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A case study in how middle school counselors mentor students at risk for emerging academic disengagement

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A case study in how middle school counselors mentor students at risk for emerging academic disengagement

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A Case Study in How Middle School Counselors Mentor Students at Risk for Emerging
Academic Disengagement

Kenneth Franklin Marmie

Rossier School of Education
University of Southern California
A dissertation submitted to the faculty
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Education

December 2023

© Copyright by Kenneth Franklin Marmie 2023
All Rights Reserved

The Committee for Kenneth Franklin Marmie certifies the approval of this Dissertation

Holly Ferguson
Courtney Malloy
Kimberly Hirabayashi, Committee Chair

Rossier School of Education
University of Southern California
2023
iv

Abstract
This case study investigated the practical and theoretical influences contributing to counselor
success at reengaging academically disengaged students in middle school. The study involved
counselors in a multi-ethnic, mid-size school district. Other researchers had found that emerging
trajectories of academic disengagement during middle school accelerated in high school, creating
urgency for intervention in middle school. This study consisted of 13-question interviews with
middle school counselors (N = 8) inquiring about their academic reengagement strategies and
counseling practice. These questions focused on the influences that affected their motivational
strategy. Participants reported frequent use of person-centered counseling techniques to establish
connections and influence. Counselors reported that their instruction to students in self-
regulation skills complemented person-centered. Counseling practice differed between
counselors with less than 5 years of experience and those with more than 10, as well as between
counselors who had life experiences with the intersectionality of race, gender, class, and second-
language acquisition and those without. The study recommends districts provide training in
person-centered counseling techniques, foster dialogue between newer and veteran counselors,
and systematically encourage the sharing of counselors’ diverse life experiences with peers.
Keywords: middle school, academic disengagement, person-centered counseling theory,
motivational theory, self-regulation theory, intersectionality

v

Acknowledgments
I wish to acknowledge and thank the following people who shaped my writing. Though I
bear sole responsibility for the final veracity and quality of this article, I see their influence on
how I framed, processed, and understood my final conclusions. I want to extend special thanks:
To my beautiful wife, Elsa Donlucas de Marmie, who deserves an honorary doctorate in
loving kindness.
To my dear friend, Dr. Robert “Roy” Houghton, who taught me how to live life with
grace and humanity. He inspired me to become a mature human being.
To my first principal, Judy White, who beckoned to me to enter the doors of education.
To my sixth principal, Dr. Mary Mason, who taught me to care for the soul of a child.
May she see her own soulfulness in this article.
To my next to last principal, Dr. Kyle Bruich, who wore his heart on his sleeve and spoke
plainly, but eloquently, through both his dignity and class, of what really matters.
To Dr. Walter Gekleman, who, in his pure brilliance, dazzled me with the allure and
challenge of conducting meaningful research.
To my wise USC thesis advisors, Drs. Kimberly Hirabayashi, Courtney Malloy, and
Holly Ferguson, who guided me with profound professionalism, patience, and wisdom.
And, finally, to the dear friends I know fondly as the “Snobby Six:” you are bedecked
with a sarcastic monicker that belies your collective genuineness--better companions a friend
could not have.
I thank all of you for your influence and your significance.
I know what I had hoped for, but I was surprised by what I found!

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Table of Contents
Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... iv
Acknowledgments............................................................................................................................v
List of Tables ................................................................................................................................ vii
Literature Review.............................................................................................................................3
Positionality ...................................................................................................................................10
Methods..........................................................................................................................................11
Research Questions ............................................................................................................11
Context of the Study ..........................................................................................................11
Participants .........................................................................................................................12
Instrumentation ..................................................................................................................14
Data Collection ..................................................................................................................14
Data Analysis .....................................................................................................................15
Findings..........................................................................................................................................15
Research Question 1: What Influences Do Middle School Counselors Consider When
Motivating Disengaged Students? .....................................................................................15
Research Question 2: What Strategies and Approaches Do Middle School Counselors
Use to Motivate Disengaged Students? .............................................................................22
Discussion and Recommendations ................................................................................................41
Limitations .....................................................................................................................................48
Conclusion .....................................................................................................................................49
References ......................................................................................................................................50
Appendix A: Instruments ...............................................................................................................57
Interview Protocol ..............................................................................................................57
Closing Statement to Read to Counselors at End of Interview ..........................................59

vii

List of Tables
Table 1: Participants 14

1

A Case Study in How Middle School Counselors Mentor Students at Risk for Emerging
Academic Disengagement
Middle school counselors routinely encounter students at risk for emerging academic
disengagement. Dean and Jolly (2012) described this phenomenon as “opting out” from learning
(p. 228). Opting out from learning often progresses into chronic academic disengagement, a
behavior that usually intensifies as students progress from middle school to high school (Easton
et al., 2009; Eccles & Roeser, 2011; Wang & Eccles, 2012). Consequently, middle school is an
ideal time to reverse student trends toward emerging academic disengagement (Wang & Eccles,
2012).
Middle school counselors have unique perspectives on student disengagement. Although
teachers often are the first to identify emerging student disengagement, middle school counselors
are more likely to discover patterns across classes (Adelman & Taylor, 2013; ASCA, 2019). This
study consisted of interviews with middle school counselors in one district regarding how they
respond to emerging disengagement among their students.
School counselors understand the factors that place students at risk of opting out of
learning (Dean & Jolly, 2012; Waterhouse, 2004). For example, they build relationships with
learners that span many years (ASCA, 2019). These relationships contrast with the shorter-term
impact of teachers who instruct students daily but only for one school period during 1 year.
Middle school counselors have training in psychology, counseling, and motivation. These
professionals possess a nuanced understanding of students’ dreams, fears, and insecurities. Their
professional training intersects with their familiarity with individual students’ stories to inform
their understanding of their wards. Teachers, by contrast, are subject matter experts and
minimally trained in psychology (Adelman & Taylor, 2013). Middle school counselors’
2

education and experience imbue them with perspectives distinct from those of teachers.
Counselors employ unique skills that assist their interventions with academically disengaged
learners.
It is essential to define middle school counselors’ professional duties. In particular, it is
necessary to delineate how their job responsibilities differ from those of school psychologists.
They have different responsibilities and priorities. School psychologists do psychological testing
and practice limited advisement and therapy with students during the school day. Their caseload
consists of the students most at risk for mental health crises, students for whom one-on-one
counseling is often a lifeline (Marx & Wooley, 1998). They are less likely to be concerned with
disengagement and more likely to tend to students in the throes of mental health crises. However,
they will address disengagement issues related to pressure, stress, depression, and mental health.
In contrast, school counselors address many student needs outside therapy-based mental
health counseling models (Adelman & Taylor, 2013; Wooley et al., 1998). Counselors conduct
brief, non-therapeutic counseling. They track student progress toward graduation, monitor
individual academic achievement trends, schedule students in classes, and help students resolve
conflicts with teachers, parents, and peers.
In contrast to school psychologists, counselors rely heavily on data patterns about
attendance, behavior, state test scores, and grades (ASCA, 2019; Marx & Wooley, 1998). They
see the significant patterns in their schools while possessing insights and context about who the
students are and what they need to flourish throughout their day (ASCA, 2019). They work
closely with students and their parents, teachers, and administrators. They also facilitate
communication between parents and their students’ many teachers (Davis & Lambie, 2005).
3

Whereas school counselors integrate actively into a school's life, school psychologists'
work can be challenging for teachers and parents to understand (Reiner et al., 2009). Middle
school psychologists often work in isolation from the rest of the school. The ethical prerogatives
of their work require confidentiality, trust, and privacy. Thus, school psychologists are less likely
to communicate their insights about disengagement with teachers or staff. School counselors
work as fully integrated, day-to-day staff members and are much more likely to share insights
with the faculty and administration about issues related to disengagement.
This study examined the experiences and perspectives of middle school counselors in one
district, soliciting the strategies they identify as successful at promoting academic re-engagement
of students at risk for emerging academic disengagement. Employing a person-centered,
humanistic theory lens, it assessed how closely counselor practices in this one district align with
the research-tested theoretical model of person-centered counseling. The study then detailed
other research-tested motivation theories employed by this district’s counselors as they counsel
students at risk for academic disengagement. This comparison allowed me to evaluate the
applicability of person-centered theory to counselor practice, including its utility in aiding in
disengaged students’ academic re-engagement. It identified incongruities between the precepts of
person-centered theory and its actual practice in the district. Finally, it justified findings about
the utility of person-centered theory to the work of middle school counselors in this district and
discussed implications beyond the district.
Literature Review
Historically, middle school instruction and organizational structure have fallen within the
purview of school pedagogies labeled as both classical and traditional in format (Kliebard,
1987). When confronted with disengaged learners, supporters of these classical and orthodox
4

pedagogies emphasized imposing order and learner compliance through teacher and
administrative environmental manipulation (Mabey et al., 2001; Morgan, 1986; Pace, 2003).
Two psychological theories undergirded the agenda of imposed coercive control inherent in
traditional school pedagogies. Negative social deviance theory (Dodge, 1985; Durkheim, 1964)
defined deviant behaviors, either misbehavior or academic disengagement, as socially
undesirable behavior outside societal norms. In response to a classification of deviance,
educators have traditionally relied on behavioralist principles (Skinner, 1998) to correct the
target behavior. Behavioralism provided a practical and easily applied theory for returning
students to accepted school norms. Behavioralism utilizes reinforcement and punishment to
retrain the undesirable behavior from non-conforming students and steer them toward the
outcomes adults desire.
Developmentalism emerged as a competing foil to this perspective, prioritizing stages of
child development and asserting the primacy of student needs and perspectives over those of the
adult (Kliebard, 1987; Pace & Hemmings, 2007). It shifted the locus of control from the adult to
the child learner, deemphasizing orthodox educational theories based on teacher control and
coercion while prioritizing the learner’s needs and desires. The Progressive educational
philosophy of John Dewey predated this trend (Pace & Hemmings, 2007). Dewey centered the
personal needs and desires of learners in both choices of curriculum implementation and the
design of school structures (Dewey, 2008, 1938). According to Dewey, effective instruction had
to promote the learner's intellectual and moral autonomy (Hurn, 1985). Emphasizing these
priorities, Dewey argued, would produce positive learning outcomes, prime among them being
academic engagement (Dewey, 1899, 1916, 1938).
5

There are four broad categories of theory about disengagement in the research literature:
symptomatic (Balfanz et al., 2007), productivity-focused (Kuh, 2000), ecological
(Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Fredricks et al., 2019; Smith et al., 2017), and person-centered,
humanistic theory (Rogers, 1967, 1969, 1980). These broad understandings of student
disengagement span the spectrum of internal and external locus of control. They posit different
degrees of primary influence on different actors, whether adults or learners (Lefcourt, 1976;
Phares, 1976; Reeve, 2013; Schunk & Zimmerman, 2006). This research focused on the last of
these categories–person-centered approaches to re-engagement.
Person-centered theory is a modern offspring of the Progressive educational philosophy.
It centers the individual student's perspective. In person-centered theories, engagement is not the
mere absence of disengagement. Person-centered theory creates an individualized student profile
based on an engagement/disengagement spectrum (Fredricks et al., 2019).
This distinction emerges because of the characteristics of their theoretical assumptions
and distinctions in their research design methodologies. Person-centered methodologies study the
full spectrum of learner engagement and disengagement. Person-centered methodologies
approach disengagement within a broader profile, producing nuanced portraits of how
extensively a student is engaged or disengaged (Fredricks et al., 2019). Within such a portrait, it
is possible to be engaged in specific ways and disengaged in others. Fredricks et al. (2019)
described person-centered education as explicitly individualized because it sorts students into
multiple dimensions and profiles of engagement and disengagement (Lawson & Masyn, 2015;
Salmela-Aro et al., 2009; Wang & Peck, 2013; Schnitzler et al., 2021). This descriptive sorting
allows unique interventions to fit various forms of disengagement (Roeser et al., 1998). Person-
centered theories utilize the phrase “student engagement” instead of “school engagement” when
6

discussing how students engage with their schoolwork. In this phrasing, the individual learner’s
autonomy, self-determination, and choice replace the dictates of school personnel as the primary
agentic drivers of student success (Fredricks et al., 2004; Reeve, 2013).
Two examples illustrate applications of an engagement/disengagement profile. Lawson
and Masyn (2015) proposed that learners exhibit various behaviors and attitudes ranging from
initiative and investment to ambivalence and disidentification. In an alternative example,
Salmela-Aro et al. (2009) described learner profiles ranging from engaged to engaged and
exhausted, to moderately burned out, to severely burned out. This spectrum ranges from possible
student participation in learning to possible non-participation, allowing for greater identification
of possible forms of student buy-in. It permits the possible coexistence of engagement and
disengagement, allowing the researcher to avoid a purely deficit-oriented definition of struggling
students (Fredricks et al., 2019).
These profiles, and the models that generate them, emerge from statistical methodologies
popular with person-centered researchers conducting quantitative research. Within the
methodology of person-centered quantifiable research, the unit of analysis is transferred from the
average of a sample (i.e., a variable-focused approach) to a more granular portrait of the
individual's experience through a revised method for analyzing data. Growth mixture
methodologies, cluster analysis, and latent class modeling enhance their nuanced analysis.
Person-centered quantitative research about disengagement contrasts with variable-centered
analytic approaches common to traditional deficit-oriented quantitative approaches to
disengagement. Whereas deficit-focused quantitative studies utilize correlative methodologies,
regression, and variable analysis to arrive at a collective sample description (Fredricks et al.,
2019; Roeser et al., 1998), person-centered statistical methodologies result in models and
7

definitions of disengagement that are far more detailed and individualized. These methodologies
can effectively describe disengagement or engagement in a population while simultaneously
being more descriptive of individual disengagement (Roeser et al., 1998).
Quantitative person-centered studies based on person-centered educational and
counseling theory contrast with earlier psychological theories and educational interventions
based on teachers’ environmental manipulation and control of students. Person-centered theories
emphasize the autonomy and self-control of the individual learner. Rogers (1951, 1961, 1967,
1969, 1980; Rogers & Freiberg, 1994) proposed person-centered educational and counseling
theory in a series of seminal works over 40 years. Rogers’s (1980) person-centered approach was
rooted in an optimistic conviction that the human condition was hard-wired to trend toward
increasing self-fulfillment.
The centrality of Rogers’ person-centered theory in this research study dictates further
elaboration on his educational theory. Rogers identified three psychological conditions as
paramount to student progress toward self-actualization and learning: the creation of a state of
authentic and genuine emotional congruence between the adult educator and the student, the
adoption by the adult of unconditional positive regard toward the student, and empathic
understanding of the student by an adult who strives to sense and identify with the ever-changing
perspectives of the learner (Rogers, 1969, 1980). According to Rogers, congruence requires the
counselor or teacher to be honest and forthright about their day-to-day and moment-to-moment
moods and reactions to the student. It urged the adult to be in touch with what they are feeling, to
be self-aware of how they are reacting to those feelings, and to earnestly strive to communicate
and model their authentic engagement with their own emotions (Rogers, 1969, 1980).
8

Unconditional positive regard urged suspension of judgment, critique, and control of the
student by the adult and insisted upon the intentional cultivation of optimism, faith, and
confidence in the positive potential of the other person (Rogers, 1969, 1980). On occasion,
Rogers (1980) summarized this cultivation of warmth through unconditional positive regard as
either “caring” or “prizing” (p. 160). Finally, empathic listening requires educators to attune
themselves to the inner perspectives of another person’s experience by sensing and identifying
with how others experience their world. This study assessed how closely the practice of middle
school counselors in the research-targeted district aligns with the authenticity, warmth, and
empathy advanced in Rogers’ person-centered theories of counseling and education.
It is worth pointing out how Rogers’s theorizing represented a sharp break from
traditional and classical coercive pedagogies. He eschewed adult and environmental control of
the learner. In 1980, Rogers wrote,
One of the most satisfying feelings I know–and also one of the most growth-promoting
experiences for the other person–comes from my appreciating this individual in the same
way I appreciate a sunset. People are just as wonderful as sunsets if I can let them be. As
I look at a sunset as I did the other evening, I don’t find myself saying, “Soften the
orange a little on the right hand corner, and put more purple along the base, and use a
little more pink in the cloud color.” I don’t do that. I don’t try to control a sunset. I watch
it with awe as it unfolds. I like myself best when I can appreciate my staff members, my
son, my daughter, my grandchildren, in this same way. (p. 22)
Rogers’s optimism about the human potential to self-actualize resulted from his
confidence in individual freedom and autonomy. He believed that an individual would trend
positively and productively toward self-fulfillment if provided with a fertile psychological
9

environment (Rogers, 1980). Rogers proposed that educators were uniquely situated to accelerate
this trend toward self-fulfillment of learners through an inherent and inevitable “actualizing
tendency” (Rogers, 1980, p. 118). In a posthumous publication (Rogers, 2015), Rogers recalled,
Gradually my experience has forced me to conclude that the individual has within
himself the capacity and the tendency, latent if not evident, to move forward toward
maturity. In a suitable psychological climate, this tendency is released and becomes
actual rather than potential. (p. 4)
Such progress, Rogers argued, occurs when one creates and sustains three psychologically
supportive conditions. These conditions are authenticity, warmth, and empathy, which a skillful
educator or counselor can provide. These conditions produce more effective learning, which
trends toward self-initiation, relevance, and self-ownership (Rogers, 1969; Rogers et al., 2014).
An example of a modern application of person-centered theories is the transtheoretical
model of change (TTM; Prochaska & DiClemente, 1983). Miller and Rollnick (1991) modified
Prochaska and DiClemente’s TTM in an intellectual evolution emblematic of how one modern
group of educational theorists has applied Rogers’s person-centered principles. Miller and
Rollnick’s (1991) TMC program recommends identifying inconsistencies between the actions of
disengaged learners and their priorities and values. It urges that adults avoid argumentation with
disengaged students and promote self-awareness among their students. It also encourages
disarming emerging resistance of disengaged learners toward the authorities in their
environment. Miller and Rollnick’s TMC is one modern adaptation of Rogers’s person-centered
theories (Lambie, 2004; Oyserman et al., 2017; Suldo, Parker, et al., 2019; Suldo, Storey, et al.,
2019).
10

Other programs that apply these theories to education are the Advancing Coping and
Engaging (ACE)program (Suldo & Shaunessy-Dedrick, 2018) and identity-based motivation
(IBM; Oyserman et al., 2017), as well as motivation enhancement theory (MET; Lambie, 2004)
and an intervention called Motivation, Assessment and Planning Meetings (MAP; Suldo, Storey,
et al., 2019). These theories and their related programs rely on the empathy and intuition of
teachers and counselors who must recognize that the learner’s autonomy is essential to
promoting the student’s motivational buy-in. They are all descendants of Rogers’s person-
centered theories.
Positionality
As I conducted this research and analyzed interviews with school counselors, I evaluated
my positionality as a researcher. I am a veteran teacher with 29 years of classroom experience.
As I collected interviews, I needed to review whether my bias and experience as a teacher
interfered with the data evaluation. It was necessary for me to maintain objectivity and neutrality
about strategies that emerge from counselor experiences, especially when these perspectives
differ from mine. I had to accept and embrace the interviewees’ seasoned worldviews and
appreciate their unique perspectives. Only then could I understand why they think as they do.
Likewise, I had to integrate the insights of full-time university researchers into the study. This
study is research-based, and it reflects the wisdom of academia. During the literature review, I
surveyed academic research about disengagement offered by full-time university researchers.
They offer a perspective enriched by their positionality outside the K–12 educational system, a
vantage enhanced by the rigor of their research methodology.
Finally, this section will address the issue of proximity bias. In this study, I limited bias
based on previous experience and acquaintance by interviewing counselors at multiple sites
11

where I do not work. I acknowledge that the interview subjects I investigated were from within
my district. This familiarity could have induced a proximity bias. However, the benefits of this
methodology balance the shortcomings. School district cultures vary, even school by school. By
interviewing as an insider to the targeted district, I leveraged my understanding of the district’s
work culture and student dynamics. This intimate familiarity with the cultural milieu of the case
study enabled accurate and informed interpretation of the interviews.
Methods
Research Questions
This study explored middle school counselors’ strategies to counsel students at risk of
becoming emergent disengaged learners. This case study surveyed the strategies utilized by
middle school counselors in one suburban district. The research questions addressed by the study
were twofold:
1. What influences do middle school counselors consider when motivating disengaged
students?
2. What strategies and approaches do middle school counselors use to motivate
disengaged students?
Context of the Study
The study site was a mid-size, diverse school district serving roughly 25,000 students. It
has four middle schools, each educating approximately 800 to 1,200 students. It boasts a
graduation rate of nearly 90% and boasts nine Blue Ribbon schools. The district has a solid
academic record of achievement. Though academically successful, it is not a district
characterized by blanket economic privilege. It is economically and ethnically diverse, with large
immigrant communities of diverse nationalities. Second language learners constitute nearly 25%
12

of the student population. Just less than half the students receive free or reduced-price school
lunches. It is a community in transition, like many in the United States. Its school board recently
transitioned to majority first- and second-generation immigrant representation. This
transformation symbolized the transition from a city of majority White influence, rigorously
enforced throughout the 1960s by strict real-estate redlining practices, to a modern, urbane,
multi-ethnic metropolis. Its school counseling staff is diverse, with a strong representation of
Middle Eastern, Eastern European, and Latine professionals. I chose this district for this study
because of the distinct characteristics of the community itself. It is representative of many
districts throughout the United States, diverse and representative of the American fabric. Based
on its high graduation rate, it is, on the whole, a district that is meeting its diverse student body’s
needs.
Participants
The interviewees were school counselors in this district who have worked at the middle
school level. Schools in this district commonly employ one to two counselors. The district has
only four middle schools, leaving the researcher with a limited sample of interviewees to support
the study’s findings. This limited sample constrains the pool of school counselors available to be
interviewed. To mitigate the limited sample pool, the school counselor sample members may
presently serve as high school counselors or middle or high school administrators. However, they
all have recent experience working as middle school counselors. This selection provided a large
enough pool of school counselors to provide valuable insights about their strategies for re-
engaging disengaged middle school students. The researcher initially anticipated finding a pool
of possible interviewees in the low teens among the district’s school counselors. However, the
final number of school counselors to be interviewed for this study depended on the degree to
13

which existing interviews saturated the research topic with sufficiently valuable interview data.
The deciding factor for how many interviews to conduct was the degree to which the recent
interviews permitted the formation of well-founded and well-supported conclusions. In this
study, the study fulfilled the criteria after only eight interviews. The research was halted early to
minimize the impact of conducting further hour-long interviews with extremely busy counselors
during the end of the school year, a time when counselors were gearing up to counsel students at-
risk for non-graduation. However, the research findings afforded by eight interviews provided
sufficient data and evidence to support study findings, justify implications, and allow for
vigorously supported conclusions.
The initial recruitment of interview subjects was facilitated by my engaging the
participation of a counselor acquaintance in the district. The counselor sent an email of
introduction on my behalf to the district's school counselors. All district middle school
counselors received a follow-up email introducing the study and requesting email contact if they
wished to participate. This recruitment methodology allowed me to recruit a viable pool of
candidates to interview. This sampling technique, though non-representative and not random,
allowed for a broad enough case study to detail the strategies the district’s middle school
counselors used to promote the re-engagement of disengaged students.
The following chart describes the participants. It identifies them by pseudonyms. The
table identifies which counselors were veteran counselors by listing their combined years of
experience counseling in middle and high school.

14

Table 1
Participants
Counselor name (pseudonym) Years of experience as a school
counselor
Angela 1–5 years
Samantha 1–5 years
Flor 1–5 years
Cynthia 1–5 years
Oscar 6–9 years
Charlie 10–20 years
Ani 10–20 years
Araceli 10–20 years

Instrumentation
I collected data using one interview protocol that was broad enough to be appropriate to
the diverse practice of the district’s middle school counselors. This protocol focused on and
narrowed interviewees’ responses to provide comparative insights into counselors’ preferred re-
engagement strategies. Meanwhile, it was also open-ended enough to capture unique strategies
recommended by these professionals. The interview protocol consisted of 13 questions that
fulfill these requirements (Appendix A).
Data Collection
The interviews lasted about 45 minutes. They included a formal review of participant
rights, a conversation about the purpose of the study, and an opportunity for voicing and
addressing any participant issues about confidentiality or other concerns. The data, captured in
audio recordings, was then transcribed by a professional transcription service. I considered the
15

highest ethical and professional standards when designing this human research study. I made all
efforts to ensure its implementation aligns with this high moral standard.
Data Analysis
The primary function of the study was descriptive, with an identification of the range of
counselor interventions in the case study and connective in that they described the motivational
theories that underlie their actions. I identified commonalities and differences between the
respondents’ preferred strategies for promoting student engagement and identified themes from
the collective data. These themes provided the data upon which the researcher grounded his
findings. These themes provided evidence, which I then analyzed for value. These themes were
collapsed into broader categories and analyzed for patterns that could then support insights that
justified the formation of findings, implications, and conclusions.
Findings
This section describes the findings generated from the interviews. It reviews the two
research questions one at a time.
Research Question 1: What Influences Do Middle School Counselors Consider When
Motivating Disengaged Students?
This study identified four influences that counselors consider when motivating
disengaged learners. They were the degree to which counselors prioritized making genuine
connections with students, the limits of the counseling role itself in terms of time constraints and
caseload, the degree to which their counseling role required them to assess students’ needs and
refer them to specialist services, and the counselors’ life experience and its impact on their
sensitivity to intersectionality.
16

Counselors Prioritized Making Genuine Connections With Students, Which Promotes
Counselor Influence
This prioritization was the first of four influences they considered when motivating
disengaged students. They spoke of the importance of establishing deep personal relationships
that enhanced their ability to form emotional connections with their disengaged students. These
counselors believed that these connections, in turn, increased their influence on their students.
Araceli explained how she perceives the relationship between relational authenticity and the
practical issues of building a genuine counseling relationship: “I found that if they know you are
coming from the heart to help them and if you don’t do that, that’s not going to work. It’s going
to be a short-term intervention.” She explained further, “I think … you want to get to their level
and … let them know that you care. And even when they disappoint you, you’re still trying when
they disappoint you, and you still will be there for them.” Although she did not explicitly relate
her prioritization of personal connection with a school of motivational theory, there are strong
associations between Araceli’s approach and the concepts of emotional congruence and
unconditional positive regard that constitute two of the three foundational premises of Carl
Rogers’ person-centered counseling theories.
Oscar, another of the five counselors who referenced this theme, confirmed that
prioritization of genuineness guides how he counsels. It generates deep connections and
promotes influence on students. He emphasized passion and engagement in the counseling
relationship:
Like, you … have to love what you do and be passionate about it. Because students know
when you’re not passionate, they know when you’re not connected. And they know when
you don’t care, right? So, make sure you’re good within so you can provide that support.
17

Oscar and Araceli emphasized their commitment to building authentic and genuine
relationships with their students. This theme appeared in five out of eight interviews. This
frequency indicates its importance to these middle school counselors. Their words gathered
across the interviews suggest that many considered this a crucial factor in motivating their
disengaged counselees.
Counselors Described Time and Caseload Limitations As Major Influences on the Strategies
Counselors Use to Motivate Disengaged Learners
High student caseloads and time constraints were restrictive realities that frequently
affected counselors’ practice. These constraints limited the motivational options afforded to
them. Oscar identified his typical middle school caseload as 370 to 1. A high caseload presents
challenging realities that limit counselors’ practical options.
However, despite high caseloads and time constraints, the interviewees repeatedly
expressed optimism about their ability to serve their students' needs. Oscar explained that his role
as a counselor fills an essential niche in his middle school ecosystem:
So, the benefit of … when I was a counselor … was that it allowed me to connect with
the students to understand what their needs are on a different basis … A teacher has 35
students in the class … but they’re teaching something instructional the majority of time.
… It’s harder for the teacher to interact with that student.
Counselors often found that time constraints and caseload limitations determined which
interventions were available for utilization with disengaged students. The limits of time
constraints and caseloads forced them to cut right to the heart of the issue with helpful advice.
Counselors may have large caseloads, but their ability to meet one-on-one with students and
interview them about their family lives, social lives, aspirations, and fears contextualized their
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interventions. Oscar explained, “As a counselor, I get to know the student on a different level
than the teacher does … I understand that the needs can differ based on … the home situation.”
This quote shows how counselors individualized their advice based on their broadly
contextualized understanding of each child.
Counselors Referenced Their Role As Assessors of Student Needs and Who Refer Students to
the Services of Specialists
Seven interviewees emphasized their role as assessors of student needs who refer students
to the services of specialists such as therapists, psychologists, counseling interns, and homework
tutors. Services for which counselors made referrals included group counseling, individual
therapy, coaching by homework tutors, and access to counseling interns. Ani spoke of the full
range of possible interventions:
Work with the whole family. Work with your community to help give resources: therapy,
counseling, to school psychologists. Work as a team to help this child because you can’t
just do it on your own. What if you’re not there that day? So, always have other people.
Even here, if I’m not here, I’ll introduce the child to three or four adults that, if I’m not
here, they can go to, so they’ll always have somebody on campus to talk to.
There were 15 references to this theme in the eight interviews. This theme was
particularly evident among veteran counselors who had worked for 10 or more years. Araceli, a
veteran counselor, explained that teachers, administrators, and even parents were other
specialists that counselors relied upon:
It’s a team approach. It’s never just you. The teachers are key, you know, to help you as a
student, and so is the parent and maybe even the school psychologist. Your administrator.
It’s really beneficial for you to look at it as a team approach.
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Veteran counselors reported the frequent use of referrals for specialized services. They
explained that this practice promotes the motivational reengagement of disengaged learners.
Veteran counselors, in particular, consider many different variables when making referrals.
These include the specialized skills of team members, their experience, and the personal
relationships they have with students.
The interviewees conceived of disengagement as a problem requiring team solutions
because disengagement is, at heart, a community problem. Although they were not explicit about
the connection between utilizing a team approach and motivating the reengagement of students
emerging into disengagement, it is possible to imply that this trend, too, confirmed counselors'
commitment to employing Rogers’ person-centered counseling methodologies. Empathic
listening, a fundamental principle of person-centered theory, advises counselors to identify what
students are saying and what they uniquely need. Counselors can make referrals to address these
needs with specialists with appropriate skills who can serve the student's needs. Targeted
interventions such as these enable counselors to individuate their interventions more effectively.
The participants’ frequent mention of their role as team members illustrated their investment in
generating team solutions to the community problem of student academic disengagement.
Counselors Drew Upon Their Life Experiences and Professional Experience to Inform Their
Motivation of Disengaged Students
The influence of life experience was particularly evident among the four counselors of
Latine descent, who explicitly identified how their own experiences in first and second-
generation immigrant families influenced how they counseled immigrant students with similar
experiences. In the case of each of the four Latine counselors, a sample representing half the
members of the case study, they reported that their life experiences influenced their awareness of
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class, race, immigration status, and gender intersectionality. The contrast between interview
references to this intersectionality between Latine and non-Latine counselors was stark. Each of
the four Latine counselors explicitly mentioned such influences; each of the four non-Latine
counselors did not, even those who were themselves first and second-generation immigrants. The
interviews with the four Latine counselors revealed unique types of intersectionalities of
ethnicity through which these counselors perceived students.
Flor stated that she viewed her counselees through the intersectionality of race and class,
focusing on the traumas of poverty associated with being an immigrant student:
You know, I’ve had students who a teacher will report that they’re just not doing
homework, and they’re getting upset with them but had to go to his mom’s job and sit …
in a broom closet or an attic. And there wasn’t … good lighting, and there’s not anybody
there to help them with their homework. And it’s basically survival at this point. So there
… isn’t a space for them to get homework done. And it’s hard. I mean, it’s not
necessarily a teacher's job to dig into their personal lives. That’s our job.
Although Flor did not explicitly state that her sensitivity to the experiences of immigrant
students emerges from a personal experience of poverty, she was the only interviewee who
referred to the intersectionality of students’ class and race.
The experience of Cynthia, Flor’s colleague, provides inferential support for the belief
that Flor became sensitized to the intersection of class and race by observing the experience of
her friends and family during her childhood. Cynthia spoke of her experience as a first-
generation immigrant student who struggled with her identity as a second-language learner. She
remembers watching her family and peers trying to succeed in an American society that spoke a
21

different dominant language. She explained how her immersion in the immigrant experience
sensitized her to the intersectionality of second language learning and ethnicity:
As a first-generation Mexican American student, my parents were immigrants. Language
was a barrier. My father chose and told my mom not to work so she can be a stay-at-
home mom and make sure that we were out of trouble. Make sure that our grades were
decent, and we avoided gangs. So, I keep that in mind when we work with our students.
A lot of our students are immigrants, just like myself. … I keep all that information and
all that in my mind when I speak to them because a lot of them have expressed similar
struggles that I saw some of my other friends who were English language learners and
immigrants have when I was growing up.
Cynthia’s observation of childhood struggles among her immigrant friends sensitized her
to the intersection of language acquisition and ethnicity. One can imply a similar dynamic at
work for Flor, who demonstrated a sensitive awareness of the intersectionality of class and race.
Araceli identified an awareness of a different intersection, that of gender and ethnicity.
Araceli talked about giving voice to her Latina students. She noted that these students tend to fall
through the cracks. They are not behavior problems; they are just invisible to their teachers.
When they fail, no one notices because they do it quietly. In her interview, she said,
I was one of these quiet kids that fell through the cracks. And so, I was not a behavior
problem. And I wasn’t getting the, you know, I was illustrative of many students, but I
was definitely very capable and very smart, and some teachers saw it. Some teachers
didn’t. But I think that’s one of the things I want to consider in my approach to the
students. It always comes from the place that, like, I’m going to see exactly what you’re
about and try to help you in every way that I can.
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Oscar spoke of how his experience as the oldest of five brothers enabled him to
understand the experience of Latino males. He was intensely aware of male gender and ethnicity.
Oscar explained that when he was a teenager growing up in a tough immigrant neighborhood, he
would guide his friends away from bad situations. He expressed that he sees his counseling role
as a shepherd for Latino students. He explained how this role arose from his childhood
experience:
It was always because I was the big brother … and being the oldest brother out of a
family of five … also contributed to that. Just making sure everyone’s okay. So … the
way I like to differentiate my role now versus the counselor is when I was a counselor, I
would like to tell the families and the students that I’m sort of your older brother that’s on
campus to make sure you're doing what you're supposed to be doing. And I’m looking
out for you.
The four Latine counselors utilized insights from their sociocultural perspectives to
enhance their counseling relationships. The implied reason for their actions was to gain context
about each student's challenges and provide culturally appropriate counseling advice. Theirs was
a unique form of Rogers’ empathic listening informed by a cultural sensitivity generated by a
shared personal cultural experience. Their counseling practice was informed by sociocultural
theory and coupled with person-centered educational and counseling theories.
Research Question 2: What Strategies and Approaches Do Middle School Counselors Use
to Motivate Disengaged Students?
The interviewees revealed five strategies and approaches that directed how they
motivated their disengaged learners to reengage with learning. Counselors reported that
consciously utilizing a broad range of varied strategies customized to each student’s unique
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needs helped them motivate disengaged students. The identification of more intensive student
needs often led to a second strategy, enlisting specialized support services. Counselors designed
these strategies to motivate students with more severe needs to reengage with learning tasks.
Counselors also reported that they sought to employ thoughtful communication skills, such as
those recommended by the empathic listening practices of Carl Roger’s person-centered
counseling. Counselors also reported that they prioritized maintaining a role as an engaged and
independent student advocate, which required them to cultivate an identity unique from those of
parents, teachers, and administrators. Lastly, counselors taught students self-regulation skills to
promote academic success. The following sections describe each of these findings in detail.
Counselors Reported Aligning Counseling Interventions to Student Needs by Conducting
Needs Assessments and Then Individuating Their Counseling Advice With Advice Customized
to Those Needs
This strategic flexibility was particularly evident in training and its relationship to
professional experience. There was a propensity among the newest counselors to assess student
needs through needs assessments and then set short-term and long-term goals. The interviews
indicated that less experienced counselors often utilized a solutions-focused counseling model
that asked students to gather frequent data on academic progress and then coupled this progress
with accountability structures. Samantha, one such newer counselor, described how she
proceeds:
Oftentimes, students seem overwhelmed by their dreams and goals, and they disengage
and lose motivation. Helping them develop goals that are SMART (specific, measurable,
attainable, realistic, and timely) makes their goal feel less overwhelming and more
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achievable. Once that goal is met, we move forward by creating another goal that builds
from the previous goal.
Samantha stated that this strategy was effective at producing re-engagement: “This strategy not
only helps them develop a thoughtful plan but encourages them in the goal … to be explicit.”
Cynthia, another newer counselor, also described using a solutions-focused approach to
counseling practice:
But my first strategy is just walking to the student and getting to know, hey, what’s going
on? What happened? There's a big dip in your class grades, or maybe you know what’s
going at home. But just a simple conversation is my first step. Second step is laying
everything on the table, creating a routine, seeing what best strategy we can use with that
particular student to help them to get motivated. There’s something that motivates them.
Every kid has something that motivates them. It’s just a matter of finding out what it is.
This solutions-based counseling approach contrasts with that employed by veteran
counselors who reported using less direct and more nuanced interview and motivation tactics,
including approaching the issue of motivation in a more holistic, circular, less straightforward
manner. Counseling intuition often drove this approach. Veterans repeatedly reported employing
a more leisurely pace and indirect approach to conversations about academic disengagement.
Such discussions led to interventions that emerged from less focused and more generalized
student conversational themes, many of which emerged organically from within the counseling
relationship. Charlie, a veteran counselor, spoke of this approach:
I’d call them in, and I’d say … your teacher wanted me to see you, or I wanted to call
you, and I noticed your grades are not doing well here. Let’s see if we can figure out
what’s the problem here. And then sometimes I’d go onto a totally different topic from
25

how they are not working and engage in other types of conversation. You try looking at
the computers, you check their grades, just checking to see what you’re doing well.
How’d you do last year if you were here last year.? Yeah. Sort of checking, then I’ll go
back to something you’re going … back to because if you need them to go from this
Point A, which is doing nothing, to Point Z … A lot of times, … you’re not going to go
straight down. You … go here, then there, then there, then there. And that does take,
sometimes, take time. Okay, so you’ve got to … maneuver away to get to those different
points.
Charlie elaborated further on the relationship between practice and motivational theory.
By counseling disengaged students more indirectly, Charlie’s approach confirms a philosophy of
many veteran counselors: individuation of counseling interventions requires truly hearing the
student's story, yet another expression of Carl Rogers’ prioritization of empathic listening:
I would always listen to the kid … I wanted them to explain … to me, even though you knew
they were going to end up in the same place … Tell me your story … then you’d go from there
… you let them get their story out … a lot of kids they at least want to be heard. And then as
they’re telling their story … they get calmed down more ... relax, and then you can bring other
stuff.
Ani, one of the most veteran counselors, exhibited a counselor flexibility that illustrates
how veteran counselors prioritized listening to their students and meeting their unique needs. The
interviews revealed a pattern among the veteran counselors. They repeatedly attempted to
individuate their counseling by throwing various strategies and approaches at students and noting
which generated positive outcomes. For example, contrary to most of her colleagues, who
avoided eliciting parental projections, Ani often tried to elicit parental projections from her
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students. Ani’s interview transcript illustrates this pattern. Ani explained how she utilizes
maternal projection with some of her girls, “I know that I have done that when…they tell you a
lot of them have used me as their mother role and they still till this day text me as ‘Hey, Mom,
my second mom.’” The variety of their interventions suggests that there is no correct way to be
an effective counselor. Ani leans into mothering projections, while most counselors choose to
differentiate from the student’s parents and fill an identity as a non-affiliated adult presence in
the student’s life. Many counselors, especially veterans, demonstrated great flexibility in aligning
counseling interventions to students' needs.
Ani expressed that using parental projection in one context does not discourage her from
using different strategies when different circumstances arise. The needs of the students determine
her approach, and her practice prioritizes those needs. She asserts the preeminent importance of
individuating counseling strategies to the needs of each child. Sometimes, when circumstances
dictate a different strategy, she utilizes contradictory approaches to address the unique needs of
her students. She explained,
You don’t teach the same to each child because each learner is different … I think it’s the
same as counseling students. Some have home problems; some have no problems. Some
parents are babying them too much, giving them too much support, and some are not
giving them enough support. And, so, I think that every child is different and every
behavior is different. I had a set of twins who lived in the same household and suffered
the same abuse. One was more vocal about it, and one was more quiet about it. So, I had
to engage each one differently when I was talking to them.
Ani’s experience prompted her to view every child as unique, even twin siblings:
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The veteran counselors in the study, such as Araceli, Charlie, and Ani, described utilizing
these circular, less direct approaches to their counseling conversations, which contrasted
distinctly with the newer counselors' solutions-focused, less adaptive techniques. Counselors
with one to five years of experience often relied on a narrower perception of student needs that
attempted to promote student success by remedying shortcomings in goal-setting and realization.
In comparison, counselors with ten to twenty years of experience frequently applied their
intuition-based wisdom to allow them to ascertain each student's distinct and particular needs.
The different approaches utilized by counselors with ten years of experience or more produced
more flexible interventions that more effectively addressed student needs.
Counselors Enlisted Specialized Support Services, When Merited, to Motivate Disengaged
Students With Time-Intensive Needs
Four of the eight counselors referenced utilizing specialized service personnel to meet the
needs of students with more intensive needs. In fact, two of them made multiple references to
this practice. These services included referrals to homework tutors, counseling interns, and
psychologists who provided group and individualized therapy. Counselors carry large caseloads,
and the needs of their counselees often exceed their trained capacity to provide care. One of the
counselors, Flor, described how she evaluates which students need specialized referrals for
services:
First and foremost, what we focus on is their educational experience. So, if it’s not really
affecting them in school, we don’t really address it. I will say that, you know, we can
offer some suggestions, but unless it’s affecting them in school, like they can’t focus,
they can't concentrate, they’re not coming to school, and then we don’t address it. But
first and foremost, if it’s something that is a higher level of trauma or even just trauma in
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general. Our first thing is to recommend some school-based therapy for them, you being
able to provide them with somebody on campus that can meet with them on a regular
basis and just have that safe space for them to be able to open up and talk about what's
going on. Although the other counselor and I…are here every day, we don’t really have
the capability of meeting students on a daily basis or even a weekly basis. You know, sad
to say, this job is very hectic. We are constantly on the move. We have a million tasks,
and we just don’t have the capability or the training at that point. And again, depending
on the level of trauma, just being able for them to have a more highly trained therapist is,
I think, more beneficial. They’re somebody with more licensing, somebody with more
knowledge in that base.
Among the strategies cited by the counselors, referral to in-house specialists enabled
them to comprehensively address the diverse needs of their students, even when those needs
exceeded the proficiencies imparted to them by their training as school counselors. These
referrals represented an affirmation of the importance of individuated counseling practice. Each
student was considered unique, and each merited unique interventions. Specialized counseling
referrals represent a powerfully affirming expression of authentic understanding of a student’s
needs. Flor summarized this when she stated her goal for specialist referrals: “Making sure that
they (the student) just know that there’s always somebody here on campus to support them.”
This is a foundational principle of Carl Rogers’ person-centered theories. Counselors must insert
themselves into the life experience of the students they counsel. Although counselors did not
explicitly state it, one can imply that referrals to other in-house specialists broaden the services a
school can provide its students, making schools more responsive to the broad range of mitigating
factors leading to academic disengagement.
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Counselors Addressed Emerging Disengagement by Adopting a Counseling Approach Infused
With Emotional Genuineness and Unconditional Positive Regard
Counselors reported avoiding any judgment or condemnation of their academically
disengaged students. Seven of eight interviewed counselors argued that counselors should avoid
sounding judgemental of their struggling students. They argued that counseling was most
effective when it avoided the conveyance of belittling sentiments and minimized lecturing by
adults.
Ani, the experienced veteran counselor who shared her unconventional practice of
eliciting parental projections, described how she worded criticism of student behavior in a way
that disarmed their tendency to become defensive:
You can’t always be the nice person in this that sometimes you got to get upset with
them. I don’t use the word like I’m “mad” at you. I say, “I’m very disappointed.” And
that one word has worked all the time for my students. The minute I say I’m disappointed
because they sometimes take me as their mother as a role model kind of person, the adult
in their life that cares about them. So the minute I say I’m very disappointed at your
behavior or what you did and not you. So it’s not like I’m mad at you. I’m disappointed
at your behavior today. So I’m very careful when I speak to them to use words like that,
and anytime I’ve worked in the use of the word “disappointment,” they’re very upset
because they disappointed me.
Araceli, another experienced counselor, used much the same language as Ani as she
emphasized the importance of frank honesty in the counseling relationship, “You want to get to
their level and … let them know that you care. And even when they disappoint you, you still will
be there for them.”
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Both veteran counselors reported seeking authentic connections in their relationships with
disengaged students. Such authenticity helped them build trust and facilitated student buy-in to
the counseling relationship. For example, five out of eight counselors insisted that they
considered it essential to state the uncomfortable truth, if necessary, about trauma. They
suggested that one must be honest but carefully diplomatic about acknowledging the context of
students’ lives, including the traumas initiated by adults. Such an approach enabled counselors to
address ensuing student disappointment with adult behaviors honestly and directly. Forthright
accounting such as this deepens the counseling relationship between students and counselors.
Ani, one of the veteran counselors, spoke of how she creates a frank discussion of trauma
with children:
Apologize for adults’ behavior that might have treated them poorly. So, if their parents
are treating them poorly, say, you, I’m really sorry that the adults in your life are not
treating you nicely. Reflect on what they’re saying. Say it back to them to make sure that
you’re understanding what they saying. Just be there for them, even if it's just a room for
them to come in. I’ve always said if you want to come in and just cry and not tell me
about it, or just sit here and be angry about it, it’s a safe place for you to do that.
Authentic acknowledgment that students have been disappointed by adults in their lives
can pay dividends when counseling students emerging into academic disengagement. Thoughtful
communication skills enable counselors and students to establish genuine connections.
Emotional congruence–Carl Rogers’ counseling advice that a counselor's emotional presence
must be honest, expressive, and authentic–enables such connections.
According to Rogers, a counselor’s emotional genuineness builds trust. Deep connections
flourish in the presence of emotional authenticity. According to Rogers’ person-centered theory,
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they also require empathic listening and unconditional positive regard (Rogers, 1969, 1980). In
the interviews for this case study, six out of eight counselors described how they try to listen to
students intentionally and kindly while assessing their needs.
When a counselor employs this posture of engagement, it often involves conducting a
student needs assessment or a school services needs assessment. One of the counselors, Angela,
described what this looked like in practice. Angela makes an explicit connection between helping
students to know themselves and their ability to flourish academically:
So, I would run counseling groups, and I would do individual counseling, particularly
with my students who are disengaged academically. And we often find that those two sort
of merge. … So, the groups would be focused on study skills, organizational skills,
learning to learn skills, and then we’d kind of bridge in other things like when they’re
mad, and they don't want to do their homework, or they’re outright refusing to come to
school doing all these things. That’s not necessarily a school issue. There’s other things
going around … that cause that, and I think groups and things really help with that, too,
because we can’t talk about grades if you have all this other stuff. You’re bringing in
with you all kinds of things from last night and this morning and what happened at home.
Angela believes that teaching non-academic coping skills benefits students’ ability to reengage
with schoolwork and succeed academically.
Counselors also recommended listening to the student’s family to gain context about the
student’s life. Thoughtful listening can enable counselors to customize their advice to the unique
needs of each student. Flor, a counselor cited repeatedly throughout this case study, pointed out
that counselors often can gain a fuller context about why a student is disengaging than teachers
can:
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In fact, I think for all of the reasons that I’ve listed, I think we are the best contact for that
because we kind of do the investigative work that teachers, maybe, you know, can’t do,
right? We can ask the harder-hitting questions to the parents, you know, you guys will
call and say, okay, they’re not doing work. What are they doing? And for us, it’s like,
who do they live with at home? Have they eaten? Where are they sleeping? What do they
do when they get home? And these are the questions we ask the kids, too. Are you
hungry? Do you shower? Do you bathe often? You know, who brings you to school? …
Who’s really there with you? Is it a sibling? Is it a parent? Is it one? Is it two? Are they
going through a divorce? In a one-on-one setting, obviously, kids are more apt to tell you
a little bit more about their life. When you’re in a big classroom setting, they won’t want
to raise their hand and say they're hungry or need a shower. You know, any of that. So,
it’s a different role.
Cultivating thoughtful communication skills can be essential to building connections with
students and their families. Rogers proposed that counselors generally flourish when they utilize
a posture of emotional genuineness and frankness coupled with diplomatic honesty. He insisted
that effective counseling requires intentionally listening to students and their families (Rogers,
1980). In this study, the counselor's thoughtful communication skills and the possibility of
referrals to more qualified specialists produced a range of options for individualizing counseling
that effectively addressed each student’s unique needs. As Flor pointed out in the quote above,
such individualization can enable an academically disengaged student to flourish academically
once more.

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Counselors Adopted a Role as an Adult Professional Who Maintains a Role Independent of
Parents, Teachers, and Administrators
Seven counselors referenced the importance of avoiding being overidentified with
students’ parents or teachers. These counselors stated that conveying their identity as a separate
and distinct adult presence in the children’s lives is essential. They proposed that counselors
adopt a third path, that of the independent student adult resource within the school setting. Flor
reiterated the importance of students identifying counselors as independent actors who were
neither parent surrogates nor representatives of teacher agendas:
Our job is to come from a different angle. Right? We need to come from a unique
approach in that we know … what you don't like. We know the struggles that you’re
dealing with. We know that there’s something else in the background that’s probably on
your mind. But how can we work through? How can we push past that? … It’s our job to
try to help push these students out of their comfort zone.
In extreme cases, the counselors dealt with students with fundamental survival issues.
Such issues can generate rapid trends toward academic disengagement. In these cases, addressing
the child’s survival needs may take priority over their academic non-participation. Students
experiencing personal crises cannot learn until their teachers and counselors address their basic
needs. In such situations, Flor explained, educational interventions for disengagement may be
inadequate:
Absolutely, there are no two cases that are ever the same in counseling … you can have
students who live with divorced parents, students who come from a homeless home, or a student
that’s in a shelter, but their needs are just so different. You know, its all about sitting down with
the student and the family if you need to discuss what is going on and what their exact needs are.
34

For some, they’re hungry … So you know where we can give some family food and then make
sure that the student eats in the morning because sometimes we will have a student that comes
and they’re really grouchy or they’re late or they’re just refusing to do work.
Flor’s quote shows how providing for a student’s basic needs supersedes academic
performance. For example, she states that if the school or parents don’t provide for a hungry
student’s survival needs, “Their behavior can be really awful. They’re hungry … they can’t focus
until they’ve had a meal.”
Counselors wield a more holistic perspective on why students develop patterns of
academic disengagement. Their ability to observe patterns enables them to serve as
intermediaries between the students and their teacher colleagues. They can share their contextual
knowledge with teachers, often inspiring them to extend a sympathetic second chance to students
emerging into academic disengagement. They can also contextualize behavior problems or act as
conflict mediators when a student/teacher relationship deteriorates. Ani explained the value and
the limitations of such a role:
You’ll have some connections with certain teachers that you could say, “Hey, this kid is
going through this … and you’re not going to have that with every personality with every teacher
that’s going to understand what this child is going through … If I have an administrator that I can
go to and say hey, listen, this child has had a rough day, and they understand, and they will work
with the child and not discipline them too harshly.
Sometimes, the adults are not disposed to be sympathetic, even when the counselor
contextualizes student behavior and choices. Then, a counselor must act as a buffer between
students and their teachers. They must mitigate the emotional consequence of an unsympathetic
adult peer because it affects the student. Ani explained that counselors are peers to teachers and
35

administrators. They are not their supervisors. Beyond appeal and persuasion, they cannot
change their adult colleagues’ behaviors. She explains, “If I do see discipline where it’s too
harsh, then I’ll just talk to the child … the adults are a little harder.”
When necessary, middle school counselors address more profound issues, including basic
student welfare, such as providing shelter, safety, and sustenance. These issues can manifest as
academic disengagement, but they often mask more profound personal crises in students' lives. A
counselor, operating with a contextual understanding of why students disengage, will intervene
more appropriately to address the underlying causes of these students’ academic disengagement.
Counselors safeguard the interests of endangered students and fulfill a role as a mediator
between the expectations of teachers and those of students who are, occasionally, simply trying
to survive challenging contexts. This role as a safety net is an essential component of middle
school counselors’ job responsibilities.
When counseling students, two interviewees emphasized persistent counselor
engagement. They considered such engagement to be a fundamental requirement of student
advocacy. These two counselors, Flor and Araceli, shared particularly poignant advice about
relentlessly pursuing their students' best interests. Flor, for example, explained that this dynamic
could often require counselors to engage with resistant students with dogged determination:
Even when the student is resistant to you at first, try and try again because they can see
that persistence. They can tell you care, and they will eventually open up and give in to
the advice that you have to give them. It's the students that gave me the hardest time at
first that ended up being so attached by the end. They can feel the sincerity. They can see
that you want to help them, and sometimes you’re the only person in that role in their life.
Araceli explained what this looked like in her practice:
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I remember a student who did not want to come to school. Just wasn’t her thing. A lot of
feeling very defeated already and … very afraid. And I remember telling the mother. …
“Come with her to see me. Just bring her into my office.” And she would spend a little bit
of time in my office, and we would talk about the situation that was impacting her. And
little by little, she spent maybe 30 minutes in my office, and then it grew to an hour.
Then, it grew to 2 hours. And it was just a baby-step process. But then I just told mom to
leave her here. And we just started building that trust and relationship between us. I
would tell her, “I hear you when you say why you don’t want to go to class.” The teacher
would send the work to the office, and she would get it done in the office.
Flor and Araceli reported that relational and emotional engagement was crucial for re-
engaging students emerging into academic disengagement. With persistent attention, even these
students came out of their shells. In the quote described above, Araceli explicitly connected her
persistence as a counselor and advocate to a disengaged student’s re-engagement.
Counselors Reported That They Teach Self-Regulation Skills to Students to Enable Them to
Succeed Academically
Five counselors reported that they promoted academic success among their students by
improving their self-regulation skills. They reported leveraging students’ pre-existing
competencies to help them reach their goals. Although all counselors described using these
strategies, the younger counselors used them more exclusively. Counselors reported teaching
students to utilize data collection and goal-setting skills to track their progress toward academic
and personal goals. Oscar explained the logic of using accountability structures such as
checklists to track student progress:
37

Because you want … to see that they’re … achieving what their goal is that you’ve given
them. So, whether it’s a check-in/check-out system that you have with the student, no
matter what the strategy is at the end of each one, you’re checking in with the student, or
the parent, and there's follow-up and follow-through. So, that’s the biggest part of each
strategy is to make sure that there’s some accountability on both parts in both parties.
Because if there isn’t, then the student just continues on the path they are on.
Notably, three interviewees stressed how education can change students’ life trajectories.
Most of them linked this to student dreams and aspirations. Araceli talked about how she inspires
student aspirations for success in their later lives to leverage their will to succeed:
It always comes from the place that … I’m going to see … what you’re about and try to
help you in every way that I can. And just … the belief that education is the key to
uplifting your life and your family’s life.
Araceli used this argument to gain persuasive traction with her disengaged students. Aspiration is
a powerful motivator. Araceli’s methods demonstrated that counselor persuasion is most potent
when it marshals student inspiration. Araceli finished the quotation above with a sentence
indicating that she was attempting to supplement and enhance the value students assign to their
identity goal, “And if you don’t think it has a purpose, I’m going to help you see the purpose in
it.”
Counselors utilize self-regulation theory to help students reach their aspirations. They
showed them how adopting goal-setting targets and marking and measuring their progress can
help them realize their dreams. The interviewees reported promoting academic competency and
taught a broad range of self-regulation skills that helped the students achieve personal and
academic success. Samantha spoke of how she weds student aspirations to their dreams of
38

possible selves. She then teaches them effective goal setting, which is one of Zimmerman’s
(2000) five competencies of self-regulation, to help them realize their dreams:
When students are at risk for academic disengagement, I started off by building rapport to
better understand them as a student. I asked them what they aspire to be when they grow
up, their hobbies, goals, and strengths. From there, we come up with smart goals to make
a tangible plan to work toward that goal. I have my intern check on them … weekly or bi-
weekly to keep them on track.
Samantha then explained why she teaches self-regulation skills to students emerging into
disengagement: “Oftentimes, students seem overwhelmed by their dreams and goals, and they
disengage and lose motivation.” Samantha’s words imply that she believes a lack of competency
in academic self-regulation skills leaves students unable to maintain their motivation to achieve
their aspirations. Without self-regulation skills, they may lack the means to apply themselves
effectively to the challenges of realizing their aspirations. In the context of academic
disengagement, Samantha’s words imply the value of teaching self-regulation skills to students
emerging into academic disengagement.
The first research question addressed the factors that affect how counselors seek to
motivate students emerging into disengagement. This study showed four influences significantly
impacted how the participants motivate disengaged students: a prioritization of genuine
relationships between students and their counselors, their role in assessing student needs and
making specialized referrals as needed, constraints on counselor strategy dictated by time and
caseload limits, and counselor life experiences, which were especially important to the Latine
counselors. Notably, these four factors reflect the influence of the recommendations of one
motivational theory: Carl Rogers’ person-centered theory of counseling. These four factors are
39

all related to how counselors show up for their interactions with their students. These influences
prioritized careful assessment of student needs, empathic listening, and understanding of cultural
experiences and key intersectionality. They also required that counselors adopt an attitude of
unconditional positive regard for students, relied on the importance of their being emotionally
available, and were enhanced by an emotionally expressive counselor presence with students.
Person-centered counseling and educational theories provided strong justification for the
postures chosen by counselors regarding their counseling practice (Rogers, 1969, 1980).
Counselors centered strategies related to Rogers’ person-centered counseling and
educational approaches, but the support of several other theories also augmented their practice.
The first strategy employed by the counselors that enabled them to motivate their disengaged
students was adopting strategies customized to student needs. This strategy was an overarching
one. It was referred to repeatedly by counselors who emphasized that each student is unique and
that those individual needs drive the form counseling takes. For example, one counselor leaned
into parental projections as a mother figure, whereas most counselors advised against it. This
contrast in strategies demonstrated how counselor flexibility and pragmatism, especially among
veteran counselors, often generated seemingly contradictory strategic approaches to motivation.
However, a common thread emerged. The individuation of practices that matched student needs
was the preeminent goal of counselor strategic outcomes, and it often dictated starkly different
strategic approaches.
The second strategy described in the findings, enlisting specialists when needed for more
individualized service, reflected a continuation of the ongoing emphasis on person-centered
theory. In particular, person-centered theory prescribes that counselors accurately assess and
address students’ needs. Rogers emphasized that a student’s self-concept only grows through
40

social interactions with another person. The counselor's understanding and acceptance of the
student’s unique experience enhances such growth. Knowing when a student needs specialized
help can be a powerfully validating form of empathic listening.
A third counselor practice revealed by the findings was that the interviewees adopt a
posture of empathic listening and express their unconditional positive regard for their disengaged
students. These practices were supported by person-centered theories of counseling. The
evidence referenced the importance of genuine emotional connections, a prioritization of
acceptance, and warm regard for student experiences. They also prioritized the practice of
intentionally listening to the deeper meanings of the students' words.
Counselors also employed a fourth strategy to motivate disengaged students. They sought
to develop an engaged and independent role as a student advocate. This required them to adopt
an identity distinct from that of teachers, parents, and administrators. Assuming an independent
adult counseling role expedites the formation of deep connections between the counselor and the
student, the interviews revealed that persistent engagement with resistant students produced
positive outcomes. The participants reported that students fondly recalled that their counselors
would not give up on them. They also spoke of the power of helping students to see the value in
their learning. They spoke of changing student expectancies of academic participation and how it
promoted student engagement with schoolwork.
The teaching of self-regulation skills was the fifth strategy highlighted in the findings.
Student self-management, enabled by instruction in self-regulation skills, could empower goal
realization. Still, the participants expressed that they enhanced student awareness of the utility of
these strategies by helping students visualize aspirational future identities. This practice involved
41

identifying their dreams of future selves and assisting them to see the utility and purpose of
developing their self-regulatory capacities.
This summary of the findings revealed that middle school counselors relied heavily on
person-centered counseling theories when selecting the posture with which they would engage
with their students. However, they also demonstrated flexibility when utilizing other
motivational theories, a pragmatic ethic-infused counselor practice. It dictated the motivational
strategies counselors applied to address students' needs. Counselors rarely explicitly attributed
their practice to specific motivational theories. Instead, our findings reveal that counselors are
practical professionals. They do what works for each student and will experiment and tinker with
their counseling approach until they ascertain what strategy best addresses each student’s unique
needs. Their students present with profoundly varying needs, and the methods utilized by
counselors were, at their most effective, dictated by the customized approach that seemed to
work with each student.
Discussion and Recommendations
Person-centered theory was used to inform the counseling interventions of the middle
school counselors interviewed for this case study. Counselors employed person-centered theory
in two ways. It defined the relationship tone of the counselors and, therefore, framed their
strategic decisions as they conducted their interventions. Person-centered counseling proposes a
humane and genuine practice that promotes deep connections and relationships (Rogers, 1969,
1980). These relationships enabled better outcomes (Rogers, 1980). The recommended practices
of person-centered counseling helped the interviewees show up for their students authentically
and genuinely.
42

Although counselors did not explicitly justify their counseling practice based on person-
centered theory, the impact of Rogers’ person-centered theoretical approach cannot be
understated. The counseling approaches described in this study were shaped and determined by
influences of 1960s and 70s humanistic psychology. The approaches of Carl Rogers strongly
influenced this period. His person-centered theory included advocacy for counselor emotional
availability and engagement. It stressed emotional transparency realized through the emotional
congruence of the counselor, a belief that self-actualization can only occur in a relationship, and
an attitude of unconditional positive regard toward those the counselor is advising. According to
person-centered theory, the counselor must listen carefully to the student, understand the
student’s perspective, and withhold judgment while restraining any impulses to condemnation
(Rogers, 1969, 1980). Such counseling practice requires counselors to recognize that those they
advise have developed functioning coping mechanisms that provide emotional shelter, strength,
and sustenance. The counselor must identify these coping mechanisms' inconsistencies, flaws,
and shortcomings. The counselor then helps the student improve their coping mechanisms to
promote a trend toward self-actualization. Although person-centered counseling implies a set of
best practices, it is based on the counselor and those they counsel maintaining an authentic
relationship. Self-actualization occurs within the context of the relationship between the
counselor and the student.
Counselors leveraged the synergies that coexist between different approaches to enhance
outcomes. As described in Rogers ' person-centered theory, sociocultural theory blends well with
empathic listening, improving counseling outcomes. Sociocultural theory was particularly
relevant to the four Latine interviewees. Sociocultural theory imbued them with cultural
awareness and sensitivity toward their immigrant students. This sensitivity was based on
43

childhood cultural experiences familiar to both the counselors and the students. These included
common experiences of second language acquisition, intersections of race and class, and
intersections of gender and ethnicity. These counselors found that a shared experience enhanced
their counseling, providing them cultural sensitivity and empathy. These shared everyday
experiences allowed them to practice a particularly empathetic form of Rogers’ empathic
listening, one enhanced by cultural awareness and sensitivity.
Several restrictions of the counselor's role constrained the interviewees’ choice of
approaches to motivate students. Foremost among these were time constraints and high
caseloads. These two influences forced counselors to truncate their counseling interventions.
Carl Rogers’ (1980) person-centered counseling theory had always presumed long-term intensive
counseling relationships. School counselors, however, had to tailor their counseling advice to far
fewer meetings. The limits of the counselor role circumscribed their adaptation of motivational
theories. In practice, this meant that counselors adapted their implementation of the motivational
theories to the limits imposed by their roles.
Time constraints and the high caseload that burdened counselors also led to a natural
division of labor between teachers and counselors. This division determined which strategies
counselors favored, contrasting sharply between counselors and teachers. Teachers see their
students multiple times a week over an entire year. Counselors had to adapt their counseling
practice to shorter, more abbreviated intervention periods.
There were several ways in which the limitations of the counselors’ role impacted the
utilization of self-regulation theory. The interviewees relied heavily on self-regulation theory
because it applies across classroom contexts, is not content-specific, and relies on a coda of skills
that is discrete and teachable in a counseling relationship. Counselors tended to focus on the
44

generalization of student self-regulation skills in many settings. They sought to teach broadly
applicable skills and concentrate on the big themes of self-regulation theory rather than the
granular, specific applications.
Several interviewees concentrated on the big picture why of learning and emphasized
student aspirations and dreams. These counselors gave practical advice about self-regulation
skills, like goal setting, to help students realize their dreams. Teachers, in contrast, focused on
each lesson’s day-to-day utility and relationship to the next day’s lesson. The interviewees
emphasized the utility of learning in a more globalized manner by dealing with student’s biggest
aspirations and dreams, which enabled counselors to imbue student learning with greater value.
Counselors tried to enhance motivation by teaching self-regulation skills that could strengthen
success in different settings, whereas teachers taught specific skills useful for individual lessons.
By teaching general self-regulation skills, counselors sought to promote academic re-engagement
in a timely and efficient manner, providing a counseling remedy for high caseloads and limited
time constraints.
The interviewees did report a certain freedom in their role. Regardless of time constraints
and high caseload, they expressed optimism about their ability to serve students’ needs.
Unburdened by the curricular limitations and classroom management issues that classroom
teachers experienced, counselors had a high degree of autonomy. They could tailor their counsel
to the student’s general needs without the restrictions that teachers experience in the classroom.
This freedom gave them broad latitude to address student needs in creative ways. They also
leveraged their ability to form multi-year relationships with students and their families. This
long-term relational timeframe enabled them to know students as complete human beings, not
just as one of 30 academic performers in a teacher’s class. They knew the back stories of these
45

students’ personal and academic lives. This was an advantage afforded counselors by their
professional role, and they leveraged it as fully as they could as they forged a unique role as
independent student advocates.
Finally, counselors relied on their life experiences to inform how they practiced their
craft, whether these were their experiences as school children or their work experience as adults
in a middle school setting. These life experiences helped them connect to students, even the
disengaged students, a bit more, and they often drew upon them to improve their practice.
Several counselors reported that their childhood experiences as first- and second-generation
immigrants sensitized them to the issues confronting many of their students. These included the
intersections of class, race, immigration status, and second language acquisition. These
experiences, common to both counselors and their students, left them particularly sensitized to
the sociocultural contexts of their students. The Latine counselors seemed more attuned to their
childhood immigrant experiences than the non-Latine-origin counselors, even though several
non-Latine interviewees were also first- and second-generation immigrant students. This
sensitivity was an asset among the Latine counselors, and they repeatedly referenced how it
helped them provide culturally sensitive counseling.
The interviewees also relied on their work experience in schools to inform their practice.
Those with 10 years of work experience often used more subtle counseling techniques than those
with 1 to 5 years of experience. Veteran counselors employed a more intuitive interview
technique anchored in careful attention to their students' explicit and implicit needs. This
sensitive attention to student needs led to more nuanced counseling interactions than counselors
with only 1 to 5 years of experience, generating more flexible counseling interventions.
46

Counselors with 1 to 5 years of work experience prioritize prompt analysis and remedy
their students’ needs, often through immediate instruction in goal setting and accountability
activities. Counselors with 1 to 5 years of work experience may be compensating for concerns
about time limitations. In light of heavy caseloads and time constraints, they appeared to be
trying to clear cases expeditiously and promptly so that they did not fall behind. This approach
was a worthwhile ambition, as it provided them with a solution to high caseloads, but it also
hindered the flexibility and responsiveness of their counseling advice.
Veteran counselors with 10 to 20 years of experience were more willing to spend extra
time when counseling circumstances merited additional time investments. This scheduling
flexibility reflected confidence that their years of counseling practice left them well-prepared to
manage the constraints of time and caseload. They seemed less concerned about getting
overwhelmed, enabling them to slow down to listen to each student’s unique needs. Veteran
counselors appeared more skilled at recognizing how to resolve a counseling issue in a timely
fashion while not short-changing the counseling process for students who needed extra,
individualized attention.
I recommend that districts facilitate a professional dialogue between their veteran middle
school counselors and their newly trained ones. The goal of such a dialogue would be to
integrate veteran collective wisdom about the counseling process into the practice of newer
counselors and, correspondingly, to expose veteran counselors to the latest training methods and
ideas taught to new counselors at the university. This dialogue will enhance counselor
effectiveness across the broad spectrum of professional experience.
Districts would also be well served to leverage their counselors with 10 or more years of
experience. They are familiar with managing time and caseload constraints and have experience
47

balancing student needs for extra attention with time limitations. They have the capacity to listen
to their students with a nuance and sensitivity borne out of their many years of service. This skill
could prove helpful to newer counselors. Districts should promote a dialogue and mentoring
relationship between veterans and newer counselors, particularly regarding time management
and the art of listening. To this end, targeted training should be implemented district-wide to
promote the practice of Roger’s proven techniques of establishing relational genuineness. This
training could focus on developing empathic listening skills and emphasize the power of
approaching students with unconditional positive regard. Such training should not be challenging
to implement. Counselors have already expressed a strong affinity for these philosophies.
Counselors should also be trained in the applications of self-regulation theories,
particularly those espoused by Zimmerman (1989, 2000) and Dembo and Eaton (2000). The
interviewees already demonstrated familiarity and comfort with making practical goals and
developing a plan of attack, two major categories of self-regulation theory. These competencies
could probably be deemphasized in training; they are already strengths. Instead, counselors'
training should emphasize contingency planning and student self-evaluation skills. These
competencies relate to students’ ability to adapt when goal setting goes awry and teach students
how to differentiate between a good strategy for reaching a goal and a poor one. These two areas
were the least mentioned self-regulation strategies, and the practice of all counselors, across
experience levels, would be enhanced by developing skills in these areas.
Although districts should leverage veteran counselors’ experience related to time and
case management, it may still be the case that younger counselors can provide their own value to
a mentoring relationship. This value is particularly evident when their counseling practice is
informed by childhood life experiences that make them sensitive to particular student
48

experiences of class, race, immigration status, second-language acquisition, and gender. I
recommend that districts promote cross-cultural mentoring among their counselors, as these
promote culturally sensitive counseling outcomes. Counselors with one to five years of
experience may have unique life experiences that they could use to inform the collective wisdom
of district counselor practice. I recommend that districts promote mentoring relationships for
counselors based on both professional expertise and life experience.
The recommendations included in this study suggest several future areas for research.
Future researchers should study how counselors can leverage their personal experiences to
promote connection with students. Research could provide a sound theoretical basis for
counselors' dialogue about cross-cultural awareness, connecting intersectionality and life
experience to best practices. Finally, I propose that researchers conduct further study of
motivation theory and its relationship to counseling disengaged students to determine whether
the advice of this case study’s counselors is generalizable or an exception. I recommend applying
this study in the larger research context of studies on engagement and disengagement, including
other case studies. Future research could confirm whether counselors of other successful districts
employ similar strategies or whether successful practice varies in different settings. It may be
that the counseling interventions that proved effective in this mid-sized, multiethnic suburban
school district will have to be adapted for use in other contexts, particularly urban and rural
settings.
Limitations
Given the study’s framing, I identified the following limitations to this research. This
article is a case study of the counselors in one district. Therefore, its generalizability is
constrained. The conclusions drawn apply most directly to the target district. However, as a case
49

study, it offers a limited reference point against which to compare other case studies and more
generalizable research study conclusions. Although its scope is limited, this study does have
applicability beyond its sample population. Effective practice in the target district, or
corresponding misalignments of practice and theory in the target district, may be instructive for
counselors in other districts.
Conclusion
In 1989, the Carnegie Report on Adolescent Development warned that middle school is a
threshold age. The report noted the grave importance of life trajectories established during
middle school. Young adolescents face significant turning points. For many youth of 10 to 15
years, early adolescence offers opportunities to choose a path toward a productive and fulfilling
life. For many others, it represents their last best chance to avoid a diminished future.
Middle school counselors can guide students to resolve this early adolescent crisis. As
counselors advise their students who are becoming academically disengaged, they must grapple
with the limitations of their role, particularly time constraints and high caseload. They also must
make authentic and genuine connections with students that allow them to influence these
students’ lives. Throughout this process, the counselors must also balance theory and practice.
Theory must inform practice. By centering Roger’s humanistic person-centered counseling
theories, they can construct a comprehensive theoretical framework to guide their counseling
practice. The centering of person-centered theories of counseling promotes effective counseling
outcomes. Counselors can apply the principles of person-centered counseling to generate
coherent practices that promote educational success. When these research-supported theories
inform their practice, they spawn effective interventions that can alter middle school students’
trajectories.
50

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Appendix A: Instruments
Interview Protocol
Introductory Statement
“Hi there, my name is Ken Marmie. I’m a teacher at Roosevelt Middle School, and I’d
like to interview you today. I am conducting research for my doctoral thesis at USC, and I want
to ask you some questions for a research study I’m conducting about the strategies that school
counselors in this district use to reinspire disengaged learners to learn again. There is no right or
wrong answer to the questions I will ask you, just your answers formed from your professional
experience. I thank you ahead of time for your replies to the study questions. I will ask you to
grant consent for me to interview you. If you do consent, you will receive a list of your rights
and protections as a participant providing information for this study. I want to make sure you
understand that you have a right to have your name kept private (confidentiality), which it will
be, and that you have the right to refuse to be taped for this interview. I hope you will permit me
to tape our interview, nonetheless. I think you will find that taping allows me to capture your
words accurately and in their true spirit. I want you to know that everything you say will remain
confidential, which means no one will know who said what you said. Furthermore, everything
we record will be carefully guarded, and the recordings will be destroyed at the end of the study.
You may find quotes of what you have said in my research paper, but no one will be able to
connect them to you. If you want a copy of the paper, when I finish my research, you may
contact me, and I’ll provide a copy of my thesis to you so that you can see that I keep my word
and have told your story as you have told it to me.”

58

Interview Preview Statement
This interview will ask you about your experience counseling at-risk students for chronic
academic disengagement from school. Chronic disengagement can take different forms but is
typically associated with student non-participation in lessons, the student’s not turning in any
work when prompted, and the generation of low grades across three or more classes in a middle
school day. One important caveat, these students do not necessarily have behavior problems.
They are just non-participants in lesson after lesson.
Interview Questions
1. Describe how much experience you have counseling middle school students.
2. How common is it for you to counsel students who are at-risk of chronic
disengagement from schoolwork?
3. What percentage of the students you counsel fall into this category?
4. Tell me a little about what experiences in your history and background influence your
approach when you counsel students at risk for chronic academic disengagement.
5. Can you think of a time you gave a chronically disengaged student good counsel
about what to do to re-engage with their teachers and classwork?
6. Describe the outcome of that intervention and tell me how the student reacted.
7. Describe whether the strategies you use to counsel disengaged students are similar for
all students of this type or whether they are entirely different depending on each
student. Follow-up: Are there commonalities in the strategies you employ with
students?
8. What are some of your most effective strategies for convincing disengaged learners to
become more engaged?
59

9. What strategies have you found are unsuccessful at persuading disengaged learners to
become more engaged? Follow-up: Is there any place where their use would be
appropriate?
10. How does your role as a middle school counselor influence your choice of strategies
for re-engaging disengaged learners?
11. Do you feel your professional role as a school counselor limits you in your ability to
give good counsel to students in danger of chronically disengaging from classwork?
Follow-up: How do you feel limited?
12. If you could give one piece of advice to other school counselors providing advice to
students at risk for chronic academic disengagement, what would it be?
Closing Statement to Read to Counselors at End of Interview
Thank you so much for your participation in this study. Your participation will help
refine the practice and theory of counselors as they intervene with students emerging into
academic disengagement. If you have any further questions about the study, please feel free to
contact me at marmie@usc.edu. Here is my card.

Abstract (if available)

Abstract This case study investigated the practical and theoretical influences contributing to counselor success at reengaging academically disengaged students in middle school. The study involved counselors in a multi-ethnic, mid-size school district. Other researchers had found that emerging trajectories of academic disengagement during middle school accelerated in high school, creating urgency for intervention in middle school. This study consisted of 13-question interviews with middle school counselors (N=8) inquiring about their academic re-engagement strategies and counseling practice. These questions focused on the influences that affected their motivational strategy. Participants reported frequent use of person-centered counseling techniques to establish connection and influence. Counselors reported that their instruction to students in self-regulation skills complemented their counseling. Counseling practice differed between counselors with less than 5 years of experience and those with more than 10, as well as between counselors who had life experiences with the intersectionality of race, gender, class, and second-language acquisition and those without. The study recommends districts provide training in person-centered counseling techniques, foster dialogue between newer and veteran counselors, and systematically encourage sharing counselors' diverse life experiences with peers.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Marmie, Kenneth Franklin (author)

Core Title A case study in how middle school counselors mentor students at risk for emerging academic disengagement

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Doctor of Education

Degree Program Education (Leadership)

Degree Conferral Date 2023-12

Publication Date 09/06/2023

Defense Date 08/23/2023

Publisher Los Angeles, California (original), University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag academic disengagement,intersectionality,middle school,motivational theory,OAI-PMH Harvest,person-centered counseling theory,self-regulation theory

Format theses (aat)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Hirabayashi, Kimberly (committee chair), Ferguson, Holly (committee member), Malloy, Courtney (committee member)

Creator Email elsie16@earthlink.net,marmie@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC113303422

Unique identifier UC113303422

Identifier etd-MarmieKenn-12323.pdf (filename)

Legacy Identifier etd-MarmieKenn-12323

Document Type Thesis

Format theses (aat)

Rights Marmie, Kenneth Franklin

Internet Media Type application/pdf

Type texts

Source 20230907-usctheses-batch-1092 (batch), University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

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Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA

Repository Email cisadmin@lib.usc.edu