School Counselor Advocacy for Transgender and Intersex Students

Abstract

One-thousand-one-hundred-and-ninety-one school counselors completed an online survey regarding advocacy for and with transgender and intersex (TI) students (i.e., school counselor TI advocacy competence). School counselors completed three competency-based assessments to assess their levels of gender identity counselor competence, intersex counselor competence, and school counselor TI advocacy competence. Further, in light of Identity Behavior Theory, they completed a demographic form so that competency levels could be examined with demographic variables. Attitudes, school level, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity counselor competence, and intersex counselor competence were significantly related to advocacy for and with TI students. These findings have implications for training practices and future research with school counselors and genderqueer students whose experiences vary from those of TI students.

Counselor Competence Gender Identity Scale: Measuring Bias, Knowledge, and Skills Among School Counselors

“…To norm the SCGMACS, data were collected by administering it along with the Gender Identity Counselor Competence Scale (GICCS; O’Hara et al, 2013) to a national sample of school counselors. This data set may be accessed in the openICPSR data repository at https://doi.org/10.3886/E122501V1, reference number V1 2020-09-25 (Simons, 2020). It is also the data set used in this study.…”