Intro to Counseling and Guidance

The links below lead to general collections of policy information for educators at the state and federal level.

Keep in mind that the policies of the individual school district may be more specific than policies at the state level. School district policy is also an important consideration in decision-making.

Tips on locating school district policies:

1. Look up the school district's website directly.
2. Policy information can most often be found under sections on the Board of Education for the district.
3. Look for general policies by topic as well as policies specifically for counselors (for example, see general substance abuse policies for cases involving student drug or alcohol abuse).
4. If policy information is unavailable online for any reason, consider looking for contact information for the Board of Education and reaching out to its members directly.

At the higher education level, college or university policies can usually be found via faculty and staff portals on the institution's website.

Google Advanced Search is a valuable tool in specifically looking for key topics within a website, such as a Department of Education or school district website.

1. In the "site or domain" field on Google Advanced Search, enter the site on which you wish to search. (Ex.: "nj.gov" "state.nj.us/education")
2. Under "Find pages with...," use the fields to add as many key words or phrases as you want to look for. Be sure to use the appropriate field for each type of word or phrase.
3. Click Advanced Search to search within the site.

In the example below, "drug abuse" has been entered in the "this exact word or phrase" field, "counseling" and "counselors" have been entered in the "any of these words" field, and "state.nj.us/education" has been entered in the "site or domain" field. This will search for any pages on the New Jersey DOE website that contain the exact phrase "drug abuse" and either the word "counseling" or "counselors."

Exploring the scholarly and professional literature in educational counseling may reveal information about best practices, and even examples of other case studies similar to yours. It may be worth investigating library databases for journal articles that may help you.

The links below lead to library databases that include journal articles relevant to educational counseling. Try searching in several or all of these databases for best results.