Critical consciousness of school counselors in Turkey

§ IJ ER International Journal of Social Sciences and Education Research ISSN: 2149-5939 Volume: 7(3), 2021 Online, https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/ijsser Critical consciousness of school counselors in Turkey Dilara Özel Research Assistant, Middle East Technical University, Faculty of Education, Ankara, Turkey, email: ozeldilaramail.com ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1250-599X Article Info Abstract Research Article Critical consciousness defines as the process of continuously reflecting upon and questioning how biases, assumptions, and cultural worldviews affect the ways of perceiving the difference and power dynamics between individuals. Counselors should provide objective counseling practices to clients, students, and families to have an ethical stand. ASCA (2016) stated that school counselors should examine their own biases and prejudices, and if they have their perceptions interfering with the counseling process, they should refer the clients. Thus, school counselors should develop critical consciousness to reflect upon these issues. Furthermore, they should understand the privilege and power dynamics inside society to evaluate their students and clients by considering the socio-political context to help them effectively. This study aims to understand how school counselors in Turkey use critical consciousness in their professional practices. In this study, 12 school counselors from different regions in Turkey are conducted semi-structured interviews about the issues and the needs they encounter inside the school in connection with the aim of the study. There are four main themes due to the interviews with school counselors: awareness, context, respect, praxis, empowerment, and transformation. Received:3 December 2020 Revised: 20 March 2021 Accepted: 23 May 2021 Keywords: Critical consciousness, Qualitative research, School counseling, Counseling, Content analysis 1. Introduction Critical consciousness is a process of questioning and reflecting the biases, assumptions, and cultural worldviews and how it affects how to perceive the difference and power dynamics inside the society (Sakamoto & Pitner, 2005). In other words, critical consciousness helps people to critically analyze their standpoints in society (Watts, Diemer & Voight, 2011). It includes critical thinking skills and the awareness of the biases and prejudices of oneself. Individuals start to question their role, function, and hierarchy by realizing the functions and roles inside the society. Therefore, critical consciousness paves the way for a better understanding of society and the person himself. Examining these different standpoints, such as identities and one’s locations in their private and professional life, can be considered the first step of developing critical consciousness (Reed, Newman, Suarez & Lewis, 1997). Individuals have many identities, including race, gender, and social class, which can be affected by the historical, socio-cultural, and political factors of the society that s/he live in. Individuals may have both oppressed and oppressor simultaneously, and bringing different social statuses for the person. These individuals have their reality, and they have their narratives as well. Therefore, each group evaluates the situations and events from their reality using their narratives. Critical consciousness allows realizing these roles and criticizing the narratives from a more objective standpoint. For example, a person who belongs to the subclass of society might have been marginalized during their daily life. On the other hand, when this person becomes a teacher and might be an oppressor inside a classroom towards their marginalized students. Thus, the teacher should become aware of their identities to help those children to create a more harmonious classroom. Critical consciousness has three vital components as critical reflection, political efficacy, and critical action. Critical reflection is about understanding the social inequalities, including economic, racial/ ethnic, and gender *This research has Ethics Committee Approval from Middle East Technical University with 21/11/2019 date and 443ODTU2019 number. This article was presented at 41st ISPA Conference: Empowering People for Lifelong Learning in Basel University, Switzerland on 9-12 July 2019. To cite this article: Özel, D. (2021). Critical Consciousness of School Counselors in Turkey. International Journal of Social Sciences and Education Research, 7 (3), 253-260. DOI: https://doi.org/10.24289/ijsser.947570 Copyright © 2021 by IJSSER ISSN: 2149-5939 254 International Journal of Social Sciences and Education Research, 7 (2021) discrimination, and systematically evaluating these inequalities. Political efficacy aims for social and political change and leads people to create a change in society. Critical action includes the changes of policies and institutional practices. The change in critical action refers to collective action (Watts et al., 2011). Therefore, critical consciousness starts with a critical reflection by examining the inequalities inside the society. Afterward, individuals may start to think about political action to transform the inequalities inside the society. The last step is to reunite with people who realize and want to change these inequalities. Therefore, critical action requires critical reflection and political efficacy at first. Freire’s perspective on critical consciousness integrates critical reflection, political efficacy, and critical action. Freire (1997) asserts that the relationship between reflection and action is reciprocal. Raising awareness and critically analyzing the social conditions are before the social change. As critical understanding and analysis occurs, people start to feel that they can change social conditions. Furthermore, when they change the social conditions and pave the way for a more just society, they understand social oppression. Therefore, social action and critical analysis have a double-faced structure. Freire (1973) indicates that ‘the more accurately men grasp true causality, the more critical their understanding of reality will be’ (p. 44). Thus, especially school should help to understand this reality and help people to act inside the society. 1.1. School counselors’ role and responsibilities According to the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) Code of Ethics (2016), school counselors are obligated to provide support and direction for all school stakeholders and inform all the stakeholders about the expected behaviors, values, and ethics practices. Furthermore, school counselors should work on their own biases, prejudices, and assumptions during their counseling education to be more objective with their clients. If they have some unresolved issues that may affect the therapeutic relationship, counselors should refer them to other professionals to get help. The ASCA Code of Ethics (2016) is adopted and used by the National Psychological Co (...truncated)