A Social Justice Approach to School Counseling

Based on the 2010 Multicultural-Social Justice Leadership Development academy presentation, this article focuses on how school counselors can collaborate with critical stakeholders to help mitigate barriers to academic success for low-income students and students of color. The overarching goal of the presentation was to define social justice, collaboration, and present a multicultural-social justice approach to school-family-community collaboration. The presenters were two school counselor educators, a mental health counselor educator, and a college/university counselor educator who all believed in the necessity of working together in order to help promote academic achievement for all students. In this article, barriers to social justice advocacy, strategies for implementing a social justice framework, and implications for school counselor practice and research are discussed.