A number of critical issues concerning the assessment of children with intellectual disabilities, including definitional problems, psychometric factors, and practical difficulties, are raised in this article. It is suggested that school counsellors and psychologists should consider these issues when assessing children with probable or known intellectual disabilities, particularly when using IQ tests. The use of adaptive scales as an additional means of defining and measuring intellectual disability is also examined. Although no ideal means of formally assessing children with intellectual disabilities is put forward, a range of concerns is explored and some suggestions for appropriate additions and caveats to present practice are proposed.

This article reports on part of a commissioned research study into students with severe challenging behaviour in primary schools serviced by the Catholic Education Office (Parramatta Diocese) in western Sydney. The data reported in this study relates to support services accessed by schools and their perceived efficacy as well as impacts of dealing with challenging behaviour on the school community. A total of 51 students were identified as having severe challenging behaviour using very conservative criteria. In-school supports were most frequently used and rated as most efficacious. External supports services tended to be used less frequently and were rated as less efficacious. Parental support was seen as limited and a range of family factors was viewed to both facilitate and hinder support of students. A range of significant impacts on the school community was documented. The support of students with severe challenging behaviour in regular school settings will clearly present an ongoing issue and several suggestions arising from the present research are offered.

Research indicates that an important determinant of mental health is the degree to which someone feels connected to his or her environment. For young people, how they feel about ‘fitting in’ at school, in terms of peers, staff and the curriculum, is an important factor in their wellbeing. An effective whole school mental health promotion approach will therefore involve the creation of a school environment that encourages a sense of belonging and connection for its students. While the theory behind student connection to school has received a significant level of attention in the education, health and crime prevention literature, not so much is known about how school staff understand the process of ‘students connecting to school’ and what they do to enable it. Even less is reported about the experiences and views of students with high mental health support needs themselves on the issue (see Unheard Voices, Holdsworth & Blanchard, 2005). Therefore, the following study was conducted to seek understanding of the perspectives of school staff about how students connect to school and the implications for enabling the connection of students with high mental health support needs. Qualitative analysis of interviews revealed the emergence of a number of themes that align with previous research on connection to school. This study formed part of the MindMatters Plus initiative, a combined health and education best practice approach to improving the mental health outcomes of secondary school students with high support needs. The findings of this study have practical implications for school staff who are looking for ways to further enable student connection to school. They also add a complementary perspective to those of students as extrapolated in Holdsworth and Blanchard (2005).

Psychological services delivered at school level play a significant role in the overall educational development and health of students. Across Australia, guidance and counselling services are currently in a state of flux, with reductions or redirections of services in most states. Some critical issues are raised in regard to present and future service provision for students, teachers and families. This paper presents a ‘case study’ of Victorian services, and an Australian ‘snapshot’ of existing school guidance services, as at April 1992.

This paper reports the findings of a study that involved 236 primary and secondary school counsellors employed by the Queensland Department of Education. The study was undertaken as a formative evaluation process prior to the redevelopment of the counsellor education program offered by the Department of Education at The University of Queensland. The survey questionnaire asked informants to evaluate the importance of various practices and skills and the degree to which these were developed during training. Another section of the questionnaire asked counsellors to identify the relevance of several conceptual or knowledge bases to their day-to-day counselling practice and, again, how well these were covered during counsellor training. The results have provided an understanding of the identity of counsellors in primary and secondary settings based upon their perceptions, and indicated areas in which counsellor education can be augmented.

School psychology reports typically include program recommendations for teachers to implement with their students. These recommendations, however, are not always followed up. This brief review identifies and discusses some of the factors which may account for this phenomenon. Lack of research in the field is evident, particularly in the Australian context. Issues of role identification of psychologists in the school system, and the expectations of them held by teaching staff are discussed.

With recent developments in technology, online tests and digital tools offer school psychologists and school counsellors alternate modes of assessment. These new technologies have the potential to increase accessibility to tests (through greater portability), allow school psychologists and school counsellors to service more students (through greater efficiency), enable practitioners to provide more comprehensive assessments, and build professional capacity. This article will outline some examples of online tools and their benefits for time-poor school psychologists and school counsellors as well as identify ethical implications to be considered when adopting new technologies.

This study examined: (1) school-based avoidance among students with problematic anxiety, (2) teachers’ levels of accommodation of avoidant behaviour, and (3) the relation between teacher accommodation and student avoidance and anxiety. Participants included 31 elementary school students with problematic anxiety (mean age = 7.7 years; range 5–11; 58% female; 71% White) and their teachers (mean age = 41.1 years; 100% female; 100% White). Children completed interviews about their anxiety, and teachers reported on students’ avoided situations and completed a questionnaire about their own use of accommodation. Results indicated that the most commonly avoided situations involved individual and group academic performance (e.g., reading aloud in front of class). All teachers engaged in some form of accommodating behaviour more than one day a week (e.g., assisted a student in avoiding things that might make him/her more anxious), and teachers who reported engaging in more accommodating behaviours had students with higher avoidance and anxiety. Findings suggest that additional training and research on teachers’ behaviours that maintain and/or reduce anxiety via reducing accommodating behaviours appears warranted.

An exploratory applied study, using a set of attention and working memory strategies specifically developed for students and named Memory Mates, was completed with normally developing students attending a primary school. Students in one classroom received the intervention, while the other classroom functioned as a control group. The study was experimental, with quantitative measures. Additional qualitative data was collected to facilitate the ongoing development of Memory Mates. A working memory instrument was used to rank students initially, and as a post-intervention measure for children with low working memory, with some gains in working memory observed in the experimental classroom students. Data were collected on academic achievement in reading, spelling, and maths. Post-intervention data analysis of the impact of the Memory Mates intervention showed no differences between the experimental and control groups for standardised academic measures. Several reasons are postulated for the lack of significant quantifiable change, chiefly the short period of intervention.

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) offers school counsellors a practical and meaningful approach to helping students deal with a range of issues. This is achieved through encouraging psychological flexibility through the application of six key principles. This article describes our introduction to ACT, ACT's application to children and adolescents, and the creation and use of our ACT-based book for young people I Just Want To Be . . . Me!.

This article reports on part of a commissioned research study into students with severe challenging behaviour in primary schools serviced by the Catholic Education Office (Parramatta Diocese) in western Sydney. The focus of the study was on the prevalence of severe challenging behaviour and the nature of presenting behaviour. Questionnaires were directed to school staff and information was obtained from 41 of the 53 primary schools in the diocese. Using very conservative criteria, the estimate of numbers of students with severe challenging behaviour was approximately 1 per school. Students were typically male and were academically below average. The most frequently reported challenging behaviour (e.g., calling out, out of seat) was inherently minor in nature for the most part, but at high frequency this could be extremely disruptive to the operation of a classroom. More serious behaviours, such as physical aggression to other school students and staff, were also reported at concerning frequency, noting that such behaviours place staff and other students at risk. The present study adds to the limited Australian data describing students in regular schools with challenging behaviour by providing specific information on the classroom frequency of such behaviour and the academic performance of students.

Currently, Australia’s school counsellors are increasingly being called upon to respond to adolescent mental health needs. Through semistructured interviews with seven school counsellors working with adolescents, this qualitative study aimed to capture the lived experiences of this group of practitioners. By adopting a phenomenological approach and using thematic analysis, this study provides insight into their profession: the current ambiguity surrounding their role; the opportunities and obstacles they face; as well as the often-present tension between stakeholders including parents, other school staff and external agencies. The findings of this study indicate that school counsellors are challenged by the need to be advocates not only for their students but also for themselves and their roles within the school context.

While for some young people family life is smooth sailing, for many others it is fraught with turbulence. In this study of secondary students in metropolitan Melbourne the major concerns of children in intact and separated families were compared. The study also compared how young people cope according to their family circumstances. The 238 young people who live in intact households reported fights with parents and happiness as their major concerns. The major concern of the 114 young people in separated households was lack of access to the non-residential parent.

The investigation utilised the Adolescent Coping Scale (Frydenberg & Lewis, 1993a), an 80-item instrument developed and validated over a five-year period as an instrument to measure adolescent coping. The results of the study indicated that there was a significant variation in coping according to gender and a significant relationship between coping and family status. There were significant gender differences regardless of whether the families were intact or separated.

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of training on learning disabilities (LD) on school counsellor candidates’ perceptions related to students with LD. The study group was comprised of 51 students in the Counselling and Psychological Guidance Department. The participants responded to an open-ended question: ‘Students with learning disabilities are like … Because …’. A content analysis technique was used in the analysis of the data. Based on the study results, it was determined that before being trained on LD, the majority of the participants considered students with LD as problematic or never progressing. Following the training, a majority of the participants started using metaphors indicating that students with LD may progress and learn.

The current study used developmental trajectories to examine the relationship between internalising and externalising behaviours and victimisation over the transition period from primary to secondary school. Data were collected using a self-completion questionnaire four times over 3 years from 3,459 students aged 11–14 years. Students were tracked longitudinally to assess their knowledge, attitudes, mental health and bullying experiences during the transition period. Multilevel modelling was used to examine the relationship between developmental victimisation trajectories and behavioural and emotional difficulties over time of students’ transitioning from primary to secondary school. Males who experienced low, but increasing, levels of victimisation over secondary school had greater emotional symptoms, conduct problems, hyperactivity, peer problems and lower pro-social behaviour than those who had not been victimised. Whereas females who experienced low, but increasing, levels of victimisation over secondary school had greater emotional symptoms and peer problems than those who had not been victimised. The current results highlight the need to prevent the continuation or escalation of chronic victimisation from primary to secondary school and to improve the emotional wellbeing of adolescents. It is recommended that whole-school bullying prevention and intervention programs and social wellbeing programs are implemented during primary school and the transition to secondary school.

Supervision provides benefits for school counsellors and career counsellors such as support, an opportunity to gain new ideas and strategies, and personal and professional development. Despite this, studies have also shown that school counsellors perceive that the amount of time they participate in supervision is inadequate. In career counselling, there is little evidence that supervision has even been established as a mainstream professional practice. The reasons for this curious situation, whereby little time is spent on a potentially beneficial activity, are uncertain. The present study investigated the supervisory experiences of a group of school counsellors and career counsellors for a six month period following their completion of an intensive supervision training program. Participants recorded their supervisory experiences in a structured diary. Even though the participants were well informed about supervision, the findings of the present study are consistent with those of previous studies. This history of repeatedly similar findings suggests that it may be timely to ask some fundamental questions about supervision in these two professions. Such questions in turn suggest possible new research directions.

The objective of this article is to describe the practical aspects involved in adapting cognitive–behavioural therapy (CBT) to an adolescent population in Australia. Some effective ways to use CBT with adolescents include preparing them for CBT by providing a thorough cognitive–behavioural formulation, describing the cognitive–behavioural approach to therapy in an adolescent-friendly manner, and adapting language and treatment conditions to suit young people's needs.

Bullying in schools continues to be a problem despite the best efforts of educators, researchers, and clinicians. Of most concern for the present study is that some children experience long-term victimisation by their peers. To improve our understanding in this area, the phenomenology of being bullied over the course of the school year was investigated with three participants aged from 11 to 15 years. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews and analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Two superordinate themes with associated subthemes were identified: ‘experience of victimisation’ (‘being different’, ‘dynamics of bullying’, ‘school’, and ‘social network’) and ‘strategies’ (‘help-seeking’, ‘behaviour’, ‘response to bullying’, ‘personal coping’, and ‘solutions’). Through these interviews some of the factors that may contribute to long-term peer victimisation were identified. The implications of these results for prevention and intervention are discussed.

Depression and externalising behaviour disorders frequently occur together in adolescence and are associated with a marked increase in symptom severity and poorer outcome. Clinical treatment research and early intervention programs for depression have not addressed the specific cognitive and interpersonal deficits associated with comorbidity. This study presents a pilot evaluation of modifications to the ACE (Adolescents Coping with Emotions) early intervention group program for depression for 17 students attending four special behaviour schools. The modified program, m-ACE, included content to address cognitive distortions, anger management and interpersonal problems. Participants reported improvements in depression symptoms and externalising behaviours. The program achieved high satisfaction ratings from participants and the drop-out rate was low. This is a promising approach for further development and targeting of early intervention programs for this complex population.

In a world where the only constant is change, schools are faced with the need to adapt creatively to changing societal demands, parental expectations, and children with increasingly diverse needs. Lasting and effective change can only occur with systemic and organisational change, and this essay argues that school-based psychologists are an invaluable, but potentially overlooked, resource in driving and supporting effective, evidence-supported, organisational change in schools. It is suggested that this can occur best when school-based psychologists are able to move away from direct service models that treat individual children to a systemic model that supports whole-school change.