Centers as suggested by Astramovich et al. (2010) may provide an alternative approach to existing models and could help promote the unique counseling expertise of professional school counselors. Therefore, the graduate-level training of school counselors should emphasize the development of individual and group counseling skills to help prepare future counselors to work effectively with a wide range of student concerns. In addition, counselor education programs must help new school counselors develop skills to advocate for the provision of direct counseling services in schools. Finally, counselor education programs must help new school counselors to foster a strong counseling-focused professional identity that is distinguishable in practice from other personnel in educational settings. Limitations and Future Research Recommendations Limitations of this study should be noted. First of all, the sample comprised graduate counseling students at one university, and therefore, caution must be taken in generalizing the findings to other populations, including working school counselors. Unlike practicing school counselors, school and mental health graduate counseling students may have differing perspectives about the roles of school counselors. In addition, the study focused on duties as suggested by the ASCA (2012) National Model domains, which may not reflect the actual day-to-day practice of professional school counselors at various school settings nationally. Future role diffusion research could be strengthened by sampling currently practicing school counselors as well as school administrators who oversee and evaluate school counselor performance. In addition, examining role diffusion at the elementary, middle and high school levels may help identify unique challenges faced by school counselors in each school setting. Lastly, role studies that help clarify and distinguish the role of the school counselor from the roles of school social workers and school psychologists may help further strengthen the identity of professional school counselors. Conclusion Although role diffusion and role ambiguity may have negatively affected the profession of school counseling in the past, today’s professional school counselors and school counseling organizations have opportunities to