What Skills and Abilities Are Essential for Counseling on Learning Difficulties and Learning Strategies?

Abstract

Counseling parents in supporting their children’s learning processes is increasingly emphasized in research on parental involvement and teacher professionalization as a central task of teachers. However, to date there have been few approaches of developing theoretical or psychometric models that describe the internal structure of teachers’ counseling competence in terms of specific skills and abilities as well as of explaining inter-individual differences. The purpose of the current study was to establish a model of teachers’ counseling competence in parent–teacher talks concerning students’ learning difficulties and learning strategies. In all, 357 teachers participated in the study, which was conducted by means of a scenario test. Structural equation modeling revealed the appropriateness of a second-order, four-dimensional model. Results provide numerous implications for teacher education and future research on teacher professionalization.