Dissertation Defense Announcement Ed.D. Program: Esther E. Quezada “‘It’s not enough’: How School Counselors Adapt Their Formal Training and Leverage Funds of Knowledge to Support Multilingual Learners”

Current reports show that multilingual learners account for 9.4% of the student population in New Jersey (New Jersey Performance Reports, 2024). This increase in cultural and linguistic diversity underscores the need for New Jersey schools to successfully integrate multilingual learners into the school community. School counselors are well-positioned to integrate multilingual learners into the school community and to facilitate their sense of belonging. At the same time, school counselors have struggled to implement interventions with confidence (Johnson & Cain, 2019; Johnson et al., 2018; Shi et al., 2022), and some school counselors report feeling underprepared to meet the needs of students from diverse backgrounds and marginalized students (Day-Vines, Brodar, et al., 2022; Kim et al., 2019).

The purpose of this critical qualitative inquiry study was to examine how school counselors’ professional training and funds of knowledge inform their work with multilingual learners. Interviews with nine school counselors, along with interviews and artifact analysis with three counselor educators from three New Jersey CACREP-accredited graduate programs, provide insights into the training school counselors received and how it informed their work with multilingual learners. The study was guided by the following research questions: (1) How is CACREP (2024) Standard 3, Social and Cultural Diversity, addressed in formal counselor training programs in New Jersey? (2) How do school counselors adapt their formal counselor education training into their practice with multilingual learners? (3) How do school counselors incorporate their funds of knowledge into their work with multilingual learners?

Data from this study reveal four major findings. First, within school counselor preparation programs, multicultural competencies are taught either using a stand-alone or an embedded program design. Second, formal training was constrained by a limited knowledge base regarding multilingual learners, which led counselor educators to focus on teaching general cultural competency and how to access indirect services. Third, school counselors utilized their formal training and also adapted foundational counseling techniques they had learned to better fit multilingual learners. Fourth, in addition to their formal training, school counselors drew upon their cultural heritage, professional background, and personal childhood experiences to support multilingual learners.

This study contributes to the existing body of research on school counseling for multilingual learners by offering new insights into the sources of knowledge that inform school counseling practice. The findings have implications for policy development, school counselor preparation programs, and individual school counselor skill sets.