<p>ABSTRACT
BELIEFS AND KNOWLEDGE OF SCHOOL COUNSELORS AND SCHOOL PSYCHOLOGISTS ABOUT GRADE RETENTION
DEBRA HARO
Grade retention long has been a controversial approach to supporting struggling students. The current study used a survey method to investigate the knowledge and beliefs of school psychologists and school counselors as to the efficacy of grade retention. In total 383 school psychologists and 108 school counselors participated in the survey which consisted of 20 Belief Statements and13 Knowledge questions. Results show that school psychologists? beliefs are more similar to research that has been done over the past several years than the beliefs of the school counselors in the current sample. The results of the Belief portion of the survey indicated that the school counselors in the sample favor retaining students for lack of maturity and poor attendance more than the school psychologists do, with the school psychologists? beliefs being more in line with research. Both groups agreed with the ideas that a student should only be retained once and students who are receiving support from a special education teacher should not be retained.
On the Knowledge portion of the survey the school psychologists obtained an average of 67.644 and the average for the school counselors was 44.515, with a statistically significant difference between the means. This indicates that the school psychologists have a significantly higher amount of knowledge on the subject of grade retention.
The school psychologists and school counselors were asked to identify their sources of knowledge in order to determine if they were practical or propositional. The school psychologists were fairly split on their responses, with 51 percent indicating that they had obtained their knowledge through a propositional source. The school counselors indicated that 84.3 percent had obtained their knowledge through practical means, which may explain the difference in beliefs and levels of knowledge.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PROQUEST/oai:pqdtoai.proquest.com:3708128 |
| Date | 16 July 2015 |
| Creators | Haro, Debra |
| Publisher | Northern Arizona University |
| Source Sets | ProQuest.com |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | thesis |
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