The use of motivational interviewing within school counseling programs for academically unmotivated eighth grade students

Graduation date: 2011School counselors are challenged with creating a wide range of programs to\ud address three developmental domains: personal/social, career, and academic, with an\ud increasing requirement to provide accurate and sufficient data substantiating their\ud professional contributions to students’ academic achievement. At the same time, the\ud professional literature reports that during adolescence there is a documented decline in\ud academic motivation for an alarming percent of students. As a result, at-risk students are\ud often referred to school counselors with a brief comment, capable but unmotivated. Such\ud referrals leave school counselors in want of strategies to enhance students’ motivation for\ud academic success. Finding a strategy that is effective with a diverse student caseload,\ud enhances a counselor's efficiency and overall impact on students' achievement and\ud successful school completion, which ultimately benefits students and society. Such a\ud strategy, Motivational Interviewing (MI) was developed as a client-centered method for\ud therapeutic work with addictive behaviors. Motivational Interviewing attempts to\ud promote behavior change by building intrinsic motivation, through amplifying and\ud clarifying discrepancies between a client's behaviors and values or goals. Literature from\ud counseling and education suggests that MI may have applications over a variety of\ud counseling settings.\ud A literature review discusses concerns related to student achievement, describes\ud motivation as a primary component of academic achievement, documents a need for\ud interventions that improve the academic motivation of adolescents, provides information\ud on the new vision for school counseling programs, emphasizes the challenges faced by\ud counselors working with academically unmotivated students, describes MI as an\ud intervention strategy, and suggests that MI may be appropriately used with adolescents in\ud academic settings. A multiple baseline research study attempted to identify if capable,\ud yet underachieving students could enhance their academic motivation and academic\ud success by participating in Motivational Interviewing sessions. Results of this study\ud documented that for two of the three participants, work production increased after MI\ud sessions