A Content Analysis of Professional Development in Social Justice and Diversity in Rehabilitation Counselor Education

The Commission on Rehabilitation Counselor Certification (CRCC) Code of Ethics has historically emphasized the importance of cultural competency for rehabilitation counselors. The newly revised Code explicitly delineates the ethical imperative of Certified Rehabilitation Counselors (CRCs) to maintain personal awareness of anti-ableism, antiracism, social justice, cultural humility, and other central facets of socially just practice. Rehabilitation counselors must be exposed to social justice and diversity content during their training to meet the needs of disabled people and these ethical mandates. Professional conferences are a primary avenue to receive training related to social justice for counselors as well as the educators who provide pre-service training. The current study explores the social justice and diversity-related content provided to rehabilitation counselor educators through the National Council on Rehabilitation Education (NCRE) annual conferences. Analysis of 1,137 conference sessions from 2014 to 2019 revealed that just under a third of the sessions in the selected conferences presented content that reflected multicultural competence, social justice, or social justice for a minoritized group of individuals. Approximately half of the coded sessions reflected multicultural content only, and the remaining were relatively evenly split between social justice and social justice for a specific population. Implications for rehabilitation counselor education and curriculum development are presented.