The Effect of Building Closures due to COVID 19 on the Perceptions and Practices of School Counselors

Louis S Nadelson,Valerie G Couture,Odunola Oyeniyi

doi:10.5430/wje.v11n6p1

Abstract

With school buildings shuttering due to COVID-19, school counselors’ work needed to shift to virtual environments. The shift in operations led us to wonder about school counselors’ perceptions and practices in these new and unfamiliar conditions. In our mixed-methods cross-sectional study, we gathered quantitative and qualitative data from 89 school counselors. Our findings include evidence of the counselors feeling disconnected from their students, lack of technology and student access, privacy issues, limited preparation to counsel in virtual environments, and work and life balance. We follow our results with a discussion, related implications, and directions for future research.

Highlights

During the COVID-19 pandemic, K-12 school counselors worked virtually to minimize personal contact with students and colleagues to slow the coronavirus’s spread
Our overarching research question was: How did school counselors respond to building closures due to COVID-19? To answer our research question, we developed this series of guiding research questions: A.Were school counselors able to fulfill their role when their buildings closed?
We found that the school counselors agreed that they could fulfill their role during school building closure with some additional effort

Summary

Introduction

During the COVID-19 pandemic, K-12 school counselors worked virtually to minimize personal contact with students and colleagues to slow the coronavirus’s spread. School counselors often focused on students’ ecological systems, including their families, schools, neighborhoods, and religious groups, as well as the ways those systems contributed to children and adolescents’ development (Rosen et al, 2020). To gauge how students coped with the COVID-19 pandemic, school counselors attempted to connect with all students, not just those considered high-risk (Karaman et al, 2021). The stressful situation increased the critical need for school counselors and educators to connect with their students even though they could not meet at a school (Karaman et al, 2021)

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Conclusion