Increasing Math Assignment Completion Using Solution-Focused Brief Counseling

Solution-focused brief counseling (SFBC) is an efficient and direct approach to therapy that emphasizes problem identification and solutions. A multiple-baseline-across-participants design was used to evaluate the effects of a SFBC intervention on mathematics assignment completion and accuracy across six fifth-grade students who were failing math. The majority of the participants showed an immediate improvement in assignments completed and these improvements were generally maintained. Although intervention accuracy rates were higher than baseline accuracy rates, they continued to remain fairly low across phases. Discussion focuses on the utility of SFBC as an academic intervention in school settings. Strengths and limitations of the current study are addressed along with implications for practice and future research.