School Guidance and Counseling in an International Context: A Reaction Paper

This article discusses three articles on the development of school guidance and counseling in an international context. The development of school guidance work as well as issues that arose in two Asian countries, Japan and South Korea, are presented by Yagi (2008) and Lee and Yang (2008) whereas Gysbers (2008) presents the rationale, practice, and results of the implementation of individual student planning in the United States. An overview of the articles suggests that there is continuous development in the positive, strength-based approach to school counseling in place of the traditional deficit and remedial approach. The issue of resources which include human resources, financial resources, and political resources (Gysbers & Henderson, 2006) is also discussed because of its importance and relevance to the development of school guidance and counseling in recent decades.