Navigating the Margins: Arab School Counselors' Attitudes Toward Poverty and Social Justice in Israel

Abstract School counselors are ethically obligated to promote social justice as a core foundation of their professional practice. Their effectiveness in supporting students experiencing poverty is closely linked to their knowledge of and attitudes toward the causes of poverty and social justice issues. Despite high poverty rates among Arab families in Israel, Arab school counselors’ perspectives on poverty remain largely unexplored. This qualitative study examines the views of 20 Arab school counselors in Israel, utilizing social justice theory and a poverty-aware paradigm, offering a holistic understanding of attitudes towards poverty that transcends the individual-structural dichotomy and dualistic perspective. The findings uncover the political, emotional, and ethical array in which school counselors' attitudes evolve, constructing their professional practices and intervention strategies. The political context discourages schools from addressing poverty through educational policies, promoting apolitical values instead. Additionally, counselors recognize the symbolic dimensions of poverty, which contribute to otherness and diminished respectability. The study highlights the need to incorporate critical knowledge that challenges stigmatizing and conservative attitudes of disadvantaged families in counselor training and practice, and considers the intersectionality of class, culture, and ethno-nationality as mutually reinforcing axes of oppression.