TPC-Journal-V5-Issue4

The Professional Counselor /Volume 5, Issue 4 525 Discussion The ASCA National Model (2012) for school counseling programs underscores the value of using student achievement data to guide intervention planning and evaluation. This requires schools to find ways to collect valid and reliable information that provides a clear illustration of students’ skills in areas that are known to influence academic achievement. The purpose of developing the PFI was to identify and evaluate socio-emotional factors that relate to students’ academic success and emotional health, and to use the findings to inform the efforts of school counselors. The factor analyses in this study were used to explore how teachers’ ratings of students’ behavior on the 13-item PFI scale clustered around specific constructs that research has shown are connected to achievement and underlie many school counseling interventions. Because the scoring rubrics are organized into three grade levels (kindergarten and first grade, second and third grade, and fourth and fifth grade), the behaviors associated with each skill are focused at an appropriate developmental level. This level of detail allows teachers to respond to questions about socio-emotional factors in ways that are consistent with behaviors that students are expected to exhibit at different ages and grade levels. Considering parsimony and interpretability, the EFA and two CFAs both resulted in the selection of a three-factor model as the best fit for the data. Through the EFA, we compared two-, three- and four-factor models. The three-factor model showed appropriate goodness-of-fit indices, item loadings and interpretability. Additionally, the two CFAs demonstrated cross-validation of the three-factor model. In this model, the fundamental constructs associated with students’ academic behavior identified are “academic temperament,” “self-knowledge,” and “motivation.” “Self-knowledge” and “motivation” correspond to two of the four construct clusters identified by Squier et al. (2014) as critical socio-emotional dimensions related to achievement. The “academic temperament” items reflected either self-regulation skills or the ability to engage in productive relationships in school. Squier et al. (2014) differentiated between self-direction (including emotional self-regulation constructs) and relationship skills clusters. Although not perfectly aligned, this factor structure of the PFI is consistent with the CBA model for clustering student competencies and corresponds to previous research on the links between construct-based skills and academic achievement. Teacher ratings on the PFI seemed to reflect their perceptions that self-regulation abilities and good relationship skills are closely related constructs. These results indicate that the PFI may be a useful instrument for identifying elementary students’ strengths and needs in terms of exhibiting developmentally appropriate skills that are known to influence academic achievement and personal well-being. Table 5 Latent Variable Correlation Coefficients for Three-Factor Model CFA 1 CFA 2 C1 C2 C3 C1 C2 C3 C1 1.00 * * C1 1.00 * * C2 0.63 1.00 * C2 0.64 1.00 * C3 0.81 0.82 1.00 C3 0.77 0.83 1.00