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The purpose of this paper is to discuss the role of both the school counselor and the school psychologist in preparing students in urban school settings for college and/or the workforce. Throughout this paper, the authors discuss how collaboration is critical to ensuring students are successful at every school level (e.g., elementary, middle and high) to avail themselves of various postsecondary opportunities upon graduation. The authors give recommendations for practice and future research to implement and increase knowledge around collaboration between school counselors and school psychologists in preparing students in urban school settings to be college- and career-ready.

This is a conceptual paper on school counselors and school psychologists using the Eight Components of College and Career Readiness Framework to collaborate on preparing students for postsecondary options.

With support from key stakeholders like administrators, teachers and parents, school counselors and school psychologists can work collaboratively to increase students’ college and career readiness. For example, school counselors and school psychologists may start by creating and implementing a needs assessment, as it relates to the developmental tasks of students (i.e. self-regulation, self-efficacy, self-competence) that must be negotiated to ensure college and career readiness. School counselors and school psychologists should also examine out-of-school suspension, expulsion, school arrest and disciplinary referral data (Carter et al., 2014).

Collaboration around college and career readiness is important to the academic success and future of students in urban school settings. School counselors and school psychologists complement each other in preparing students for college and the workforce because their training has prepared both for addressing academic needs, assessment, mental health issues, career development, behavioral concerns and social–emotional needs of students (American School Counselor Association, 2012; National Association of School Psychologists, 2014). Further, school counselors and school psychologists are in a pivotal position to create a college-going culture by using evidence-based activities, curricula and practices.

Little attention is given to black male experiences and decision-making process around college-going. A qualitative study (interpretive phenomenological analysis [IPA]) was conducted using a strengths-based perspective to understand the experiences of three first-generation black men college students attending a predominately white institution. Superordinate themes include perceived benefits to attending college, barriers to college admission and attendance and influential programs and supports. Recommendations for school counselors helping black males are included.

The authors used a narrative approach to illustrate the stories and experiences captured by the three young men who participated in the study. Hays and Singh (2012) suggested using a narrative approach for telling the stories of marginalized groups. IPA (Smith, 1996) was the approach used to identify superordinate themes, because the authors wanted to better understand the participants’ K-16 experiences. As a qualitative approach, IPA provides detailed examinations of personal lived experiences on its own terms rather than pre-existing theoretical preconceptions.

The participants’ accounts clustered around three superordinate themes: perceived benefits to college, barriers to college admission and attendance and influential programs and supports.

Although there are studies that provide insight on the factors that impact first-generation, black men’s success in attending college, there are few studies that have used a strengths-based perspective to investigate key experiences that lead to college enrollment. Those experiences that lead first-generation black male to attend college are pivotal and provide insight into important points of intervention and support. School counselors and other educators can use these insights to inform practices and the creation of supports for black men in their respective schools.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how multicultural counseling students expressed their understandings about themselves and others in relation to diversity. The authors wanted to know how cognitive development, affective development, and sense of self-evolved during a multicultural counseling class to examine all aspects of growth.

Themes from a phenomenological qualitative analysis of journals from a multicultural counseling class suggest that students struggle with cognitive challenges (dealing with ambiguity, internalizing multicultural concepts, and self- and other-acceptance) and affective challenges (anger, guilt, and fear) in attaining multicultural growth.

This expanded view of multicultural growth that includes affective challenges can fill a prior gap in understanding how multicultural learning occurs.

Implications are explored for counselor educators and supervisors.

Recent use of journals to provide empirical insights into student growth include a study by Cohen et al. (2015), who used qualitative analyses of journal contents to examine growth in student attitudes toward geriatric clients, death, and dying. Knowing that student journals can provide insights into changing multicultural attitudes, and that qualitative methodology can provide tools for analysis, the authors decided that it might be possible to better understand multicultural growth by studying the journals written in a multicultural counseling class.

The purpose of this article is to explore and classify the pattern of themes and challenges in developing socially sustainable supply chains.

The methodology is based on a systematic review of the peer-reviewed literature to explore what major themes and challenges have been discussed and the significant gaps where opportunities for further research can be found.

In total, four categories of themes were identified, namely, human-centric, focal organization-centric, supply chain-centric and governance-centric. Challenges were classified into seven categories, namely, inadequate and asymmetric knowledge, difficulties of operationalization, shifting the values, subjectivity in evaluation, governance complexity, difficulties of small- and medium-sized enterprises and sustainability fade.

The focus of the article is on the social pillar of sustainable development in the context of supply chains. A more holistic systematic investigation of synergy of all the three pillars/bottom lines of sustainable development (economic, environmental and social) can be an opportunity for further research.

Taking a more holistic view of the pattern of currently discussed themes and challenges may be beneficial in increasing the absorptive capacity of industrial and business practitioners, by accumulating and assimilating external knowledge, when they design and operationalize innovative strategies in developing sustainable supply chains.

This article may increase awareness about the social responsibilities of supply chains actors and stakeholders in different scales. It may also guide managers, decision makers and practitioners to better understand the difficulties, obstacles or dilemmas that can hinder the sustainable development of supply chains. The results section presents a framework driven from the emerged themes, and the discussion section provides propositions for tackling the challenges and opportunities for further research.