ABSTRACT
School counselors understand the importance of comprehending and integrating context into their work (e.g., Bronfenbrenner, 1986). School counselors working in various situations from kindergarten to 12th grade understand that social, political, and historical contingencies have leverage in their practice. In this chapter, context refers to social constructions of race, gender, and social class, and the sociopolitical (e.g., the unequal distribution of power), sociohistorical (e.g., biased and inaccurate histories of peoples), and sociostructural (e.g., legal, educational, and economic systems) forces that perpetuate inequality and marginalization (Liu & Ali, 2005). Of all the different contexts, social class is one of the least understood in counseling and psychology. Therefore, the focus of this chapter will be on understanding and integrating social class perspectives into school counseling. Specifically, the chapter will address social class issues related to children and adolescents from low-income, poor, and impoverished environments, as well as those from the middle and upper classes. In the research review, keep in mind that many lower-class K–12 students are typically African American or Latino American; as a result, race and social class are often confounded in the extant research. Although this makes it difficult to tease apart the precise effects of the two variables, this is a bigger problem for research than for practice. Ethnicity and social class are fundamental personal characteristics that necessarily interact in affecting any individual with whom a practitioner works; therefore, it is unnecessary, and possibly even harmful, for practitioners to treat ethnicity and social class as separate entities. Because this chapter is concerned mainly with the role of social class in the practice of school counseling rather than in research, it will not attempt to untangle the effects of race and social class, but instead will examine their interaction in affecting the children with whom school counselors work.
