Customer Reviews

The Transformed School Counselor

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This textbook really lets you in on what you are signing up for as a future school counselor. You also learn the history of school counseling and the future of school counseling. This is a well-written, well-organized and very informative textbook. I have found it extremely useful in my studies.

I've just begun to read the book and have enjoyed all the insight and viewpoints that are presented! It is a good read and will prepare me to be a school counselor!

I was hopeful that this book would actually do a thorough job of discussing both the goals and responsibilities of a counselor. I was wrong. Being a second-year student mean that this reading was rote, banal, and superficial in both scope and depth. Here are my biggest issues with the book:

1) The book does a horrid job of explaining its concepts. Though it covers a decent amount of information, the amount it attempts to disseminate borders on the absurd. I'm not sure how the authors expect students to remember this much information, but a quick review of literature indicates that retention is unlikely. If the book made more of a concentrated effort, it wouldn't suffer from the "Counselors for Dummies" effect.

2) For newly-minted counseling students who may be using the text, the glut of information is both insufficient and, at times, wrong. For example, the book discusses "learning styles", claiming that there is a plethora of research backing up its effectiveness - this is incorrect. Though there is a decent amount of information regarding learning styles available, this information has little substance, suffering from low levels of both reliability and validity. This section also references biased, if not altogether racist, literature (Dunn, 1987) in regards to how learning styles should be altered for minority students. If first-year counseling students read such information without accompanying data, the potential for misinformation and biased perceptions increases. By failing to discuss matters fully and objectively, the book creates circumstances where counselors are less able to fully help students.

3) The book is boring. This is a small issue, but compounds the previous issues. The "real-life" experiences are average, at best, and the text itself offers few opportunities for true engagement. If this is what a transformed school counselor looks like, our future students are in for a long, sleepy ride.



I would not recommend this book for anything other than a slight reference tool. To utilize it as a conduit for learning and counseling pedagogy would be tantamount to using duct tape to fix your car - it might work for a few seconds but will only end up hurting in the long (or not so long) run.

This is by far the best textbook I have ever read. I am using it for my first Master's Degree course in School Guidance Counseling and it is FULL of real life applicable information, ASCA standards are thoroughly explained, there are case examples with responses from actual school counselors, awesome wrap ups reviewing the highlights of what you learned in the chapter and a section on Technology at the end of each chapter offering TONS of resources and ideas that can be found online. This book is laid out perfectly! The combination of reading material, examples, graphs and charts makes it very easy to complete a chapter. I usually reach the end of the chapter without even realizing it. This textbook is SO up to date, progressive and unlike other texts. I appreciate that it includes technology as a valid student learning style. The Transformed Counselor is an ideal text for an introductory course in this field. I feel like everything I have read has been so valuable, there is no waste or necessary material within the text. I could immediately put into practice what I have learned by the end of each chapter. The text is so thorough, yet so simple to read and understand. I am an Academic Advisor pursing my Masters degree and I WISH my students textbooks were of this quality and clarity. Dahir and Stone have done an excellent job. I 100% recommend this book! You will learn so much!

While the book is in fairly good condition, an orange marker was used to 'highlight', however, the marker was not a 'highlighter' pen, therefore, it's a bit distracting when reading.

I received an email a week after purchasing the item stating that when I purchased the item they had already sold it. I looked the very day that I received that email and it is stating available. Very misleading and lack of communication is concerning.