Moreover, U.S. students do not fare well on the international educational stage. At a time when globalization has brought much closer linkage between cultures, economies, and countries, American school children are lagging behind. The justification for focusing on strategies to keep children interested in school -- and to help them succeed in school -- is to be found in the fact that U.S. students' average scores are very poor in comparison to other students internationally.
To wit, according to the 2003 data from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) (in cooperation with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD), 15-year-old American students rank 24th out of 38 countries in science. U.S. students rank 12th of 38 countries in reading, and 26th of 38 in "problem solving." The 2006 assessment is just as grim, for those hoping that American schools are catching up to the rest of the world in academics.
Indeed, in the 2006 assessment, of 57 countries world wide, U.S. students 35th in math and 29th in science (OECD). As to the comparison of reading scores, they could not be reported because there were printing errors in U.S. test booklets, the OECD explains. In PISA's 2009 reading results, the U.S. students were 17th -- behind Iceland, Poland, Switzerland, Estonia, Norway, Belgium, Netherlands, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong-China, Finland, Korea and #1, Shanghai-China (PISA, 2009).
Given the problems associated with academics and with students dropping out of high school, there is strong justification for conducting research into the positive outcomes associated with group counseling in middle school.
Definition of Terms
Group counseling (led by a professional counselor, a group of 5 to 7 students meet and learn strategies for success in academics); National Defense Education Act (NDEA) (money was made available to schools for many services, including counseling); American School Counselor Association (ASCA) (develops standards for counseling services in public schools); stakeholders (all those who are affected by the success or failure of schools); "at-risk" students (students that are in danger of failing due to a number of reasons, including academic struggles); positive self-talk (when a student has a strong self-concept or self-image); service-learning (learning how to share information with others; for example, middle school students acquire service learning skills that they then share skills by tutoring elementary students); Skill-Builders (fostering self-confidence and new skills in students that lag behind); self-disclosure (how much should a counselor reveal about his or her own life? There are limits to how much a leader should disclose to students); Experiential involvement (actual hands-on experience is referred to as experiential involvement).
Chapter Two
Historical Background of Group Counseling
The history of group counseling cannot be traced precisely to any one era or place, because as Sally Barlow and colleagues point out, the "informal study of groups" has been occurring since humans began congregating together (Barlow, et al., 2004, p. 3). But the "written history of groups really only began at the fin-de-Siecle of the 19th Century," Barlow explains. The point Barlow makes near the beginning of the essay in Janice L. DeLucia-Waack's book is that saying "group counseling" means many things to different people. The application of psychotherapy is often done in group counseling sessions, for example, and "medical self-help groups" also meet in group counseling sessions. The "comprehensive definition" according to Barlow is that group therapy can be linked to "prevention, guidance, counseling, and training" (pp. 3-4).
To whom should credit be given for launching group counseling for any purpose? Barlow suggests it was Sigmund Freud, who had now-famous "Wednesday night meetings" with his students in Vienna, Austria, for instruction relating to understanding psychological issues. Of course this paper is linked to the need for academic help for middle school students, but there is certainly a psychological theme involved when you are asking adolescents to meet together in a group for additional scholarship support. The author asserts that by 1932, group counseling in the psychological context had been named "Group Therapy" and there were contributions to the practice of group sessions from social workers, school counseling, educational psychology, nursing, organizational behavior and clinical psychology, Barlow continues on page 5.
By the 1980s, Barlow explains, it was clear that group treatments were "effective" for whatever the particular cause or problem might have been. In the 1990s, serious research into the effectiveness of group therapy and group counseling continued, and "with few exceptions, the general conclusion to be drawn from an enormous number of studies, covering...
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