An ecological model of school counseling.pdf

Journal of Counseling & Development ■ October 2014 ■ Volume 92 459
heory
© 2014 by the American Counseling Association. All rights reserved.
Received 12/18/12
Revised 05/14/13
Accepted 06/04/13
DOI: 10.1002/j.1556-6676.2014.00172.x
The world has changed dramatically in the past 150 years, so
much so that the common artifacts of the 21st century would
make life hardly recognizable to someone from the early
1900s. In contrast to the great advances that have been seen
in technology, health care, and engineering, the educational
system in the United States has changed very little since the
early 1900s (Heckman & Monterra, 2009). Grounded in the
segmented, linear, and time-bound paradigm of the industrial
revolution, many public schools operate similar to a factory
(U.S. Department of Education, n.d.), where students are raw
products that are run through the assembly line of education,
exposed to different teachers who work independently to
add their piece to the developing student before moving that
student along to the next stop on the assembly line (Ayers,
2009).These schools-as-factories have a clear vision of what
the final products should look like, and this final product is as-
sessed and evaluated in an attempt to ensure that all graduates
meet the same standards. Students who do not match these
standards or who do not move through the process on time
are deemed to be deficient and are eventually discarded (or
allowed to discard themselves) from the system.
The industrial model of education has grown stale and,
too often, discourages innovation, collaboration, and shared
leadership (U.S. Department of Education, n.d.). This ap-
proach, which values linear processes over cyclical processes,
efficiency over quality, and uniformity over uniqueness, leads
to an undemocratic system that asks a group of unique indi-
viduals to engage in a process that will attempt to make them
more uniform and closer to a standardized vision of a “good
student” and graduate (Angus, Mirel, & Vinovskis, 1988).
As William Ayers (2009) put it, the message to the students
H.George McMahon, Counseling and Development, George Mason University;Erin C.M.Mason, Counseling and Special Education,
DePaul University;Nichole Daluga-Guenther, Linton-Stockton High School, Linton, Indiana;Alina Ruiz, Counseling and Psychologi-
cal Services, Gwinnett County School District, Atlanta, Georgia.H.George McMahon is now at Counseling and Human Development
Services, University of Georgia. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to H. George McMahon, Counseling
and Human Development Services, University of Georgia, 402 Aderhold Hall, Athens, GA 30602 (e-mail: gmcmahon@uga.edu).
An Ecological Model of
Professional School Counseling
H. George McMahon, Erin C. M. Mason,
Nichole Daluga-Guenther, and Alina Ruiz
The 21st century has witnessed a drastic transformation in professional school counseling, fueled by calls for social
justice and educational equity and characterized by a movement toward collaboration, advocacy, leadership, and sys-
temic change to promote academic success for all students. The authors describe how this transformation is aligned
with an ecological perspective, provide an overview of the basic tenets of ecological thinking, and take a first step
toward developing an intentional model of ecological school counseling.
is, “You are not important or unique; be only malleable and
productive in terms established by a higher authority” (p. 390).
One danger inherent in the industrial model of education
is the number of students who do not fit the model’s vision
of a successful student. In an ever-changing world where
people from different backgrounds must work together and
where new technology is being introduced at incredible rates,
the concept of a standardized learner is simply no longer
relevant. Schools and school systems that operate under the
belief that learning should take place in ordered, time-bound
chunks and that knowledge remains static through time will
not produce the graduates and, therefore, the workers and
community members that an increasingly multicultural and
technology-driven world demands (Angus et al., 1988; U.S.
Department of Education, n.d.). Moreover, at a time when
student alienation from schools is a serious problem (Schulz
& Rubel, 2011; Sciarra & Ambrosino, 2011), educators
who internalize the industrial model’s vision of a successful
student and place those expectations on their students may
be exacerbating students’ beliefs that school is not for them.
In addition, counselors who cling to a rigid perspective of
successful students rather than understanding the cultural
values inherent in that vision are missing a key piece of
being a culturally responsive counselor (Brown & Trusty,
2005; Locke, 2003); they are also more likely to participate
in troublesome practices such as inequitable scheduling and
advising (Holcomb-McCoy, 2007). What is needed is a new
paradigm that appreciates diversity and is more responsive to
the changes that characterize the 21st-century world. Because
of their training in leadership, advocacy, and collaboration
skills and their ability to think and work systemically, profes-

Journal of Counseling & Development ■ October 2014 ■ Volume 92
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McMahon, Mason, Daluga-Guenther, & Ruiz
sional school counselors may be in a unique position to help
initiate this change. In fact, professional school counseling
has already started this process.
Efforts to transform school counseling practice in order
to address educational inequity and be more responsive to
the needs of all students have taken root. Evidence supports
the notion that professional school counselors conceptual-
ize and perform their jobs differently than was done in past
years (Wilkerson & Eschbach, 2009; Young & Kaffen-
berger, 2011). Following the lead of the American School
Counselor Association (ASCA) and the National Center for
Transforming School Counseling, today’s school counselors
are being asked to work more systemically (e.g., Dahir &
Stone, 2009), use leadership and advocacy skills to serve
all students (e.g., Amatea & West-Olatunji, 2007; Mason
& McMahon, 2009; Mason, Ockerman, & Chen-Hayes,
2013; Singh, Urbano, Haston, & McMahon, 2010), and use
data to identify and address the inequities within the school
system (e.g., see Holcomb-McCoy, 2007). In addition,
educational leaders are calling for school counselors to col-
laborate more effectively with the community in which the
schools are located to improve student achievement (Bryan
& Holcomb-McCoy, 2010; Epstein & Van Voorhis, 2010).
This evolving direction of professional school counseling,
which emphasizes understanding students in context, is
articulated in the definition of school counseling offered
by The Education Trust (2009b): “School counseling is a
profession that focuses on the relations and interactions
between students and their school environment to reduce
the effects of environmental and institutional barriers that
impede student academic success” (para. 3).
The evolution of professional school counseling is a
movement toward a more ecological approach. Ecological ap-
proaches have been used in a variety of human service and so-
cial science fields, including conflict resolution and mediation
(Oetzel, Ting-Toomey, & Rinderle, 2006), school psychology
(Sheridan & Gutkin, 2000), social work (Unger, 2002), public
health (McLeroy, Bibeau, Steckler, & Glanz, 1988; Sallis,
Owen, & Fisher, 2008), and professional counseling (Conyne
& Cook, 2004). However, it has not yet been used intentionally
and systematically to inform the scope of work expected of
professional school counselors. The purpose of this article is
to present a model of professional school counseling using an
ecological perspective as its theoretical foundation.
Ecological Thought: An Overview
After gaining popularity in mainstream culture through its
use in general systems theory and, more recently, in the
environmental conservation movement, the term ecology is
used often but it is not always clearly understood.Although a
detailed description of ecosystems is beyond the scope of this
article, there are a few core concepts that are worth presenting.
First, ecosystems include all aspects of the environment (e.g.,
organisms, geography, climate), and everything within an eco-
system is interconnected. Because everything is connected,
a change in any aspect of an ecosystem will create a ripple
effect in all other aspects of the ecosystem; those effects will
in turn affect everything else, including the original change
agent. It is this interconnectivity and interactional causality
that is often thought of as the hallmark of the ecological ap-
proach (Capra, 1996).
Second, ecosystems are made up of smaller ecosystems and
are also nested within larger ecosystems.Although ecosystems
are often discussed as a single bounded entity (e.g., a pond),
fromanecologicalperspective,noecosystemcanbeunderstood
separate from its larger system (e.g., the forest surrounding it)
or as distinct from the smaller ecosystems embedded within it
(e.g.,waterconditions,plantlife).Becauseinteractionalcausality
governs life between multiple levels of an ecosystem, changes
to any part of an ecosystem can be felt and observed throughout
the larger and smaller systems (Capra, 1996).
Finally, ecosystems seek sustainability. In order to be sus-
tainable, ecosystems use a few strategies. First, ecosystems
must maintain a dynamic balance, wherein energy and matter
are constantly flowing through the ecosystem, yet the system
remains balanced.To do this, ecosystems use feedback, which
communicates information so that if the system is becoming
unbalanced, it can correct itself (Capra, 1996). In addition, eco-
systems must maintain diversity of life within its system, with
each constituent making a unique contribution and fulfilling
a necessary function. This diversity not only helps to preserve
the balance of the system (Nadkarni, 1994), but also provides
flexibility within the system so that it can adapt to the inevitable
external and environmental threats (e.g., changes in climate,
introductions of new organisms; Ives & Carpenter, 2007).
Ecological Thought in Counseling
Ecological models within a human systems context gener-
ally refer to a framework that seeks to understand the inter-
connections between humans and their multiple contexts,
with a goal of creating and sustaining balanced, synergistic
relationships between people and the environment (Conyne
& Cook, 2004). In Conyne and Cook’s (2004) Model of
Ecological Counseling, which is grounded in Lewin’s (1951)
field theory, Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) Social Ecological
Model of Human Development, and the philosophy of deep
ecology (Capra, 1996), counseling is defined as “contextual-
ized help-giving that is dependent on the meaning clients
derive from their environmental interactions” (Conyne &
Cook, 2004, p. 6). This approach builds on previous work
by Conyne and Clack (1981), in which they asserted the
importance of understanding the role of the ecological
climate—conceptualized across physical, social, and insti-
tutional domains—in client behavior.

An Ecological Model of Professional School Counseling
Counselors working from an ecological perspective use
a variety of assessment, intervention, and evaluation strate-
gies, yet share some common philosophical and procedure
factors. First, for ecological counselors, the ultimate goal of
counseling is to enhance the fit between the client and his or
her environment and to ensure that the client can operate suc-
cessfully within his or her ecological niche (Conyne & Cook
2004; Cook, Conyne, Savageau, & Tang, 2004; Greenleaf &
Williams, 2009). This approach does not assume, however,
that it is the client’s responsibility to accommodate to the
environment. Rejecting a solely intrapersonal or intrapsychic
model of understanding the client’s personal functioning,
ecological counselors work to develop a sense of ecological
empathy, wherein counselors understand the client holisti-
cally and from within his or her immediate environment, or
ecological niche (Conyne & Cook, 2004; Cook et al., 2004).
Ecological counselors work collaboratively with the client to
gain an understanding of the complex dynamics involved in
the presenting issue and develop goals that the client sees as
useful. Understanding a client’s value system and meaning-
making processes is a crucial aspect of developing ecological
empathy and in collaboratively defining counseling goals
(Bemak & Conyne, 2004).
The process of developing ecological empathy for one’s
clients serves as scaffolding upon which the direction and
strategies for counseling is built. It is important to note that
ecological counseling does not reject traditional counseling
methods nor demand a completely new skill set (Conyne &
Cook, 2004). Rather, ecological thought provides a philo-
sophical foundation for expanding on traditional individual
counseling methods by adding interventions across ecological
levels, including peer groups, families, institutions, and com-
munities (Cook et al., 2004; Greenleaf & Williams, 2009).
Ecological counseling can be seen as transtheoretical in that
a variety of theoretical approaches can be useful, depending
on the context (Conyne & Cook, 2004). For example, help-
ing a client change her thoughts about a particular situation
or helping a young man change his behavior in a particular
environment may be the small change needed that leads to a
better client–environment fit across contexts. More often, such
strategies may be paired with a wide variety of activities that
are designed to improve individuals’ability to fully participate
in and contribute to their larger community, including orga-
nizational consultation, community development, strategic
planning, and social advocacy and action (Conyne & Cook,
2004; Greenleaf & Williams, 2009).
Using the tenets presented by Conyne and Cook (2004),
scholars and practitioners have applied ecological counseling
models to various specialties within counseling, including
group work (Bemak & Conyne, 2004; Conyne & Mazza,
2007), career counseling (Cook, Heppner, & O’Brien, 2005),
family counseling and consultation (Marotta, 2002), organiza-
tional consultation (Rapin, 2004), and social justice counsel-
ing and advocacy (Greenleaf & Williams, 2009).The number
of applications of these models within the counseling profes-
sion provides some evidence of a conceptual fit between eco-
logical concepts (i.e., understanding clients’behavior within
multiple contexts, interactional causality) and many areas of
focus within the counseling profession. Unfortunately, there
has been little outcome research demonstrating the effective-
ness of the application of ecological models to professional
counseling. This is not true, however, in other health-related
fields. For instance, in public health, large-scale behavioral
interventions based on ecological models of assessment and
intervention have been widely applied to better understand
and address unwanted behaviors (e.g., smoking, unhealthy
eating, sexual risk taking) and show great promise in their
use for addressing the major health issues in the United States
(Sallis et al., 2008).
The Application of Ecological Thought
in Public Health
Ecological concepts in public health were initially brought
together when Rudolph Moos (1980) developed his landmark
social-ecological model of health-related behavior, which
stated that health-related behaviors are affected by all aspects
of one’s environment interacting with each other interdepen-
dently and across multiple levels. Building on Moos’s ideas,
McLeroy et al. (1988) reconceptualized Bronfenbrenner’s
(1979) systemic model, identifying these levels of influ-
ences on health behavior as individual/intrapersonal factors,
interpersonal processes and primary groups, institutional/
organizational factors, community factors, and public policy
and social structure. In McLeroy et al.’s model, as in Bron-
fenbrenner’s model, any given health issue is understood to
be affected by contributing factors across multiple levels
and that those factors, across levels, interact with each other.
In 2002, Sallis and Owen further advanced the utility
of ecological models of health promotion by articulating a
set of principles to guide ecological approaches to research
and interventions in public health. These principles posit
that, because environmental influences exist across multiple
levels, multilevel assessment should be used to identify the
most relevant factors contributing to an unwanted situation;
multilevel interventions implemented by a collaborative team
targeting multiple factors across spheres of influence are most
effective at eliminating unwanted behaviors (Sallis & Owen,
2002).These theoretical models led to an explosion of schol-
arship on social-ecological approaches to health behavior and,
more important, the practical adaptation of this scholarship
for improving health behaviors by targeting factors at mul-
tiple levels of influence. Since then, ecological models that
use multilevel assessment to inform multilevel interventions
have been demonstrated to be successful in explaining and
treating a range of health topics, including predicting youth

462
smoking behavior (Leatherdale, McDonald, Cameron, Jolin,
& Brown, 2006), promoting self-management for patients
with diabetes (Fisher et al., 2005), increasing infant and
child car seat use (Ebel, Koepsell, Bennett, & Rivera, 2003),
treating adolescent and adult substance abuse (Kumpfer &
Alvarado, 2003), and preventing sexually transmitted diseases
(DiClemente, Salazar, & Crosby, 2007).
The research outcomes that validate the use of multilevel
assessment and intervention in public health are impressive.
The relevance of the research to many areas of counseling
may have been overlooked, however, because the focus in
public health studies has been on larger scale behavior change
rather than on specific strategies for helping an identified cli-
ent or small group of clients. However, research supporting
multilevel assessment and intervention is very relevant for
professional school counselors, who increasingly are being
asked to effect change on a larger scale (e.g., ASCA, 2012;
Holcomb-McCoy, 2007). Despite the call for leadership,
advocacy, collaboration, and systemic change to promote
success for all students (ASCA, 2012), school counselors
have only traditional, individually based counseling theories
to inform large-scale endeavors. By adopting an ecological
perspective and using the multilevel assessment and interven-
tion approach, school counselors can apply strategies that are
supported by research to promote school-wide change in ad-
dition to addressing the complex needs of individual students.
We present an application of the tenets of ecological
thought to the practice of professional school counseling.
These tenets are borrowed from many areas, including eco-
logical studies, field theory, social-ecology human develop-
ment, ecological counseling, and public health. We identify
the basic assumptions of an ecological model of school
counseling, exploring the implications for school counseling
practice from an ecological perspective.
An Ecological Model of
Professional School Counseling
Recent landmarks in the evolution of professional school
counseling, such as the ASCA National Standards for Stu-
dents (ASCA, 2004), the Transforming School Counseling
Initiative (The Education Trust, 2009a), and the ASCA
National Model (ASCA, 2012), have paved the way for new
thinking about the school counselor’s role and have provided
new structures and tools for the practice of school counseling.
Such milestones in school counseling have also led to a clearer
understanding of the various political and social contexts in
which school counselors do their work. Using an ecological
perspective to better understand and inform the work that
school counselors must do may be a useful next step in the
ongoing transformation of school counseling and education.
Schools are complex systems, nested within larger community
systems and made up of a myriad of subsystems (Conyne &
Mazza, 2007), all affecting one another through the natural
flow of information and energy. By using an ecological per-
spective, school counselors can better identify and understand
the rich and complex patterns of interaction that occur within
schools and between schools and their communities, and how
they affect student achievement. Furthermore, by gaining a
more realistic, albeit complex, view of the factors that affect
student outcomes, school counselors will be better equipped to
develop and evaluate sound interventions that more accurately
target contributing factors across multiple levels.
Basic Assumptions of the
Ecological School Counseling Model
The core assumption upon which the ecological model is
based is that schools are ecosystems. This is not a metaphor;
that is, we are not proposing that schools are like ecosystems,
but rather that they are ecosystems. On the basis of this core
assumption, the following principles of ecology must also be
true of schools.These principles are based largely on environ-
mental ecology (e.g., Ives & Carpenter, 2007), deep ecology
(e.g., Capra, 1996), general systems theory (e.g., von Berta-
lanffy, 1968), ecological psychology (e.g., Bronfenbrenner,
1979; Lewin, 1951), and ecological counseling (e.g., Conyne
& Cook, 2004) but have been adapted to school environments.
Schools are part of an interconnected web of subsystems
and suprasystems. Schools can be broken down into a mul-
titude of subsystems, some of which are organizational and
officially endorsed by the larger school system (e.g., class-
rooms, grade levels, sports teams, clubs) and some of which
are more organic in nature (e.g., cliques). These subsystems
operate under many of the same principles as the larger school
ecosystem and are interconnected with all other systems.
Schools are also part of larger suprasystems, some of which
are related to the educational system (e.g., feeder patterns,
school districts) and some of which are beyond the educational
system (e.g., community). These larger systems also have an
interdependent relationship with schools because changes in
either system affect both.Thus, the school, its subsystems, and
the larger suprasystems of which the school is a part form an
interconnected network, or web, in which changes within any
larger system affect all of the subsystems to varying degrees,
and changes within any subsystem can affect other subsystems
as well as the larger ecosystem.
Healthy, well-functioning school systems are dynamic,
balanced, and flexible. Schools operate as a network of in-
terdependently connected components and, like cells, ponds,
and families, are in a constant state of change, yet they work
to maintain a healthy balance within change. The process of
maintaining balance while in a constant state of change is
called dynamic balance (Capra, 1996); it requires semiperme-
able boundaries that are not only clear enough to distinguish
separate within-school groups (e.g., teachers, students, admin-
istrators), but also penetrable enough to promote connection

between the groups. This connection is characterized by a
flow of energy and information (Ashby, 1962). A school that
maintains a dynamic balance is one in which everyone feels
connected to and has ways of contributing to the institution.
School members understand the roles and expectations for
being part of the system and any subgroups with which they
identify and are clear about the school’s goals and values.
These boundaries help to provide a balancing force in the face
of the constant change within the system, including turnover
among students and school personnel.
Diversity within school systems is necessary and adaptive.
Diversity within schools is necessary to promote a healthy,
balanced, and adaptive system. Administrators, teachers,
administrative support, nurses, maintenance specialists, and
other workers in a school setting play different but vital roles
in the functioning of the school. A diverse faculty can help to
improve student achievement, because students are more likely
to develop the interpersonal bonds that predict school success
with teachers who are similar ethnically and racially (Crosnoe,
Johnson, & Elder, 2004). Just as students learn more from
teachers with a variety of knowledge areas, they also benefit
from the diverse experiences of their peers, not only from the
presence of a wider variety of perspectives and experiences,
but also from being exposed to the process of sharing those
experiences (Denson & Chang, 2012; Slavin, & Cooper, 1999).
Finally, a school that has the benefit of a diverse range of
talents, perspectives, and experiences will find it easier to
adapt to the changes of the larger society. Just as diversity
of life helps natural ecosystems become resilient in the face
of environmental changes (Ives & Carpenter, 2007), schools
that will most easily adapt to new laws, policies, and evolving
cultural norms are those that already have a variety of skills,
experiences, and perspectives at their disposal and that use
these differences to promote the health of the system.
Schools use feedback to identify and address emerging is-
sues. Ecosystems operate on feedback loops, which serve to
identify and address an imbalance within the system. When
systems become unbalanced, new structures or patterns of
behavior within an ecosystem will spontaneously appear
in an attempt to find new order within the system (Kay,
2008; von Bertalanffy, 1968). Feedback loops also occur in
schools, sometimes as intentional feedback loops, such as
school data assessment and strategic intervention planning.
Many, however, emerge organically on smaller scales (within
subsystems), often out of the awareness of school leadership.
When new behaviors (e.g., skipping class) or structures (e.g.,
gangs) arise, particularly among student populations, they are
often identified by school personnel as “problems.” From an
ecological perspective, however, these new structures are a
response, providing feedback that there may be an imbalance
or disruption somewhere within the system. For instance, low
student attendance at a local high school may be connected
to (a) students’ beliefs about the relevance of school to their
future (intrapersonal), (b) a family decision that working and
bringing in income is a stronger priority than going to school
(family), (c) a lack of perceived opportunities beyond col-
lege (community), or (d) any combination of such variables.
Because of the interconnectedness of the levels of influence,
there are likely multiple factors that affect each other. For
example, an economic downturn on a national scale may lead
to work closings in a local community, creating an immediate
need for income and contributing to a sense of pessimism in
the future; such realities lead some high school students to
choose to get a full-time job so that they can help the family
in the present rather than complete high school in the future.
Meaning is both constructed and experienced within
schools and their subsystems. Making meaning from experi-
ences is a vital human function (Hayes & Oppenheim, 1997).
As Conyne and Cook (2004) pointed out, in the Lewinian
formula, behavior is equal to a function of the interaction
of a person and his or her environment, [B = f(P × E)]; the
× refers not only to the interaction of people with their en-
vironment, but also to individuals’ interpretations of these
interactions. The meaning-making process within school
systems is particularly important to school systems in two
main areas. The first is the identity and/or purpose of the
school-as-system. Most people know what schools are and
why they exist in a very broad sense; however, according to
Hayes and Oppenheim (1997), each school defines for itself
what it means to be a particular school, at a specific time.
This defining process happens not only at the school level
but also at various subsystem levels (e.g., what it means to
be a teacher, a ninth grader, or a student who was retained
at this school). The more consistent these multiple identities
and purposes are across subsystems, the more balanced the
larger system will be.
Meaning making is also derived from feedback that is
received by the school-as-system. This feedback comes from
multiplesourcesandcanbeformalorinformal;schooloutcome
data are a convenient example. Various individuals within
schools wait anxiously to receive scores on academic measures
and learn “what the data can tell us about our school.” From an
ecological perspective, the data do not say anything; rather, they
are interpreted differently depending on unique perspectives
and specific contexts.Thus, administrators, teachers, students,
parents, school board members, and community members all
ascribe different meanings to the data.
Healthy schools are sustainable. Ecosystems are efficient,
with each organism and subsystem contributing in its own
way to the overall function of the system, helping to create
an environment in which future generations can mature until
they are able to contribute. A healthy school system, there-
fore, will have a reciprocal, collaborative relationship with
the community system in which it exists, thereby enabling
citizens and workers to sustain the functions of the commu-
nity; this, in turn, provides the school with a new generation

464
of students who are ready to contribute to the school com-
munity. In practice, this would translate to an efficient system
not only in which students are graduated on time and with
the skills to perform a wide variety of jobs necessary to the
ongoing functioning of the community, but also in which
older students and graduates help to prepare (recycling) the
next generation of students to succeed in school and continue
the cycle, whether through teaching, parenting, mentoring, or
community activism. The notion of schools promoting sus-
tainability within the larger system (which will also promote
the school’s sustainability) is significant because it means that
the primary goal of education is to graduate students who
are able to use their specific talents and abilities to perform
a wide array of functions that promote a healthy community.
Ecological School Counseling:
Roles and Functions
The ecological model of school counseling presents a
qualitatively different theoretical/conceptual approach to
understanding schools and promoting student success; yet,
using an ecological approach is not intended to replace the
ASCA National Model (ASCA, 2012). In fact, because
the Ecological School Counseling Model is a theoretical/
conceptual model and the ASCA National Model is largely
an atheoretical structural model, the ASCA National Model
would continue to be a useful tool for ecological school
counselors (ESCs) in organizing, monitoring, and delivering
their school counseling programs. Ecological concepts as a
theoretical basis would be incorporated into the foundation
system, where their influence could be seen in how a school
counselor defines the program mission statement, vision,
and program goals. In addition, the basic process of assess-
ing student and school needs (management), designing and
implementing interventions (delivery), and evaluating the
impact of the interventions (accountability) fit well with
the ecological model, as do the roles school counselors play
within schools (e.g., counselor, group facilitator, counseling
curriculum coordinator, advocate, collaborator, leader, con-
sultant, systemic change agent).Table 1 provides examples of
the skills and practices that ESCs could use when assessing
and intervening across systemic levels, as well as how these
practices align with the ASCA National Model.
Although the roles would be largely the same, taking an
ecologicalapproachwillleadtosomedifferencesinhowschool
counselorsengageinthinkingabout and,thus,performingsome
of these tasks. Presented next is a profile of an ESC, followed by
four vignettes describing how he might approach issues faced
within a school year. Specifically, the case study demonstrates
howESCs mightintentionallyseektounderstandtheirstudents’
multiple contexts in order to better their students; how they
could use multilevel assessment and multilevel interventions
to address school-wide concerns; how they may work directly
with students from an ecological perspective; and how they
can use leadership, advocacy, and collaboration to help create
and maintain a healthy school climate. It should be noted that
many school counselors already operate ecologically in some
ways, but this model attempts to create some insight into how
thisfictionalschoolcounselormightuseanecologicalapproach
as a philosophical grounding for informing his work. It should
also be noted that this is just one example of how one fictional
counselor might operate, but there is no “right answer” from an
ecological perspective, because any change will create ripple
effects throughout systems and could lead to larger changes.
An ESC Profile
Mr.Thomas Connor is a middle school counselor in an urban
setting. He earned a master’s degree in 2010; he was trained
in the ASCA National Model (ASCA, 2012) and the school
in which he interned was awarded RAMP (RecognizedASCA
TABLE 1
Ecological School Counseling Skills and Practices
Ecological Level
Individual
Interpersonal/group
Institutional
Community
Note. ASCA = American School Counselor Association.
Assessment Intervention
ASCA National
Model Alignment
Delivery system,
accountability
Delivery system,
accountability
Foundation, manage-
ment system,
accountability
Foundation, manage-
ment system,
accountability
Testing (nondiagnostic), career assessment,
suicide assessment, psychosocial counseling,
clinical interview
Collecting and examining perception data
(focus groups, student/faculty surveys) and
outcome data (school achievement,
achievement gap)
Reviewing school improvement plans,
program assessment; examining process,
school counselor competencies assessment;
examining school process data
(opportunity gaps)
Advisory boards, collecting and analyzing
community perception data (focus groups,
surveys), completing needs assessments,
examining census data
Individual counseling, student planning, goal
setting, crisis intervention, behavioral man-
agement, teaching self-advocacy
Small group responsive services, core coun-
seling curriculum, Closing the Gap projects,
advocacy
Committee, building, district, or organizational
leadership; advocating for policy change on
behalf of students, families, or staff; provid-
ing professional development
Collaboration with school staff, families, and
community; community social justice activ-
ism, political activism

Model Program) status the year he was there. He is beginning
his 3rd year at the middle school. He is on his school’s leader-
ship team, serves as a mentor for new school counselors in the
district, and has recently been elected to the board of the state
school counseling association. Thomas’s school has 1,000
students who are in seventh and eighth grades. The school
has two full-time school counselors. Thomas’s cocounselor
has been at the school since it opened 20 years ago, and she
was a teacher there for 6 years prior to earning her school
counseling degree; Thomas does not have teaching experi-
ence. The school body is largely African American (68%),
with an increasing number of Latino/a students (18%). A
smaller percentage of the student population identify asWhite
(7%), multiracial (5%), andAsian (2%).Approximately 88%
of the school’s students are on free or reduced lunch, about
17% are English language learners, and 10% of the students
have individual education plans. On state tests, 57% of the
student body meet state standards and 41% do not meet those
standards; 2% score in the “exceeds” category. There have
been concerns about low attendance rates recently, particu-
larly in the seventh grade. The school has a strong reputation
regarding its basketball program and robotics team, there
are tutoring services after school 3 days a week, and a local
church is the hub of activity for many of the school’s families
on the weekends.Although neighborhoods directly around the
middle school have seen a drop in crime over the past few
years, those on the perimeter of the catchment area and near
the high school have seen a recent surge in store robberies
and gang-related shootings.
ESCs seek to understand their students within their mul-
tiple and unique contexts. Accurate case conceptualization
has historically been a primary role in counseling. One of
the unique perspectives school counselors bring to educa-
tional teams is their ability to conceptualize students from a
more complex, multidimensional perspective than do many
other educators (Cormier & Hackney, 2012; Dollarhide &
Saginak, 2012). For ESCs, understanding students within
their multiple and unique environments and how their ex-
periences in each area may carry out in schools is a crucial
part of being a school counselor. Borrowing from ecological
counseling as well as McLeroy et al.’s (1988) Public Health
Model, counselors do not assume that any issue brought
to them by a student is an intrapersonal issue only; rather,
they assume that the issue is related to the interaction of
multiple factors across levels of the student’s environment
(Cook et al., 2004). ESCs must, therefore, consider intra-
personal (e.g., learning style, personality), interpersonal/
primary group (e.g., cultural upbringing, family dynamics,
peer interactions), school (e.g., class structure, teaching
style), community (e.g., neighborhood composition, ac-
cess to resources, cultural norms of the larger community),
and public policy (e.g., school board policy, changes in
funding/support related to political shifts) variables when
assessing a situation. Thus, it is important for counselors
to understand (a) each student in the context of his or her
cultural background and cultural identity development
(Holcomb-McCoy, 2004), (b) the multiple contexts in which
that student lives (e.g., family, peer group, neighborhood,
identification with traditionally marginalized groups, larger
community, larger cultural groups), (c) the role that experi-
ences of racism and oppression may play in the student’s life
or the lives of his or her family members (Holcomb-McCoy
& Chen-Hayes, 2007), and (d) how the student’s primary
cultural values interact with the cultural values inherent
in the school (Brown & Trusty, 2005). Being a culturally
competent counselor who is aware of and routinely checks
one’s own biases is important (ASCA, 2010), as is having
the skills to effectively build relationships cross-culturally
(Holcomb-McCoy, 2004) and implement culturally appro-
priate counseling interventions (Holcomb-McCoy, 2007).
However, it may also be important for a school counselor
to immerse himself or herself into the multiple contexts
from which a school’s student body comes and to spend
time with students and their families outside the classroom
or counseling room setting, particularly in settings in which
the students pursue extracurricular interests and skills. The
following case example illustrates these points.
Because he interned for a year in a different setting (a
middle-class suburban high school with six full-time school
counselors and a college specialist), Thomas knew that get-
ting acclimated to the culture of a middle school in an urban
district would take some time but would be a worthwhile
investment in his future work. Prior to staring his current
position,Thomas had conducted extensive online research on
the school, reviewing current and past school-wide data and
news stories and meeting with the outgoing school counselor
on several occasions to learn her perspective on the school.
He had also driven the perimeter of the school’s catchment
area and traveled the major thoroughfares, noting the various
housing types, routes to the school, businesses and social
services, community landmarks, and public transportation
stops. He also spent considerable time in his 1st year at-
tending school-related events (e.g., sporting events, drama/
musical productions, robotics competitions) so that he could
get to know students and their families in a context beyond
the classroom. Furthermore, he sought out the wisdom of
school staff, especially those who had been in the school for
a number of years, including his cocounselor, the assistant
principal, the custodian, the cafeteria manager, the media
specialist, and two department chairs; they were happy to
share their experiences and stories.
When the school year started, he completed a written needs
assessment with students and staff; his primary focus was the
seventh graders who were new to the building. He visited each
classroomtodoacorecurriculumlessonontheroleoftheschool

466
counselor during which he invited students to sign up for brief
focus groups so that they could discuss their goals for the year.
During the school’s open house session, Thomas set up a table
near the refreshments area so that he could talk with parents and
guardiansabouttheirneedsandconcerns.Usinginformationhe
gathered during his drive through the community, he developed
a community resources map and began to reach out and connect
withcontactsateachresource.Thomasrepeatedasimilarprocess
at the beginning of each school year.
ESCs participate in an ongoing cycle of multilevel assess-
ment and multilevel interventions. To efficiently and effec-
tively address the multiple levels of systems within a school
and help create a balanced and healthy system, ESCs must
engage in multilevel assessment and multilevel intervention.
Although multilevel assessment, specifically, may be new,
using data to identify the needs of students and the larger com-
munity to inform practice and evaluate outcomes has been a
cornerstone of the recent transformation of school counselors’
practice (e.g., ASCA, 2012; Center for School Counseling
Outcome Research & Evaluation, 2011; Dimmitt, Carey, &
Hatch, 2007). With multilevel assessment, current strategies
used by school counselors to analyze academic outcome data
would be expanded to include data from multiple levels and
multiple perspectives. Outcome data would still play a crucial
role in the needs assessment and accountability process, but
complementary multilevel data, such as student perceptions,
teacher surveys, and community data (e.g., employment data,
changes in community demographics), must be consulted as
well.This model of multilevel assessment, which will lead to
multilevel intervention, more closely resembles public health
models and is also consistent with evidence-based school
counseling models (Dimmitt et al., 2007).
Although ecological and accountability models are similar
in practice, they differ philosophically. Specifically, because
traditional accountability processes assume some degree
of linear causality, most accountability data are interpreted
as providing evidence of the effectiveness of a specific in-
tervention once it has been completed. From an ecological
perspective, the principle of interconnectedness and cyclical
causality contradicts the assertion that assessment data are
evidence of the success or failure of a program, because each
program is embedded within an ongoing cycle of assessment
interventionassessmentand so on. Outcome data can
still be isolated to satisfy accountability requirements and
advocate for school counseling support; however, ESCs would
conceptualize such data as one part of an ongoing feedback
loop, thereby providing a snapshot of the current status of the
system from multiple perspectives across levels rather than
identifying an outcome.
Just as assessment data are collected across multiple levels,
so will the interventions that are informed by school-wide data
be implemented across levels. Such multilevel interventions
across levels would include those services that are typically
thought of in the delivery system of theASCA National Model
(ASCA, 2012; individual counseling, group counseling,
school counseling curricula) as well as the indirect services
(from consulting with an individual teacher to collaborating
with school leaders or policy makers). Intentional advocacy
that is informed by the needs assessment (e.g., using data as
a marketing tool to bring a systemic issue to others’ aware-
ness or conducting professional development opportunities in
response to an identified need) would also be seen as part of
this assessmentintervention cycle, because the ultimate goal
is to promote a balanced, sustainable learning community.
After analyzing a great deal of data collected over the sum-
mer, including state-level achievement and demographic data,
needs assessments from students and staff, and surveys from
parents and guardians, Thomas and his colleague use a pro-
fessional development day to review, aggregate, and analyze
the data to develop key school counseling program goals for
the year. After extensive discussion and a comparison of the
data with administrative goals for the year, the two school
counselors select three program goals, one of which was to
decrease the percentage of seventh-grade students with 10 or
more absences from 5% to 3%.
Given this goal, Thomas and his cocounselor decide that
the first step toward meeting this goal was to better understand
the perspectives of the students. They convened five focus
groups over a 1-month period; the groups consisted of eighth-
grade students who had 10 or more absences the previous year
as well as a few students who had exemplary attendance.The
purpose of these focus groups was to better understand the
attendance challenges (e.g., logistical, motivational) of the
students. The counselors used previously collected school
data and the students’ perspectives to create a Closing the
Gap action plan that included the following set of multilevel
interventions to address the attendance goal.
฀ •฀ Maintain฀the฀school-wide฀attendance฀initiative฀program฀
(existing).
฀ •฀ Collaborate฀with฀the฀school฀social฀worker฀to฀meet฀with฀
students on a monthly basis and with family members at
least once per grading period to monitor attendance and
grades and to identify and address emerging problems.
฀ •฀ Invite฀all฀rising฀eighth-grade฀students฀who฀missed฀10฀
or more days the previous year (approximately 25) to
become members of a special club that was established
to promote school attendance among its members. The
club would be divided into three teams that would meet at
the beginning of the school year to set attendance goals;
the teams would then meet monthly to assess how well
they were achieving the attendance goals and to provide
support and problem solving so that the students could
encourage one another to meet their goals.

฀ •฀ Collaborate฀with฀the฀high฀school฀in฀the฀feeder฀pattern฀
to develop a mentoring program, where high school
students would volunteer to tutor and mentor middle
school students. Although the program would be open
to other students, those with more than 10 absences
from the previous year would be invited specifically to
participate in the program.
฀ •฀ Restructure฀current฀college฀and฀career฀development฀les-
sons in the eighth-grade school counseling curriculum
to focus more specifically on the relevance of school
for postsecondary options, in response to information
collected from student focus groups.As part of this new
focus, Thomas would invite local community members
from a variety of careers and educational backgrounds
to discuss their educational journeys.
฀ •฀ Develop฀a฀collaborative฀community฀campaign฀in฀which฀
local businesses and agencies would receive ad space on
the school’s website in exchange for displaying, in their
business’s front window, a student-created poster about
reasons to go to school.
฀ •฀ Advocate฀for฀the฀students฀(on฀the฀basis฀of฀student฀focus฀
group recommendations as well as professional litera-
ture) with school administrators and faculty members
to increase the number of after-school extracurricular
activities and involve students in the development of
extracurricular clubs.
ESCs work directly with students from an ecological
perspective. When ESCs work directly with a student, the
goal of an intervention should be to improve the student’s
ability to work within the environment in order to meet
his or her goals. ESCs can work directly with students
through a variety of traditional school counseling roles, for
example, individual counseling, small group counseling,
and school counseling curricula. This work can be focused
across levels and will often address issues at more than
one level. For instance, counseling can be used to address
intrapersonal factors (e.g., changing thought patterns or
narratives, building awareness), interpersonal factors (e.g.,
building social skills, teaching mediation skills), or larger
systemic issues (e.g., advocating for students, encouraging
students to self-advocate). In conceptualizing this type of
work, one should remember that all of the interventions
across levels are related. For example, an ESC might work
with a student to build an awareness and an interpretation
of the role that oppressive systemic factors play in his or her
experience (intrapersonal) as well as work on self-advocacy
skills (intrapersonal), then encourage the student to use the
newly acquired awareness and skills to better navigate the
system (interpersonal) while also appropriately advocating
for systemic change (community). This type of counseling
borrows heavily from Conyne and Cook’s (2004) model,
but it also uses principles of deconstruction and promotes
agency in students, similar to social justice counseling
models (e.g., Goodman & West-Olatunji, 2009).
As part of the larger intervention to increase attendance,
Thomas, or “Mr. C” as the students called him, monitored the
attendance data of several of the current eighth-grade students
who had a significant number of days absent from school when
they were seventh graders. One of these students, Chris, was
absent 32 days during the previous spring. Chris was a student
with average to below-average academic performance with a
few recent but minor disciplinary referrals. Chris was barely
able to pass seventh grade because of the many assignments
he had missed during the school term. When Mr. C noticed
that Chris’s truancy was continuing at the beginning of his
eighth-grade school year, he became curious and invited Chris
in for an individual counseling appointment to see whether he
could learn the reasons for his absences. Chris informed Mr.
C that his mother, a single parent to Chris and his younger
brother, had been diagnosed with Stage 2 cancer. Chris, who
was 13 years old, often stayed home to care for his 4-year-old
brother so that his mother could get to doctors’appointments
and treatment sessions; typically, she used public transporta-
tion. Mr. C acknowledged that it took courage and a sense of
responsibility to assume such a role within his family; he also
expressed concern about the challenges Chris was facing and
how they might be affecting him. Chris expressed a degree
of conflict, indicating that he felt the need to be available to
take care of his mother and his brother, but he also worried
about how falling behind in class might affect his future. In
addition, he had little time for friends or previous interests,
including soccer. Mr. C asked Chris if it would be okay for
Mr. C to talk with his mother and some of his teachers to see
if they could develop a plan that would help to make sure
that his mother and brother received the care that they needed
while giving Chris more time to focus on his schoolwork and
possibly some extracurricular activities. Chris agreed.
After consulting with Chris’s mother and learning more
about her needs, Mr. C collaborated with Chris’s teachers and
the school social worker to develop some ideas. The social
worker contacted members of the community and helped to
secure transportation for Chris’s mother to the clinic, and
found a church in the community that was able to provide
day care for Chris’s 4-year-old brother while his mother was
receiving treatments. Because Chris’s mother had to reduce
her work hours at a local retail store, the social worker also
helped to arrange for meals to be delivered to the family.
Meanwhile, Mr. C worked with Chris’s teachers to help them
understand his situation and develop plans for Chris to make
up work if he began to fall behind. Mr. C also worked with
Chris to help him develop self-advocacy skills so that he
could better talk to his teachers as well as to his mother about
what he needed. Finally, Mr. C met with Chris periodically
to discuss how he was managing the stress of a busy family

468
life full of responsibility as well as the fear associated with
his mom’s illness. Mr. C also provided resources for counsel-
ing for Chris and his family if they decided that counseling
outside the school would be necessary.
ESCs use leadership, advocacy, and collaboration to help
create and sustain a healthy school-as-system that promotes
success for all students. Concordance with its ecological
system is crucial for any species to thrive; therefore, ESCs
are concerned with promoting a good fit between students and
their school environment.Toward this end, one of the primary
concerns of ESCs is to help ensure that the school-as-system
is a healthy, balanced, and sustainable learning community
that can be successful in its mission to graduate students
who are prepared to contribute in a variety of ways within
the larger community. Similar to the culturally responsive
schools proposed by Lee (2001) and the culturally proficient
schools proposed by Lindsey, Robins, andTerrell (2009), the
school must be not only an inclusive and safe place where
all students can be academically successful, but also a place
where students are valued for their unique strengths and con-
tributions. This means school personnel must encourage all
students to be successful according to terms defined by the
school, and also expand the definition of what a successful
student might look like in response to changes in the student
population and larger community. In addition, such a school
should be flexible enough to create structures through which
students can participate and contribute (e.g., student leader-
ship opportunities, extracurricular events) in response to the
evolving interests and skills of the student population.
Ideally, this focus on creating a school-wide climate of a
strengths-based focus and a true valuing of diverse contribu-
tions would be the responsibility of all school leaders, not just
the school counselor. In this collaborative model, school coun-
selors could play a vital role by working closely with other
school leaders to help articulate and operationalize this vision,
develop specific plans for making this vision a reality, and
assessing the ongoing process of achieving this vision (Mason
et al., 2013). However, in many instances, school counselors
who work from an ecological model may be the only school
personnel who understand or value such a perspective. In such
a case, school counselors must use their leadership skills in
working with other school personnel and community mem-
bers to help create a vision of a healthy learning community
(whether or not ecological language is used; Mason, 2010;
Mason & McMahon, 2009; Shillingford & Lambie, 2010). In
addition, advocating for more opportunities to which margin-
alized or alienated students can contribute, and advocating for
equitable access to those opportunities, is a vital part of the
process (Mason et al., 2013; Singh et al., 2010). Furthermore,
fostering respectful, collaborative relationships with students,
teachers, administrators, parents, and community members,
and modeling the personal characteristics necessary to cre-
ate and sustain a healthy school-as-system (e.g., being open
to new ideas, participating in social action, valuing a wide
variety of student contributions; Brigman, Mullis, Webb, &
White, 2005; Chen-Hayes, Ockerman & Mason, 2014), will
help to move the system toward a more healthy system; this
can be done as conversations are ongoing with other school
leaders about the importance of taking an ecological perspec-
tive of the school.
Another part of creating and maintaining a healthy and
balanced system is ensuring that there is sufficient diversity
to promote an optimal learning environment.Advocating for
the intentional diversifying of faculty, administration, and stu-
dent population (both within the general population through
district-level advocacy and within student subsystems, such
as the diversification of advanced classes), then, becomes a
key function of creating a healthy system. It is important to
remember that diversifying is not the end goal itself, but rather
a critical factor in creating effective learning opportunities
for a wide variety of students through the sharing of different
perspectives and experiences.Therefore, ESCs must collabo-
rate with others to help foster a community that respects and
honors multiple perspectives and in which honest articulation,
accurate understanding, and genuine processing of multiple
perspectives occurs regularly as a central component of the
educational process.
Ecological thought also provides some insight into strate-
gies for creating systemic change, something that is lacking
in previous school counseling literature. Because of the notion
of interconnectedness and interdependent causality among
factors within an ecosystem (Capra, 1996), ecological counsel-
ing models assert that any change that is initiated will lead to
change in other areas (including unintended consequences).
Thus, the approach becomes one of parsimony rather than
the identification of the cause of an issue (Conyne & Cook,
2004). The approach changes the ESC’s responsibility from
determining what needs to be changed to fix this problem to
determining what intervention will most likely lead to desirable
change with an acceptable level of energy, time, and resources.
A key component to addressing the health of the larger system,
then, would be to attend to the health and balance within its
multiple subsystems. Considering the major subsystems (e.g.,
students, teachers, administrators) and the smaller subsystems
within them (e.g., math teachers, seventh graders) is important
because a disruption in any subsystem can quickly lead to an
imbalance at larger levels, or vice versa. Identifying emerging
challenges and recognizing them as feedback that there are
systemic issues can help ESCs quickly develop interventions
that are targeted at the level or levels that will result in the
biggest impact.
In his 2nd year on the job, Mr. C told the principal that he
wanted to be involved with the school leadership team; he felt
that his perspective would be very useful on such a committee.

As part of his duties, Mr. C collected data on school climate
from various constituents, including students, teachers, and
parents. Comparing these data with school demographic and
achievement outcome data, Mr. C made a presentation to the
leadership committee each summer outlining findings from
the surveys and suggestions from programs to enhance the
school climate. In the most recent summer meeting, Mr. C
pointed out how the demographic data for the student body
was quite different from the demographic data for the fac-
ulty, which was mostly White. In addition, some data from
the school climate surveys showed that many parents and
students did not always see their relationship with faculty
as a collaborative one, and student ratings for “My teacher
understands me” were lower than expected. In response to
this finding, Mr. C recommended that a deliberate effort be
made to recruit and hire faculty members who more closely
mirrored student demographics. In addition, Mr. C proposed
collaborating with counselor educators at a local university
to provide multicultural competence training as part of the
summer continuing education series.The goal of this program
would be to increase teacher awareness of the cultural values
that their students bring to school, how those cultural values
mesh with the values promoted byAmerican school systems,
and how to effectively navigate those differences.
In addition to his work with the leadership team, Mr. C.
works with the school counseling program’s advisory council
and the parent–teacher organization to (a) gather data from the
parents’and community’s perspectives about emerging issues
and community needs and (b) maintain good collaborative
relationships with them. He and his cocounselor also work
with the counseling department at their feeder high school
to recruit speakers during the first grading period who would
talk with the students about the most effective way to use their
eighth-grade school year to prepare for high school. Finally,
Mr. C reaches out to the nearby college of education from
which he graduated to solicit undergraduate and graduate stu-
dent volunteers for various programs, such as the mentoring
program, which is a component of the attendance intervention.
Conclusion
Adopting an ecological framework represents a fundamen-
tal shift in conceptualizing the role, scope of practice, and
ultimate goals of professional school counseling. Although
the perspective is new, we believe that it is consistent with,
and is an extension of, many recent successful movements
in the profession that have contributed to the transforma-
tion of school counseling in the late 20th and early 21st
centuries (House & Martin, 1998). Given the continual and
ever-changing atmosphere of educational reform in which
school counseling exists and the diverse populations that
school counselors serve, there is a need for a framework
that accounts for an increasingly multiculturally and tech-
nologically driven society where change is the norm; such
a framework would allow school counselors to be effective
leaders in education and help promote the success for all
students. In this article, we proposed that using an ecologi-
cal perspective fits this need.
Viewing the primary goal of the ESC as maintaining
a healthy school-as-system is not completely foreign to
school counselors. School counselors have long been
identified as the “heart” of the school, the ones who “have
their fingers on the pulse of the school.” These and other
metaphors suggest that school counselors work across
multiple levels and stakeholders and are in touch with the
overall functioning of the school in a way that few school
employees are. In fact, it is not uncommon for school
counselors, during the course of a day, to move from the
microlevel of working with individual students, to the
mesolevel of working with large groups of students, to the
macrolevel of collaborating with stakeholders on larger
policy issues. The ecological perspective simply makes
this role more intentional and formal.
Education reform efforts are likely to continue evolving
in the future; thus, the mandates for schools will also change.
Adopting an ecological approach to school counseling can
help school counseling programs maintain the flexibility that
is needed to ensure that they remain aligned with specific
school improvement plans and school missions. Furthermore,
through leadership and systemic change, ESCs can help in-
dividuals in various subsystems within their schools update
their understanding of the role and goals of education in the
21st century, resulting in schools that are more relevant to
the 21st century.
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