This special issue of the Journal of School-Based Counseling Policy and Evaluation presents the outcomes of the research of a team of international scholars seeking to better understand the nature of the variability of school-based counseling practice across countries and the contextual determinants of this variability. A lead article describes a large, ten-nation, factor analytic study of school-based counselors’ ratings on the International Survey of School-Based Counseling Activities (ISSCA) that identified five dimensions that describe cross-national variability. Five articles use this five-dimensional framework to describe the mode of practice for school-based counseling within a single country (India, Kenya, Malta, Nigeria, and the United States) and to organize a discussion of the contextual factors related to these modes of practice. One article used the five-dimensional framework to compare the modes of practice in two countries (Costa Rica and Venezuela). The last article reported the results of two separate factor analyses from respondents in Hong Kong and supported the validity and utility of the five dimensions presented in the lead article. Implications, future directions and limitations were discussed relating to the promotion of cross-national, comparative research in school-based counseling