Where Is Counseling in School Psychology Literature? A Review of Six Prominent School Psychology Journals.

School psychology professionals rely on professional literature to access information on scientifically supported practices. Counseling is certainly one of those practices. The purpose of this review was to determine how many articles published in prominent peer-reviewed school psychology journals have addressed providing effective counseling services to children and youth. We wanted to determine the types of counseling approaches that were described in those articles and which approaches garnered the most attention. Findings revealed that there were relatively few articles about counseling in prominent school psychology journals. Interestingly, most studies employed quantitative rather than qualitative designs and analyses. Cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) was the approach that was implemented the most in empirical studies across the school psychology journals. Empirical studies mainly included elementary and middle school students from diverse racial and ethnic groups who were receiving counseling services in a small group (tier 2) format. Implications for the profession of school psychology are provided.

Stop to Ask and Respond: Effects of a Small-Group Self-Questioning Intervention on Reading Comprehension Performance.

Self-questioning, a strategic approach for monitoring one's own comprehension, has shown promising outcomes for a diverse range of learners. The current study sought to replicate and extend this area of research by examining the effects of a small-group self-questioning intervention with systematic prompt fading on students' reading comprehension performance. Two small groups of fifth grade students performing among the lowest on reading comprehension in their general education classroom were selected to participate in this study. Three participants in each group were taught to stop to ask and respond to questions (STAR strategy) while chorally reading expository text passages. A multiple probe design across the small groups was used to examine the effects of this self-questioning strategy on the reading comprehension performance when prompts were systematically faded. Results indicated the groups, on average, demonstrated an increase in the number of comprehension questions answered correctly. Implications for practice are discussed.

Teaching students with intellectual or developmental disabilities to write: a review of the literature.

The purpose of this review was to identify effective methods for teaching writing to students with intellectual disabilities. After criteria were established, database searches and hand searches of selected peer-reviewed journals were conducted. Findings revealed a relatively small number of studies that met the criteria for inclusion. Participants, settings, research designs, independent variables, dependent variables, and results are synthesized across studies. Writing instruction effects on various written expression outcomes were aggregated by averaging percentage of non-overlapping data (PND) across studies. Findings revealed that strategy instruction was investigated more frequently than other types of approaches. Strategy instruction was consistently found to be very effective for teaching writing skills to students with intellectual disabilities. Limitations, directions for future research, and implications for practice are discussed.