California Student Counselors Reflect on a Study Abroad Experience in New Zealand

Abstract

Seven counseling and guidance students from California participated in a study abroad program in which they were placed in a high school in Auckland, New Zealand, for one month. Their comments on the experience in response to researchers' questions form the basis of this paper. They suggest that the participants benefited from being immersed in a culturally different context where they had to consider differences in school organization, counseling priorities, and students' cultural mores. This immersion required them to think about their own professional values and to engage in high level learning, appropriate to masters level field experience work. They commented especially on different approaches to cultural and racial issues in New Zealand and California and on experiencing a counseling profession that is more focused on addressing social issues than on college readiness.