Addressing Ableism in Rehabilitation Counselor Education

Ableism is prevalent across community spaces, including disability services and rehabilitation counselor education programs. Rehabilitation counseling reflects historic and current social views on disability. Despite rehabilitation counseling’s focus on disability, advocacy, and social justice, counselors and educators are not exempt from perpetuating ableism, harming current students and future clients of their students. In many rehabilitation counseling programs, concepts like disability culture, identity, Disability Justice, academic ableism, and ability privilege remain underexplored. In this article, we examine opportunities and barriers to training anti-oppressive counselors and offer suggestions for supporting students in working towards anti-ableism in their counseling practice. Implications for pedagogy, supervision, leadership, and research are presented.