A Qualitative Exploration of Counseling Student Development through Community Outreach

Abstract

Community outreach and service learning have been shown to facilitate counseling and psychology student development. Community outreaches conducted from a liberation psychology-based perspective are particularly effective in terms of promoting multicultural competence and social justice ideals and actions among outreach participants. Using qualitative interviews of students participating in a local community outreach, the authors explore student development with a focus on multicultural and social justice practices. The authors discuss the implications for facilitating community outreaches based on the data from student participants.