A Quantitative Exploration of School Counselors’ Evidence-Based Classroom Management Implementation: Investigating Culturally Sustaining Practices and Multicultural Competence

Abstract

Considering professional calls for culturally sustaining, comprehensive school counseling practices, this study examined school counselor factors (e.g., age and years of experience) and school factors (e.g., school size and percentage of students of color enrolled) that predicted school counselors’ implementation of evidence-based, culturally sustaining classroom management. We also examined correlations between school counselors’ classroom management and their multicultural practices. The results indicated (a) that age, previous teaching experience, years of school counseling experience, caseload, and percentage of students of color enrolled at school were the strongest predictors of school counselors’ culturally sustaining classroom management implementation and (b) that evidence-based, culturally sustaining classroom instruction is moderately correlated with school counselors’ multicultural behaviors. We offer implications for school counselor practice and preparation, and discuss limitations and future directions.