Introduction to the Special Section

Abstract

In a span of merely 10 years, the school counseling profession has reinvented itself. Since the late 1990s, school counseling has progressed from the tradition of a responsive services focus to a proactive and programmatic system that is inextricably integrated with the mission of schools. The national standards of the American Counselor Association (ASCA, 1997; Campbell & Dahir, 1997), the Transforming Counseling Initiative (Education Trust, 1997), and the ASCA (2003, 2005) National Model have directed school counselors to respect the past and embrace the present but forge a new vision to the future. The challenges facing students and 21st-century schools have influenced the paradigms and practices that forward the profession and place a renewed emphasis on supporting student achievement, social justice advocacy, and school counselor accountability. * We Are in Charge of Our Destiny The imperative of any professional organization is to choose with intentionality how to lead the organization and propel its members forward by anticipating what the future may hold and establish a foundation to shape its destiny. Theobald suggested that we need to envision the society we really want and to develop a plan to move from the present into the future that we choose to shape (Maples, 1984). More than 20 years ago, Inbody (1984) identified six basic premises that were critical to the future of school counseling: 1. What the school counseling profession does today wild have an impact on the quality of the field of school counseling and educational environments in which school counselors and students must live. 2. Scientific methods of researching school counseling can be used for anticipating the various futures school counselors could create unknowingly. 3. There is no longer just one future that awaits the school counseling profession but many different possible futures, depending on what school counselors and the profession choose today. 4. counselors assume a moral urgency in their responsibility to future generations of students and school counselors. 5. Technology continues to serve as a powerful tool for school counselors; however, school counselors are responsible for technology integration and use in the future in a way that may have been inconceivable 20 years ago. 6. Prior to unleashing the power of an idea on the school counseling profession and students, an extensive study of the future impact of that idea must be mounted. (adapted from pp. 216-217) Despite the passage of more than 2 decades, these premises still ring true. The purpose of this special section, School Counseling in the 21st Century: Where Lies the Future? is not to dwell on the past but to ponder the next wave of innovation that will forward the profession. The contributors have worked with the assumption that the ASCA (2003, 2005) National Model and the Transforming Counseling model (Education Trust, 1997) will become firmly embedded themselves in the hearts and minds of the 100,000 school counselors in public schools. In our crystal ball, 21st-century school counselors are in a powerful and pivotal position to effectively demonstrate how the complement of academic rigor and affective development is the formula to student success (Stone & Dahir, 2006). They recognize and embrace the critical part they play as key members of the educational leadership team and rise to the challenge to share in the responsibility of preparing students to meet the expectations of higher academic standards while assisting them to become productive and contributing members of society. Counselor educators, practitioners, and future school counselor candidates for degrees have established a new way of work as leaders, collaborators, advocates, and systemic change agents in concert with the dynamics of the educational landscape, the globalization of society and economics, and the plethora of diverse student needs. …