The Lived Experiences of Black Doctoral Students in Counselor Education

Black doctoral students represent 25.09% of doctoral students that are enrolled in a Council of Accreditation of Related and Educational Programs (CACREP) Counseling Program. The voices and experiences of Black doctoral students in counselor education programs have been collected and reported by researchers in regards to the various challenges they experience in their program. However, despite the continuous research, Black doctoral students continue reporting feelings of isolation, microaggressions, navigating white privilege and white fragility, and a host of other negative experiences within their counselor education programs. This study consisted of twelve participants that participated in semi-structured interviews regarding their experiences, feelings, and perspectives of how they felt their program was meeting CACREP standard 1:K which explains how programs should make continuous and systematic ways to attract, enroll, retain and create an inclusive learning environment for diverse students. In an effort to illuminate the voices of the participants and capture genuine responses in the findings, Black Critical Theory (BlackCrit) was utilized as the theoretical framework and Critical Phenomenology was utilized as the methodology. From the data collected in this study, four themes emerged: Representation is Meaningful and Matters, White Faculty not Providing Safe Spaces, Disingenuous and Performative Programs, and Black Students Have Specific Needs. The findings aligned to existing research and provided a proposed solution for moving counselor education programs from awareness to action.