Counselors as Advocates: Effects of a Pilot Project Designed to Develop Advocacy Knowledge and Confidence in Trainees
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33043/JSACP.9.2.79-94Keywords:
Advocacy, Counselor preparation, Multicultural, Social justice, TrainingAbstract
While there has been increased attention to advocacy within counseling and counseling psychology, it has been noted that trainees generally feel unprepared to engage in advocacy and do not participant e in this type of work to a large extent, even with increased age or professional experience). The qualitative study summarizes the findings of a project within a graduate multicultural counseling course designed to increase trainee knowledge and confidence related to advocacy. This project required students (N = 19) to complete individual advocacy projects in the community, with opportunities for self-reflection and evaluation of their progress throughout the semester. Student reflection responses about the effects of this project were analyzed using methods from Grounded Theory by a collaborative research team. This process resulted in a core category of responses that included expanded definitions of advocacy, increased self-confidence regarding advocacy work, obstacles encountered, and reactions to the course assignment. Implications and future directions are discussed.Downloads
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
By submitting to JSACP, the author(s) agree to the terms of the Author Agreement. Beginning in 2018, all authors retain copyrights associated with their article contributions and agree to make such contributions available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license upon publication in JSACP. Copyrights to articles published prior to 2018 have been transferred from the authors to JSACP.