In India, school psychology is an emerging field of study. The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has mandated the appointment of school counsellors to boost mental health through counselling, life-skills education, and career guidance. In the present study, the school counsellor implemented a five-minute meeting to quickly interact with students to promote their wellbeing. Using universal sampling, data were collected from 78 students using a Google survey form at one of the leading private schools in Meerut city of Uttar Pradesh State, India. The findings of the study indicated an improvement in the personal-social and school-career domains of students’ wellbeing. Approximately 72% of students reported being happy, and 58% shared being friendly (personal-social domain). Nearly 68% of students reported doing well in the school (school-career domain). Moreover, 65% of students expressed willingness to meet with the counsellor. The initiative received an overwhelmingly positive response (82%), indicating that it has increased the value of support for these students. This initiative provided an opportunity for both the counsellor and students to get to know each other and allowed the counsellor to plan individual and group counselling sessions as needed. Prospective studies could employ robust methodology with a larger sample size to evaluate the effects of this initiative on mental health outcomes.

Today’s children are born into a climate crisis and are increasingly exposed to its effects. Eco-anxiety is an emotional response to climate crises. Numerous recent studies have shown that the prevalence of eco-anxiety is increasing among children. School counsellors are uniquely positioned to lead educators, parents, and students on how eco-anxiety can be addressed within schools. However, this phenomenon has not yet received attention in the school counselling literature. This conceptual article aims to convey the importance of school counsellors’ knowledge and consciousness of the relationship between ecological crises and mental health and to discuss their roles in schools in this context.

School counselling has the potential to deliver significant support for the wellbeing of children. However, much of the research on school counsellors has been conducted in developed Western countries, with very limited research into factors influencing the effectiveness of counsellors in lower middle-income countries or in Asia. The aim of this qualitative study was to investigate the perceptions of Filipino counsellors about their roles, and factors that supported or impeded their effectiveness. Seventeen school counsellors in the Philippines were interviewed, and the data were analysed thematically. Our findings suggest that Filipino school counsellors often carry out dual roles, experience a lack of role clarity, and are systemically disempowered in their schools. Relationships with school principals have a significant influence on counsellors’ roles and positioning in schools, and therefore on their effectiveness. The ability of principals to foster a school ethos supportive of counselling is essential in enabling counsellors to leverage the multifunctional nature of their work, become embedded and centrally positioned in the school community, and enhance their effectiveness. Doing so can enable counselling to be more culturally accessible to young people.

Trusting and supportive relationships with school counsellors can help first-generation college students access college despite barriers. In this narrative inquiry, 11 first-generation college students in the United States shared stories of their positive relationships with their former high school counsellors. After an iterative and consensus-based data analysis process, we summarised our participants’ grand narrative with five themes: family context, school counselling delivery, relationships with school counsellors, impact of relationships with school counsellors, and suggested improvements. Participants valued how school counsellors helped them advocate for themselves, build their confidence, and feel encouraged and accountable through individual meetings, career counselling, and college guidance. School counsellors can offer targeted and relational interventions to help first-generation college students access and persist through college.

Underutilisation of school counselling services was prevalent prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Using the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) as a framework, this qualitative study seeks to elicit salient beliefs towards help-seeking from a school counsellor in secondary school contexts. Through focus-group discussions and individual interviews, 29 students from 10 secondary schools were interviewed. Constructive content analysis was utilised to identify specific salient behavioural beliefs, salient normative norms and salient control belief. The salient beliefs identified include perceiving counselling as a form of professional help, nonjudgment, stigmatisation, and past counselling experience. This study identified and highlighted a systematic approach to understanding specific socio-cognitive factors that support and hinder school counselling utilisation in an Asian school context. Implications arising from the study were discussed in the light of the findings.

School counsellors often encounter ethically challenging situations due to contradictory values and roles. This qualitative research aimed to define school counsellors’ ethical dilemmas and their responses to such situations. Twenty-seven school counsellors in Turkey were asked to respond to 13 vignettes with ethical dilemmas. The most frequent ethical dilemmas involved the limits of confidentiality, confusion about counsellors’ professional roles in school settings, uncooperative behaviours among stakeholders, and suspected child sexual abuse. It was revealed that counsellors prioritise the students’ benefit and respect students’ privacy. They follow legal guidelines in risky situations and insist on working within their areas of competence; they are not willing to accept noncounselling tasks. The results and implications for counsellors, counsellor educators and researchers are discussed.

Starting from the importance and purpose of school counselling, the article highlights the content-methodical specifics and assumptions of effective counselling work with students, and gives a brief overview of the practice of school counselling in Serbia. On that basis, this study aimed at examining school counsellors’ experiences in counselling elementary/primary school children (e.g., reasons for counselling, ways of implementation and difficulties). A sample of 81 school counsellors participated in a semistructured interview. The results show that undesirable behaviour and learning difficulties are the most common reasons for counselling, initiative is mainly coming from teachers or counsellors, and individual work and corrective counselling are more common. The difficulties respondents mentioned mainly related to the students’ personalities. The experiences of practitioners imply that the counselling practice insufficiently appreciates the importance of an integrative-systematic approach in student counselling. In this regard, the conclusion provides some recommendations that could contribute to improving the practice of counselling in schools in Serbia.

The professional experience of school counsellors in training in Australia is subject to different supervisor-supervisee relationships and school settings. The current study explored the first-year New South Wales school counsellor in training professional experience via an adapted qualitative content and framework analysis approach. Participants were students undertaking their first professional experience as part of the Master of Teaching (School Counselling) at the University of Sydney. The most common descriptive reflections explored professional psychological learning, followed by system- and process-related knowledge of the school setting. Emergent themes highlighted that professional experience prepared students for the role, which varied based on supervisor and school setting, and helped the students form professional identities via observing rich ethical and professional practice. Future professional experiences may be enriched with explicit reflections, peer-to-peer learning and support to foster working supervisor-supervisee relationships.

We examined the paradigmatic position of school counsellors as it relates to their practice. A survey and interviews were conducted with counsellors, counsellor educators, and teachers. Findings demonstrated that counsellors lacked skills regarding theoretical orientation and applications, counselling practices remained arbitrary and less effective due to the confusion experienced in the adaptation and application of counselling approaches, and the confusion in paradigms stemmed from problems in the identification of local needs, direct transfer of Eurocentric paradigms, training, and professional roles.

For a school counsellor or classroom teacher, working with newly arrived students from refugee backgrounds can be daunting, particularly with the awareness that these students have likely experienced significant and potentially horrific trauma. There is now a wealth of evidence showing that traumatic experiences can significantly impact our neurological development, resulting in difficulties in areas such as learning, behaviour, relationship building and emotion regulation, meaning newly arrived refugee students will often arrive at school with some significant challenges. While there is an extensive amount of literature on trauma, there is very little that focuses specifically on the refugee population, and even less on young people from refugee backgrounds. Predominantly, the research looks at chronic or developmental trauma such as child abuse and neglect, or acute trauma such as natural disasters. The following article looks at the refugee context specifically, breaking down the difference between acute, chronic and developmental trauma; and describing the neurological effects of trauma and suggesting some practical classroom-based strategies that can be employed to support and facilitate the recovery of students from refugee backgrounds.

This research examined the effects of structured group supervision (SGS) on counsellors’ self-efficacy, counselling competency, and job involvement in Singapore. Twenty-one counsellors participated in six, 3-hour SGS sessions over 12 weeks with one qualified counselling supervisor. The counsellors had at least six months’ experience working as counsellors in schools or educational-related settings, such as student care centres. A single-group, before-after design was adopted. Pre- and posttest questionnaires were administered — Counselling Self-Efficacy Scale (CSES), Counsellor's Competence Self-Evaluation Scale (CCSS), and Job Involvement Scale (JIS) — to examine counsellor self-efficacy, counselling competency, and job involvement respectively. Paired-sample t tests were used to examine the impact of SGS on the three measures, whereas the Pearson correlation was used to examine the relationships among them. It was found that there was (a) a significant increase in mean scores for pre- and posttest scores for counsellor self-efficacy and counselling competency, but not for job involvement after SGS; and (b) a significant positive correlation among the three variables. With a better understanding of the SGS and the impact on counsellors, supervision practices can be improved and school counsellors can become more competent and confident.

School counselling services have always been unpopular among Malaysian students. Many researchers have studied what prevents students from seeking mental health services. However, there is a lack of study on the barriers to seeking help in the context of Malaysian school counselling services. Using a sample of Chinese high school students (N = 277), this qualitative study explored the under-utilisation of school counselling services. A thematic analysis was used to analyse an open-ended question, and the findings uncovered contextualised issues such as: conceptualisation of problems and the shameful, fearful, concerned, and responsible self that contributes to the under-utilisation of school counselling services.