The professional is political: Postcolonial Impacts on Palestinian School Counselling Professional Identities
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.64074/fhjg6q42Keywords:
professional identity, postcolonialism, school counsellingAbstract
This paper explores the postcolonial impacts on Palestinian School Counselling Professional Identities (SCPI), examining how school counsellors perceive their roles and responsibilities in a settler-colonial context characterized by historical power gaps and ongoing political violence. Deploying postcolonial theories and discourse analysis, I analyzed semi-structured interviews with 21 Palestinian school counsellors who work in Palestinian schools in Israel and follow the Israeli school counselling regulations. The findings revealed that Palestinian SCPIs are structured on an intersection between resistance and internalized oppression, reflecting professional attitudes and practices that may reproduce colonial oppression or empower students through counselling interventions. The results also reveal that the current Palestinian SCPIs stretch back to an ongoing history of Israeli negligence policies towards Palestinian minority and the lack of multicultural competencies in counselling trainings. Although focused on the Palestinian context, this study is relevant to mental health professions in the global south and Indigenous communities, highlighting the significant impacts of political contexts on mental health professions. The study also invites international mental health practitioners and researchers to reassess ethical roles and responsibilities in oppressive and politicized spaces and asymmetric power.
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