Academic Probation Advising Training November 1, 2022

Micro-Counseling Skills & Student Development Theories Guide

Below is a brief guide to “micro-counseling” skills, otherwise known as helping skills. Micro-counseling
skills are a series of strategies and techniques that can inform your practice with students and more
effectively help others. While some of these skills may seem like common sense, I have found that being
deliberate and intentional in engaging in these practices help me feel more confident in my abilities and
help meetings with students run more smoothly.
Listed below is also a brief guide to student development theories which may be helpful in this position.
Student development theories are research-based theories which can provide a framework to help foster
student development and growth. They can be used to guide interactions with students to ensure our
communication and leadership provides value to the student within a supportive environment.

Micro-Counseling Skills:
Active Listening:

 Effective listening requires the helper to adopt the students frame of reference as completely as
possible.
 Effective listeners embrace and express an attitude of unconditional positive regard and
temporarily suspend their personal assumptions, judgements, and values.
 Active listening requires helpers to pay close attention to verbal and nonverbal messages they
receive as well as the ones they send.
 Silence is an important element of listening and attending and is one of the most effective skills
for helpers to cultivate.
 Effective listeners embrace the slow place necessary to allow students to tell their stories and give
their full attention to the helpee.

Starting and Structuring:

 Good beginnings increase the chances of good middles and good endings. It is important to start
the helping process in friendly and functional ways.
 Structuring entails explaining the helping process – this can help make the process more
comprehensible and less threatening.
o “We have about 30 minutes together, today we will be discussing ____.”
 Permissions to talk are brief statement inviting helpees to tell their stories and indicating that you
are prepared to listen.
o “Tell me more about ____.”
o “Where would you like to start?”

Reflecting and Summarizing:

 Reflecting is a general technique of rearticulating the students verbal and nonverbal

communication with the goal of achieving an accurate, shared understanding of the student’s
experience.
Academic Probation Advising Training November 1, 2022

o “You feel ___ because ____.”

o “You are struggling with ____ because of ____.”
 Summarizing the students’ thoughts or feelings can help establish order and add some direction to
the conversation. To do this, helpers identify a thought or idea that has emerged and rephrases it
back to the student to convey the core message.

Questioning and Clarifying:

 A helper may find it necessary to begin asking questions to gain deeper insight into the student’s
reasoning for certain actions or feelings about specific circumstances or to guide the student to
focus.
 Questioning and clarifying can also be helpful to clarify something that the student has said that
could be interpreted in various ways. As a helper, it is important to understand the students
meaning accurately; therefore, it is the helper’s responsibility to clarify any potential confusion or
misunderstanding.
 Open-ended questions are more productive than closed-ended questions.
o “How” or “What” are more productive.
 Avoid asking a question beginning with a “why.”
o People often find it difficult to answer why they think or feel the way they do, making
“why” questions unproductive.
 An effective approach to questioning is to offer a restatement or reflection first and then follow
up with the question.
 Examples of questions could include:
o “Tell me more about your situation.”
o “What would be helpful to you in this situation?”
o “What can you do to help yourself?”
o “How do you think you could improve your situation?”
o “What resources have you used to improve your situation?”

Interpreting and Confronting:

 Interpretations are helper statements that provide ways of thinking about the dilemma that the
student may not have considered before.
 Helping students identify and confront their blind spots is critical to helping them move towards
more effective patterns of thinking and behaving.
 Confrontations address inconsistencies between student statements.
o “You say that you are experiencing ___ but you continue to _____.”

Developing Goals and Action Plans:

 Once the helping process has generated a clear understanding of the student dilemma, the helpers
next task is to aid in identifying and specifying goals that can alleviate the dilemma.
Academic Probation Advising Training November 1, 2022

 Goal-setting guidelines create goals that are personal and positive, challenging, stated as clear and
concrete outcomes, specific in direction, achievable and sustainable, measurable, attainable
within a reasonable time frame, and of value to the student.
 Developing an action plan begins with first helping the student generate an array of possible paths
or courses of action through brainstorming.
 Asking questions can be beneficial in conceptualizing goals and actions.
o “What would your life look like if this dilemma did not exist?”
o “In an ideal world, how would you handle this situation?”

Making Referrals:

 Some interactions reach a point where the helper’s level of skill, knowledge, and/or responsibility
are not appropriate or adequate to address the student’s dilemma, and the student would be better
served by continuing the process with a different helper.
 To make effective referrals, the helper must be able to accurately understand and acknowledge
the limits of their own expertise and recognize when a helping interaction requires different or
greater assistance than they are able to provide.
 Accurately assessing a student’s dilemma is central to making a successful referral.
 Helpers must offer referrals with the same care as interpretations and confrontations, bearing in
mind that students may feel threatened by the suggestion that their dilemma requires expert or
professional attention.
 Helpers must have a strong understanding of campus and community resources available to make
successful referrals.

Student Development Theories:

Baxter-Magolda’s Theory of Self-Authorship:

 Self-authorship is defined as “the capacity to internally define a coherent belief system and
identity that coordinates engagement in mutual relations with the larger world.”
o It can also be described as the ability to know yourself, know what you know, reflect
upon it, and base judgments on it.
 There are three elements on self-authorship – trusting the internal voice, building an internal
foundation, and securing internal commitments.
o Trusting the internal voice: gaining control over thoughts and responses, leads to greater
confidence in internal voice.
o Building an internal foundation: developing a personal philosophy to guide actions.
o Securing internal commitments: living life authentically, internal voice and foundation
are integrated with external world.
 Self-authorship is continually developing and happening throughout one’s life.
 The theory of self-authorship can be best relied on in instances of students struggling to make
decisions such as deciding to change their major or determining whether to stay on campus or
move home. We can use this theory to guide students to reflect on their interests and passions
and to begin to trust their internal voice and make decisions for themselves.
Academic Probation Advising Training November 1, 2022

The Learning Partnerships Model:

 The learning partnerships model suggests that students are “knowers” and should be equal
participants in the construction of knowledge and learning.
 There are three core principles of the learning partnerships model: validating learners as knowers,
situating learning in learner’s own experience, and defining learning as mutually constructing
meaning.
o Validating learners as knowers: students should feel assured that their voices are
important and encourages students to share their ideas and viewpoints.
o Situate learning in learner’s own experience: it is important to recognize and
acknowledge that students bring personal experiences and diverse viewpoints into the
classroom.
 The learning partnerships model can be used both in and out of the classroom.
 In this position, I used the learning partnerships model when working with students to create a
plan of action to improve their situation and in turn grades. Rather than telling students what we
think is best for them, it is more beneficial to work together with the student and ask them to
reflect on their own experiences to determine what strategies will work best for them to improve
their status on academic probation.

Sanford’s Theory of Challenge and Support:

 Sanford’s theory proposes that students undergo significant personal growth and development in
college, much of which is influenced by the college environment itself.
 Sanford believed that for growth and personal development to occur, a student must have an
appropriate balance of challenge and support.
o This theory recognizes that the balance will change depending on the task.
 With too much support, the student will never really learn what they need to grow and develop.
 With too much challenge, the student will become frustrated and possibly quit trying.
 This theory is important to use in this position as students need a supportive environment to
unpack and discuss their struggles and situation. However, students also need an environment that
challenges them and holds them accountable for their actions and the consequences. By assessing
the students individual situation and determining the appropriate balance of challenge and
support, we can provide an environment that is productive and conducive to growth,

Astin’ Theory of Student Involvement Theory:

 The theory of student involvement proposes that students are more academically and socially
proficient the more they are involved in the academic and social aspects of college life.
o Involved students can be defined as those who participate actively in student
organizations, spend time on campus, interact with faculty outside of the classroom, and
devote time to studying.
 This theory focuses on the motivation and behavior of students, recognizing this as the integral
role of students time and the quality of available programs and resources.
 Astin stresses that involvement has a quantitative feature (the amount of time devoted by
students) and a qualitative feature (the seriousness with which students approach their
involvement).
Academic Probation Advising Training November 1, 2022

 The theory proposes if students invest significant amounts of time and approach academic and
campus life with seriousness, their overall learning will increase because they are emotionally
and physically invested in the outcomes.
 This theory can be difficult to utilize, as involvement and seriousness is something that must be
intrinsically desired by the student. However, this theory can be used in practice with students
who may be struggling to adjust to the university, who may struggle with motivation or interest,
or who may be looking to meet other likeminded students to spend time with which can in turn
help to improve their grades.

Scholossberg’s Transition Theory:

 Transition theory can be used to help students transition through an event or nonevent in their
lives.
o Such events or nonevents can be a result of change in relationships, routines,
assumptions, or roles.
 Transitions have specific meanings for each individual based on the type, context, and impact of
the change/transition.
o Type: anticipated, unanticipated, nonevent.
o Context: individual relationship to the transition, the setting.
o Impact: alterations to the individuals daily life.
 The transition process is described as reactions over time – moving in, moving through, and
moving out.
 To cope with the transition, Scholossberg’s theory pulls from four major factors: situation, self,
support, and strategies.
o Situation: timing of the situation, control, role changes, duration, previous experiences,
stress, etc.
o Self: personal characteristics which affect how an individual views life and their
situation.
o Support: type, function, and measurement of support. Who is there to help?
o Strategies: modifying the situation, control the meaning of the problem, aiding in
managing stress.
 Transition theory is helpful to pull from in situation where the student may be experiencing a
difficult transition into college. Having regular check-in’s may help to see where the student is at
in the transition as well as discussing the four S’s can be helpful in uncovering ways in which the
transition can be understood, viewed differently, supported, and moved through.

Hettler’s Model of Wellness:

 Hettler’s model of wellness proposes that students cannot develop psychosocially and
intellectually without wellness.
o Wellness is defined as a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being.
 Hettler’s model utilizes a holistic model of wellness that integrates six dimensions of a student’s
life: physical, intellectual, social/emotional, spiritual, environmental, and occupational.
Academic Probation Advising Training November 1, 2022

o Further, it proposes that each dimension requires a deliberate personal commitment and
time to reach an optimum level necessary for balance to fully experience learning and
development that is positive, healthy, and complex.
 This theory recognizes that students will struggle in their academic work, personal and social
lives, and career development without a critical understanding of the dimensions of wellness.
 This theory can be used when working with students who are struggling in any of these areas
which may be affecting their grades and overall life. It can be important to ask students questions
about their health, sleep cycle, eating habits, exercise, mental health, and so forth to determine
whether steps should be taken to improve any of these areas. It may be helpful to get students
connected with wellness resources on campus if you suspect students are struggling, such as
counseling and consultation services, health services, the wellness center, campus recreation,
huskie food pantry, etc.