School counselors’ perceived school climate, leadership practice, psychological empowerment, and multicultural competence before and during COVID-19

Abstract

Following a population-based randomized design, we investigated changes of school counselors’ psychological empowerment, multicultural competence, and leadership practice, as well as their perception of school climate from before to during COVID-19. Specifically, school counselors were randomized into two conditions: (a) the pre-COVID-19 condition (n = 506) and (b) the current-COVID-19 condition (n = 542). Participants in the pre-COVID condition responded to survey items following a retrospective manner based on their experiences between September 2019 and March 2020. We found that participants in the current COVID-19 condition scored significantly higher in psychological empowerment and perceived school climate and lower in multicultural competence and leadership practices compared to the participants in the pre-COVID-19 condition. Regardless of directionality of changes, results supported the significant impacts that the pandemic had on school counselors’ roles related to addressing systemic issues. We discussed implications of the results to school counseling practice and school counselor training.