School Counseling for the Achievement Gap: Attitudes and Beliefs of School Counseling Graduate Students About Culturally Responsive School Counseling

Abstract

School counselors are uniquely positioned to mitigate gaps in opportunity, achievement, and attainment for culturally and linguistically diverse students. However, culturally responsive school counseling is a relatively new field and many practicing school counselors lack requisite knowledge and skills. This heuristic, critical qualitative inquiry explores the attitudes and beliefs of school counselors-in-training in a school counseling graduate program at a Midwestern, urban university focused on equity and social justice. Participants were chosen based on their commitment to multicultural competence, social justice, and culturally proficient consultation and advocacy. Results revealed the importance of cultural responsiveness, bias awareness and mitigation, advocacy, and critical, reflective practice. In addition, participants shared beliefs that all students deserve a facilitative learning environment, that the world is fundamentally unjust, that children’s family experiences are formative, and that they are the experts of their own experiences.