The Education Trust, a national nonprofit dedicated to equity in education, implemented the Transforming School Counseling Initiative in the late 1990s to encourage school counselors to take on a more proactive, advocacy-based approach to supporting students – especially those from under-resourced communities.
This initiative outlined five tenets – leadership, advocacy, collaboration, counseling and coordination, and data and assessments – to guide school counselors’ work.
Assistant Professor Erin Mason, doctoral student Adrianne Robertson and colleagues at the University of Florida, Pennsylvania State University and American University co-authored an article in Teaching and Supervision in Counseling that updates and expands the five tenets to incorporate anti-racism practices.
“We view anti-racism as deliberate steps that school counselors take to provide equitable opportunities for all students on an individual and systemic level,” they wrote. “We understand much of this work to happen in a professional context, however, we also believe that school counseling professionals can and must combat racism in their personal contexts as well — within themselves and among others.”
To achieve this, the authors outline several changes that university-level counselor education programs can implement to ensure future school counselors have a firm anti-racist foundation when they enter the field.
This includes challenging students to reflect on their personal beliefs and biases, reviewing course materials to ensure a diverse range of voices are represented, and incorporating advocacy skills into coursework and internship experiences, among other recommendations.
“While the context of every graduate program is unique, anti-racism must be foundational to all school counselor preparation,” Mason, Robertson and their colleagues wrote. “Anti-racist school counselor preparation is essential to evolving the profession as a whole and shifting the role to one that is as skilled in addressing systems as it is in counseling students.”
About the Researchers
Erin Mason
Department of Counseling and Psychological Services
Erin Mason is a Georgia State University graduate and an assistant professor in the Department of Counseling and Psychological Services. She practiced as a school counselor for 13 years in the metro-Atlanta area. After earning her Ph.D., she spent nine years as a faculty member in the counseling program in the College of Education at DePaul University in Chicago. As a researcher, author and presenter, Mason seeks to reach both practitioner and scholarly audiences. Her primary area of interest is the relationship between professional identity and professional practice in school counseling. Mason’s research has resulted in a body of work on topics including leadership, advocacy, anti-racism, evidence-based practice and the use of technology.
Adrianne Robertson
Department of Counseling and Psychological Services
Adrianne Robertson is a doctoral student in the Department of Counseling and Psychological Services’ counselor education and practice program. She is a recipient of the National Board for Certified Counselors Minority Fellowship, which is designed to strengthen the infrastructure that engages diverse individuals in counseling and increases the number of professional counselors providing effective, culturally competent services to underserved populations. She was also one of four Georgia State University students selected to participate in the inaugural Gates Notes Deep Dive, a virtual discussion series hosted by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that explores subjects in depth.
Citation
Mason, E., Robertson, A., Gay, J., Clarke, N., and Holcomb-McCoy, C. "Antiracist School Counselor Preparation: Expanding on the Five Tenets of the Transforming School Counseling Initiative." Teaching and Supervision in Counseling, Vol. 3, Iss. 2, Article 2. https://doi.org/10.7290/tsc030202.