A Content Analysis of 25 Years of Disability Research in School Counseling

Abstract

School counselors have an ethical obligation to provide culturally relevant and evidence-based services to students with disabilities. Yet school counselors continue to express concerns about their competence to serve students with disabilities, and researchers continue to identify gaps in disability-related content during preservice school counselor training. Missing from the professional literature is a close examination of the types of disability-related research available to guide the work of school counselors. The purpose of this study was to examine themes and trends in professional literature related to school counseling and students with disabilities over the past 25 years. How many and what type of peer-reviewed articles have been published in the past 25 years related to school counseling and students with disabilities? What topics have been addressed in peer-reviewed journals over the past 25 years related to school counseling and students with disabilities? We used content analysis involving a combination of an a priori codebook and inductive coding to examine peer-reviewed journal articles published between 2000 and 2024 related to school counseling and students with disabilities. Of the 109 total articles identified, just under half were empirical and few were classified as outcome or intervention studies. We categorized the articles into eight broad topic areas. A diverse amount of conceptual and empirical information related to school counseling and students with disabilities exists that could be integrated into school counselor education programs and used for school counselor professional development.