School Counselors' Levels of Self-Efficacy Providing Career Counseling in the Middle School Setting

Abstract

After a critical review of the literature on school counselor self-efficacy and Social Cognitive Career Theory (Lent, Brown, and Hacket, 1994; Lent and Brown, 1996) this cross-sectional study of practicing middle school counselors was conducted. The study identified levels of career counseling self-efficacy in a sample of 143 practicing middle school counselors across Virginia using the Career Counseling Self-Efficacy Scale-Modified (O'Brien, Heppner, Flores, and Bikos et al., 1997), and a subscale of the School Counselor Self-Efficacy Scale (Bodenhorn and Skaggs, 2005). In addition, mean differences in career counseling self-efficacy across experiences such as work as a school counselor, work as a teacher, and recent training in career counseling were explored. Finally, the relationship between career counseling self-efficacy and amount of time spent providing career counseling was identified using a correlation analysis. Implications for school counselors, counselor educators, and administrators are discussed.