The Privilege in Our Pedagogy: Exploring Class and Class Privilege in Counselor Education
Census | \ ˈsen(t)-səs
A census is defined as an official count or survey, conducted in a systematic way to record information about a given population. Census results are typically used by governments to help them understand how many people live in their territory and who they are with respect to things like age, race, gender, marital status, income, educational level, etc. Governments use the results of a census to plan for future needs, determining what their citizens need and where they can best allocate resources. For example, the United States conducts a census every ten years. While many people may know that the results are used to determine the number of Congressional districts, the government also uses census data to identify population trends and determine how to allocate money to different communities. The census also shows how the country and its people have changed over the decades, illuminating broad trends in society.
Our Project: The Counseling Student Census
According to the Council for the Accreditation of Counseling and Related Education Programs (CACREP), there were over 50,000 students enrolled in counselor training program across the country in 2018. However, we have very little publicly available data to tell us who these students are with respect to their economic, cultural, racial, educational, and familial backgrounds. We believe this information is crucial to understanding how our profession is currently doing with respect to recruiting and training a diverse group of future counselors. As such, our research aims to fill this gap in information by surveying students in master's and doctoral programs about their backgrounds.
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In addition to understanding who our students are with respect to various identities, we also seek specific information on the financial experiences and challenges currently enrolled students are managing and how those experiences and challenges impact their educational journey. We hope that this data will help the field better understand the economic realities of students and provide a solid foundation from which we can advocate for improved funding for counselor training.
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It is not enough to simply understand who our students are. If we want to create more equity and diversity in training programs, we also need to understand how our programs are currently structured and examine whether that structure unintentionally privileges those who are already well-resourced. To that end, our census also collects data from program directors about the structure of their programs including costs, when and how courses are delivered, available financial aid, and requirements that may create a financial obstacle for students.
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The Counseling Student Census will begin in the Winter 2022 semester.
Research Design
We considered doing separate surveys of program directors and students, but we believe the data will be most useful if the students we survey are representative of the programs we survey. As such, our research design relies on recruiting program directors who are willing to complete the survey for program directors and forward the survey for students to all students currently enrolled in their program. Program directors who agree to participate will receive an initial email informing them that the census is open and providing them with a link to the survey for program directors. They will also receive text for an email that they will need to send to their students, explaining what the census is and providing a link to the survey for students who wish to participate. Participating program directors will receive two reminder emails during the course of data collection and they will be asked to send two reminder emails to their students.
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Our research study has been approved by the Institutional Review Board of Texas State University. It has also received grant funding from the Southern Association of Counselor Educators and Supervisors, which allows us to offer some incentives for participation in the form of gift cards to some participants.
Want to Participate? Watch for Us!
If you are a program director in a counseling training program and you are willing to complete the survey for program directors and forward the survey for students to your currently enrolled students, watch for our recruitment announcement on CESNET!