A National Survey of Social Justice Engagement Among Professional Counselors

Abstract

This exploratory survey examined the relationship between 169 professional counselors’ social justice engagement and demographic, personality, and contextual factors. A hierarchical regression analysis indicated that counselors’ sexual orientation, trait extraversion, and postgraduate training predicted their level of engagement in social justice behaviors. The authors recommend that counselor training in social justice be focused on quality, rather than quantity, and that personality and identity characteristics of individuals be incorporated into pedagogical practices.

Undue Police Violence Toward African Americans: An Analysis of Professional Counselors' Training and Perceptions

“…Despite the awareness and knowledge that many participants demonstrated through accurate recognition of UPV and its impact, most participants (95.4%) identified having no policy or procedure for addressing UPV or were unsure about existence of such policies and procedures. Contrary to Na and Fietzer's (2020) findings that many counselors engage in various acts of social justice, results from this study indicate that most participants have not advocated for those affected by UPV. Specifically, there was far less advocacy in the community/school/organization and public arena domains than in the client/student domain.…”

“…Although their study was not specific to counselors, it suggests that holding beliefs about the importance of UPV may not be sufficient on its own in demonstrating skills. Additionally, Na and Fietzer's (2020) finding that postgraduate training in social justice is related to social justice engagement supports the assumption that developing knowledge in social justice may be connected to developing skills in social justice. Thus, to develop knowledge and skills in addressing UPV, counselor beliefs on topics associated with UPV may be an important area of focus for counseling practitioners, supervisors, and educators.…”

“…The lack of evidence of validity of the Awareness of Undue Police Violence Survey is another limitation to the study. Furthermore, unlike Na and Fietzer's (2020) survey of social justice engagement, our study did not define or specify advocacy or the domains of the ACA Advocacy Competencies (Toporek & Daniels, 2018). As a result, lower rates of engagement in advocacy found in our study could have been confounded by a lack of knowledge around what is considered as advocacy.…”

Social justice outcomes and professional counseling: An 11‐year content analysis

“…Early formulations of multicultural competence emphasized the need for counselors to eschew discrimination against clients from historically marginalized communities, with less emphasis on changing the social context that fosters their marginalization and oppression (Lee et al., 2018). Although more recent perspectives on multicultural counseling and social justice stress the synthesis of these two complementary philosophies (see Ratts & Greenleaf, 2018; Ratts & Pedersen, 2014), the practical application of social justice tenets to counseling remains an under‐examined and under‐theorized focus area (Hays, 2020; Na & Fietzer, 2020). A lack of focus on the application may be due in part to the lack of professional consensus on what outcomes should result from counseling based on social justice principles, and what interventions are best suited to realizing those outcomes with specific groups, situations, or contexts (Fietzer & Ponterotto, 2015).…”

Introduction to the Special Issue

“…In the last empirical work, Na and Fietzer (2020) examine relationships between social justice engagement and a host of factors (e.g., personality, personal experiences of social justice) in their article, “A National Survey of Social Justice Engagement Among Professional Counselors.” The authors encourage us to examine best practices to effectively train future generations of counselors in using the MSJCC and explore how current counselors can retrain to ensure the implementation of the MSJCC toward real and lasting social change.…”