Infusing YPAR in School Counselor Preparation Curriculum: Experiential Learning Toward Racial Healing in Schools

• In Event: The Inequitable Impact of COVID-19 on Education: A Crisis or an Opportunity?

Abstract

Today, as we write this article, amidst the Covid-19 pandemic and the illumination of racial injustice, there is a distinct need to not only offer culturally responsive approaches, but to support school counselors in being anti-racist practitioners who combat and create new structures to support youth development (Ieva et al., 2021). Responding to these very concerns, Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) has emerged as a promising approach to group work whereby school counselors and students collaborate on researching, creating, and disseminating tangible projects which aim to address issues youth deem relevant to their lives (Cook & Krueger-Henny, 2017). The authors of this paper believe that YPAR in school counseling offers a distinct pathway to respond to these needs/critiques. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to describe how an innovative approach to group work can be taught within school counseling preparation programs to address gaps in cultural responsiveness and anti-racism training and to answer the research question, what is the impact of an experiential YPAR process on Pre-Service School Counselors?
Theoretical framework
We come to this study through the lens of Ecological Systems Theory (EST; Bronfenbrenner, 1979; 2001; 2005; Bronfenbrenner & Evans, 2000). EST provides a framework to inform how systems work in tandem to support or hinder individuals and communities and to understand how human development is influenced at diverse environmental and interconnected systemic levels (microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem) throughout the lifespan (Brofenbrenner, 2005).

Authors

• Kara Ieva, Rowan University

• Ian Levy, Manhattan College

• Natalie Edirmanasinghe, Old Dominion University