Abstract:
School counselors are challenged with creating a wide range of programs to
address three developmental domains: personal/social, career, and academic, with an
increasing requirement to provide accurate and sufficient data substantiating their
professional contributions to students’ academic achievement. At the same time, the
professional literature reports that during adolescence there is a documented decline in
academic motivation for an alarming percent of students. As a result, at-risk students are
often referred to school counselors with a brief comment, capable but unmotivated. Such
referrals leave school counselors in want of strategies to enhance students’ motivation for
academic success. Finding a strategy that is effective with a diverse student caseload,
enhances a counselor's efficiency and overall impact on students' achievement and
successful school completion, which ultimately benefits students and society. Such a
strategy, Motivational Interviewing (MI) was developed as a client-centered method for
therapeutic work with addictive behaviors. Motivational Interviewing attempts to
promote behavior change by building intrinsic motivation, through amplifying and
clarifying discrepancies between a client's behaviors and values or goals. Literature from
counseling and education suggests that MI may have applications over a variety of
counseling settings.
A literature review discusses concerns related to student achievement, describes
motivation as a primary component of academic achievement, documents a need for
interventions that improve the academic motivation of adolescents, provides information
on the new vision for school counseling programs, emphasizes the challenges faced by
counselors working with academically unmotivated students, describes MI as an
intervention strategy, and suggests that MI may be appropriately used with adolescents in
academic settings. A multiple baseline research study attempted to identify if capable,
yet underachieving students could enhance their academic motivation and academic
success by participating in Motivational Interviewing sessions. Results of this study
documented that for two of the three participants, work production increased after MI
sessions.
