1. Advancing Social Justice
Abstract
Social injustices pose barriers to the health and well-being of many clients. In the last several decades, competencies for multicultural counseling have been defined. However, these frameworks have not been expanded to include competencies for social justice or to assess practitioner attitudes, knowledge, or skills in this area. Social justice competencies aim to move applied practice beyond individual client empowerment to community empowerment, advocacy, and activities designed to impact the systems that support both privilege and oppression based on gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, ability, social class, age, and other cultural identities. This study is a comparative, cross-national study of career counsellors’ competencies related to social justice.
Advancing Social Justice
in Career Counselling
Dr. Sandra Collins, Athabasca University;
Dr. Nancy Arthur, University of Calgary,
Dr. Mary McMahon, Queensland University, and
Suzie Bisson, University of Calgary
Findings
Key findings from the needs assessment, barriers assessment, and critical incidents:
Implications
Career practitioners’ perspective on the importance of social justice to career development is higher than their perceived competence levels.
Career practitioners’ knowledge and skills tend to be focused predominantly on work with individual clients even though their attitudes are broader.
Career practitioners appear to be disempowered in regards to advancement of the social justice agenda.
Most career practitioners are familiar with the concept of social justice; however, most lack professional training in social justice practice.
Objectives
To develop an assessment tool for evaluating social justice competencies of career counsellors.
To document best of practices for integrating social justice into career interventions.
To document barriers for career counsellors to applying social justice competencies in career interventions.
To conduct a needs assessment of career counsellors to inform future pre-service and continuing education programming.
Assessment of Social Justice Competencies
Practitioners placed the most importance on social justice attitudes and the least importance on social justice skills. Similarly, they rated themselves as more competent on attitudes than on knowledge and least competent on social justice skills. There was consistent correlation between importance and practitioner competence for attitudes but no correlation for almost half of the skills.
Importance
Competence
Correlation
Attitudes
Moderately high to very high
Average to moderately high
All but one
Knowledge
Average
Most
Skills
Average to very high
Moderately low to average
Just over half
Defining Social Justice
Key principles of social justice supported:
1. fair and equitable distribution of resources
and opportunities;
2. direct action to ameliorate discrimination,
oppression, and marginalization within
society; and
3. full inclusion and participation of all
members of society in a way that enables
them to reach their full potential and
human rights.
Familiarity with Social Justice Issues
Only 14% of participants were very familiar;
53% were somewhat familiar; and
28% were somewhat or very unfamiliar.
Social Justice Interventions (Critical Incidents)
Most target change at level of individual client;
Less than 1/3 targeted community change;
Less than 1/5 targeted organizational change;
Less than 1/10 targeted broader systems.
Barriers to Social Justice Agenda
Lack of time;
Lack of financial resources;
Lack of professional influence or power;
Lack of training;
Lack of support from colleagues; and
Lack of support from supervisor.
Social Justice Competencies - Core Factors
Equal worth and rights of all people;
Professional responsibility for social injustices;
Respect for client perspectives on meanings and limitations of career;
Relationship of cultural group membership to social and economic privilege;
Systemic barriers and facilitators of social justice;
Perpetuation of inequities through organizational, community, and broader social, economic, and political systems;
Relationship of cultural identity to career decision-making;
Impact of discrimination on career development;
Expansion of professional roles;
Client empowerment and cultural autonomy;
Assessment and intervention targeting organizational, community, and broader social, economic, and political systems;
Ethical decision-making related to social justice interventions; and
Advocacy for social justice agenda within the profession and beyond.
Training in Social Justice
38% had attended a workshop on social justice; 27% had attended a course.
Method
Instrument: A review of career, multicultural, and social justice literature lead to a matrix of social justice competencies. A modified Delphi panel of ten experts provided content validation. The final version of the online questionnaire had 41 competency statements. Perceived barriers to social justice intervention and critical incident samples were included.
Participants: 209 career practitioners participated, 87% from Canada and 13% from Australia. Canadian data is presented here. Participants were predominantly women (77%), in the year old bracket (90%).
Data collection: Data was collected through an online survey. Participants were asked to rate each competency statement on two Likert scales for importance to career counseling and practitioner competence and to provide both positive and negative critical incidents.
Conclusions
The social justice agenda requires professionals to examine social structures that perpetuate power differences and to make an effort to ameliorate social inequities.
Career counselling is limited if it cannot deal with fundamental issues of injustice that adversely impact clients.
Applying a lens of social justice optimizes client success and changes the conditions that create client distress.
Career practitioners must be educated and empowered to engage in social justice interventions in their work with individual clients and to promoting change in social, economic, and political conditions.
Contact Information
Dr. Sandra Collins
Athabasca University
Phone:
Acknowledgement: This research was made possible through a grant provided by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.