School Counselors' Experiences Fostering Social Justice in Urban Public Schools

School counselors play a vital supportive role in schools. As the needs of students and diverse populations in urban schools surge, the need to improve understanding of school counselors' experiences facing social justice issues also increases. Framed through the lens of Rawls's social justice theory, the focus of this generic qualitative study was how school counselors foster social justice in urban public schools to answer the research question, "How do school counselors describe their experiences fostering social justice in urban public schools?" Purposive sampling followed by snowball sampling yielded a sample of seven professional school counselors, five women and two men, aged 25 to 54 years. Four participants were White; two were Black/African American, and one was Hispanic. Following the nine-step process of inductive analysis, findings indicated that school counselors need more training to face the challenges of working in urban schools. Analysis yielded six primary themes: (a) school counselors who work in urban schools experience a higher need to educate staff and parents, (b) school counselors experience a lack of resources in urban schools, (c) school counselors describe inequality as few opportunities to facilitate change (d) school counselors describe a fast-paced work environment wherein they do not have enough time to complete their tasks, (e) school counselors describe themselves as advocates of change, and (f) COVID impacts school counselors who work in urban schools. This study's limitations included the study's design, the lack of previous findings from seminal authors, and possible technological issues. Recommendations include provision of training to expand school counselors' knowledge of facilitating social justice in urban schools and counselor education and supervision programs and further studies on the level of support school counselors get when working in urban public schools. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]