Making The Grade? Exploring the Sexual Orientation Counselor Competency of School Counselors

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Making The Grade? Exploring the Sexual
Orientation Counselor Competency of School
Counselors

• Dr. Markus P. Bidell
• Hunter College

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Purpose

• Examine the sexual orientation and multicultural
  counselor competencies of school counseling
  students through a cross specialization
  comparison with community agency students

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Background

• Developing the necessary attitudes, skills, and
  knowledge to work effectively with LGBTQ clients
  is an ethical imperative (Bidell, 2005 Carroll
  Gilroy, 2002)
• American School Counseling Association Code of
  Ethics states that professional school
  counselors, acquire educational, consultation
  and training experiences to improve awareness,
  knowledge, skills and effectiveness in working
  with diverse populations regarding
  ethnic/racial status . sexual orientation, and
  gender identity/expression (ASCA, 2010, p. 5)

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Crisis in our Schools

• GLSEN 2009 National School Climate Survey -
  Continues to shed a disquieting light on the
  hostility most LGBTQ youth experience at school
  (Kosciw, Greytak, Diaz, Bartkiewicz, 2010)
• Almost all LGBTQ youth experience some form of
  harassment
• Over 60 dont feel safe at school
• Middle school can be worse than high school
• School staff can part of the problem
• Most LGBTQ fail to report harassment

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Problem

• CONTRARY to popular belief, counselors are in
  fact human beings, thus prone to being messy and
  imperfect
• Counselors can hold prejudicial views as well as
  lack specific skills and knowledge regarding
  minority sexual orientation and gender identity
  issues (Barrett McWhirter, 2002 Henke,
  Carlson, McGeorge, 2009)
• Students more likely to speak to their teachers
  (65.9) versus their school mental health
  professional (40.9) (Kosciw et al., 2010)
• Studying the retrospective experiences of
  transgender adults as youth, researchers found
  that few participants reported reaching out to
  school staff for support (Bidell, Orozco, Strom,
  Doherty, 2009)

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Who I Studied

• Studied 147 counseling
• School Counseling (n 75) or Community/Agency
  Counseling (n 89)
• Characteristics
• Most were females (33 male and 114 females)
• They ranged in age from 22 to 59 (M 32.13, SD
  8.83)
• Just less than 40 identified as a member of an
  ethnic minority group (9.1 African
  American/Black, 62.8 White/Caucasian, 8.5 Asian
  American/Pacific Islander, 12.2 Latino/Hispanic,
  2.4 Biracial, and 3.0 identifying as other)
• The majority self-identified as
  straight/heterosexual (90.2) and the remaining
  9.8 identified as LGBTQ

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What I was Studying

• Recruited 2nd year counseling students from 7
  CACREP-accredited counseling programs across the
  United States
• Students completed two psychometric assessment
  scales
• Multicultural Counseling Knowledge and Awareness
  Scale (MCKAS Ponterotto, Gretchen, Utsey,
  Rieger, Austin, 2002)
• Sexual Orientation Counselor Competency Scale
  (SOCCS Bidell, 2005)

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What I Found

• Examined possible variables that might impact
  scores on the MCKAS or SOCCS
• multicultural coursework, age, gender, ethnic
  background, sexual orientation, and number of
  LGBTQ friends and acquaintances
• SOCCS
• Analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) covarying out the
  effect of reported numbers of LGBTQ friends
• MCKAS
• Analysis of variance (ANOVA) since no variables
  were found to significantly relate

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Findings
School Community
MCKAS-Total 5.33 (.90) 5.72 (.69)
Awareness Subscale 5.71 (.77) 5.99 (.75)
Knowledge Subscale 5.09 (1.17) 5.55 (.83)

SOCCS- Total 4.03 (.68) 4.64 (.66)
Attitude Subscale 5.96 (1.13) 6.50 (.76)
Skill Subscale 2.26 (.88) 2.91 (1.14)
Knowledge Subscale 4.07 (1.16) 4.70 (.84)
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What Does this Mean?

• School Counselors had significantly lower scores
  on both the MCKAS and SOCCS
• Lowest scores were on the SOCCS (Skills Subscale)
• Limitations of Self-Report Competency Scales

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Fear?

• Fear of Social Justice Advocacy
• Teachers feared tenure, dismissal, or retribution
  if they supported LGBTQ school organizations
  (Valenti Campbell, 2009)
• Also worried their credibility might be
  undermined and that others would assume they were
  LGBTQ or wanted to convert students

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Fear?

• Professional school counselors likely share
  similar fears about addressing LGBTQ issues at
  their schools
• Examined 16 school counselors self-identifying as
  social justice agents (Singh, Urbano, Haston,
  McMahon, 2010)
• Did not explicitly ask about LGBTQ advocacy
• School counselors acknowledged that being a
  social justice agent and working on systems
  change was politicized and at times unpopular
  within their school

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Opportunities

• What can we do?
• How can we address the findings?
• Discussion