Exploring Elementary School Counselor Self-Efficacy to Improve Graduate Training and Retention

The role of an elementary school counselor is vital to a school system. Still, school counselors’ roles are often misunderstood, leading to underutilization of skills and ultimately leading to burnout. School counselor training programs are tasked to help future school counselors feel efficacy in their role. However, all school buildings are different; school building leadership can perceive the role differently. The purpose of this qualitative manuscript is to explore school counselors’ perceptions of how self-efficacy is experienced and manifested in their profession and use these findings to make recommendations for counselors and counselor training to ensure preparedness for entering the profession and successful longevity in the job. Findings suggest that (a) quality in relationships, (b) trust and support of administration, and (c) freedom to define the role all contributed to self-efficacy. The hope is that this information can be used by graduate training programs to help build a foundation for their future school counseling graduate’s success.