Meeting Students' Needs During a Global Pandemic: School Leader and School Counselor Perceptions

• In Event: Principal and School Counselor Collaboration to Support All Students

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic brought with it many changes and uncertainties in education. The forced transition to online learning has been accompanied by many difficulties for students, families, and teachers, such as increased anxiety and stress, technical issues, feelings of uncertainty, trauma, sadness, and anxiety (Hammond et al., 2020). Thus, it is important to consider how educators, principals, and other school leaders are meeting student needs during this time.
The purpose of our study is to explore school leaders' and school counselors' perceptions of the mindsets and behaviors of PK-12 students and state and federal guidelines in schools during a global pandemic to understand school counselor and leader collaboration, planning and support. The data from this project is expected to better prepare school counselors, leaders, and policymakers for changes that need to be made to best support students.
The ASCA Mindsets & Behaviors for Student Success (ASCA, 2019) “describe the knowledge, skills, and attitudes students need to achieve academic success, college and career readiness and social-emotional development” (ASCA, 2019, p. 1). These mindsets and behaviors represent the attitudes and skills that students should be capable of demonstrating after being part of the school counseling program (ASCA, 2019), and thus all 35 standards were a part of the framework for this study.
As a single case study of school counselor and school leader perceptions throughout the nation, 226 school counselors and 124 school leaders completed one electronic survey via Qualtrics with quantitative Likert-scale questions. Participants then had an opportunity to complete open ended survey questions. The survey data was analyzed as disaggregate data and anonymous.
In our findings during the COVID-19 pandemic, school counselors (M= 3.578, SD=0.810 ) and school leaders (M=3.552, SD=0.900) agree that school counselors are able to encourage the mindsets for students. School counselors (M=3.346, SD=0.783 ) and school leaders (M=3.504, SD=0.689) agree that school counselors regarding learning strategies that students have demonstrated. School counselors (M=3.539, SD=0.792) and school leaders (M=3.602, SD=0.730) report a similar agreement that regarding the self-management skills that students have been able to demonstrate. School counselors (M=3.318, SD=0.758) and school leaders (M=3.342, SD=0.755) report a similar agreement regarding social skills that students are able to demonstrate. School counselors (M=2.903, SD=0.908) and school leaders (M=3.221, SD=0.805) disagreed (p<.001) about how useful they felt the state and federal guidelines were in guiding heir response to the pandemic. School leaders felt the guidelines were more helpful to their response than did school counselors.
These results are encouraging in the way that they demonstrate high levels of agreement between school counselors and school leaders. According to Rock et al. (2017), high levels of principal-school counselor collaboration and understanding are related to a healthier overall school climate. Perceptions about the utility of guidelines in the school’s response to the pandemic should be addressed. Potential reasons for this difference in perception could include differences in a) Level of awareness about the guidelines; b) Roles on the school crisis team; and c) Level of engagement with crisis planning and response.

Authors

• Rachel Louise Geesa, Ball State University

• Theresa Kruczek, Ball State University

• Renae D Mayes, The University of Arizona