Academic success through group work: Linking social skills, achievement, learning behaviors and collaboration

Professional school counselors face the challenge of delivering guidance and counseling services to students while connecting to the educational mission of schools. In conjunction with this challenge there is a call for professional school counselors to conduct research that illustrates their accountability within practice. This study linked academic considerations with personal/social development within a group counseling intervention for elementary students. A pre-test post-test research design compared the performance of a convenience sample and control group of students from elementary schools in a local school district following their participation in a unique group counseling treatment entitled "Racing to Achievement through Group Work" developed by the researcher. The objective of this intervention was to determine whether there was significant improvement in the participants' achievement, learning behaviors, and social skills compared to the control group. Additionally, school counselor/teacher collaboration was qualitatively explored to discover the perceptions that the teachers participating in the study had about the school counselors who facilitated the intervention and their impressions of how successful their collaboration process was. It was hypothesized that students exposed to the group counseling intervention would have significantly higher scores on the achievement, learning behavior, and social skills rating scale than the control group. Further, the researcher believed that the teachers' perceptions of the quality of the school counselor/teacher collaboration throughout the duration of the group counseling intervention would be viewed positively. It was found that for the treatment group, GPA in Language Arts was significant following the intervention; however, none of the other variables were statistically significant. The qualitative feedback shared by the teachers positively depicted the work of the school counselor and the impact within the classroom that they had made. Implications regarding the changing role of professional school counselors, the importance of conducting research that addresses student achievement and the impact of collaboration are discussed. Next, limitations of the study and recommendations for future research are provided.