The development of counseling as a profession in Italy has been moving at a slower pace when compared to the American context and can be traced back to the beginning of the 1990s. In contrast to the United States, where school counselors have played a distinct role in U.S. schools for the past 100 years and has evolved to include a wide range of activities, Italy does not have the tradition of counseling in schools, no equivalent practice has ever been applied and Italian schools are currently hampered by the lack of a proven model for the delivery of counseling services and by a lack of trained professional to provide counseling services. If counselors in Italian schools might have felt unnecessary in the past, nowadays students’ educational needs are becoming more multifaceted and so are the forms of distress that affect an always greater number of children, adolescents and young people. These emerging needs led to these questions: Could school counselor make a difference? Could school counselors be proactive leaders who are effective collaborators in advocating for the success and well-being of all students? There is some support suggesting that comprehensive counseling programs have positive effects on students’ social and emotional development (Gerler, 1985), their academic achievement and career development (Evans & Burck, 1992; Lapan, Gysbers, Hughey, & Arni, 1993; Clark & Stone, 2000). The paper presents a qualitative research conducted in different U.S schools in order to understand the role of school counselors. An empirical qualitative research is essential to understand the role of counselors from the ground-up. Empirical enquiry means that data collection was the starting point to develop concepts (Bassey: 1999) which I compared with theories emerged from the literature review. I worked on data in order to explore features, create interpretations and test for trustworthiness. The aim was to find out the best practices of U.S school-based counselor and valuated which elements could provide interesting answers to problems emerging in the Italian educational system.

This paper shows a research project carried out in the United States, at the National Center for School Counseling Outcome Research at the University of Massachusetts. The research project is a collective case study (Merriam, 2001) which involved 8 U.S. schools (elementary, middle, high) and 13 school counselors. The research instruments are qualitative and include: -observations of school counselors in action, in order to gain an in-depth knowledge of this theme (observations of events, acts, phisical setting, environment, self-observations); -interviews focused on some broad topics with school counselors, students and other school staff; -analysis of formal and informal documents used and written by school counselors. The method of analysis is qualitative and is based on the grounded theory process (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), which allowed me to develop key concepts regarding the role of counselors in schools.

The findings of the research showed what defines the profile of school counselors as leaders and highlighted the central role they play working with the whole school community. The categories indentified showed some best practices and the school counselor professional identity (e.g. tasks of school counselors, what services they provide, the needs they usually meet, ecc). The practices identified and the U.S. school counseling model are a useful starting point to define, develop and implement some school counseling guidelines and intervention practices that can be adapted to the Italian school context.