Group Work in the Schools

Group Counseling in the Schools is the first text of its kind to recognize the increasing specialization needs of school counselors and to focus exclusively on what a school counselor needs to know to provide effective prevention and intervention group work with students.

School counselors now make up close to one-half of the counselors graduating from master’s level training programs, and this text recognizes that group work in schools is very different from group work in the clinic. While few school counselors receive any formal instruction on how to run task groups, psychoeducational groups or even how to conduct group counseling within the specialized school context, Group Counseling in the Schools focuses solelyon the specialized group work that school counselors perform.

Written from a systemic perspective and in a multicultural context, the core of this text involves the systemic approach to group work: preparing school counseling students to facilitate the systemic group process in the school context, from planning the group, through the four stages of group work: forming and orienting, transition, working, and termination. Mastering the facilitation of these defined stages of group work allows school counselors to effectively work with students in all types of school-based group contexts. Throughout the book, students are exposed to the foundations of group work by exploring the historical forces that shaped group work in schools today, the therapeutic factors that underlie effective group approaches, and the advantages and disadvantages of group work in the schools. Students will build a foundation of multicultural, ethical and legal group work attitudes, and knowledge and skills before learning to distinguish the roles of group members and group leaders.