Special Needs Report Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Special Needs Report - Essay Example Solution-focused counseling involves a clear set of beliefs about students and an identifiable set of questioning techniques. The central belief is that it is more productive and effective to focus on students' skills, abilities and resources rather than on their weaknesses or what is going wrong and why. Other important beliefs include the following (Gass and Gillis, 1995): The main skill in solution-focused counseling is the use of effective questioning. Presented below are several types of questions that are illustrative of how a positive focus on solutions, rather than problems, can be achieved with students and others who are 'stuck' (based on Manthei, 1997). It is not unusual for students to begin experiencing positive changes in their difficulties in between the problem being identified and the time when they talk to the teacher about it. These 'pre-counseling improvements' often signal ways in which the student has begun successfully dealing with the problem, even if unwittingly so. If such change has occurred, teachers should explore the reasons for those improvements and identify the helpful factors over which the student has control. The three approaches presented so far, the problem-solving and solution-focused approaches and the application of listening skills in counseling on the run, are ones which teachers can use effectively to deal with the majority of situations in schools, which require counseling. They are also ones which teachers can learn relatively quickly, for example, after reading this book and attending a one-day workshop. However, there are a wide range of other counseling techniques or intervention strategies which can be very useful in the school setting, given the right circumstances. These strategies are more specialized ones, which require more extensive information than can be presented here and so require further reading. Teachers have successfully implemented many of these strategies with little or no additional training. However, ideally, they should obtain training on the strategies from qualified counselors and then only use them in settings in which ongoing guidance from colleagues with experience of using the strategies are available. Brief outlines of a selection of such strategies, with suggestions for further reading, are presented below. More information on each of the strategies and a variety of other strategies which can be used in schools can be found in Thompson and Rudolph (2000) and Vernon (1993). Cognitive therapy This is an approach which is based on the view that the feelings and behavior of students are influenced by their thoughts or beliefs (Hughes, 1988). Therefore, changing their