Addressing the professional development awareness needs of school counselors regarding English Language Learners (ELLs): Using the School Cultural Capital Game to enhance level of self-efficacy with ELLs and attitudes toward immigrants

Close to 4.6 million public school students receive English Language Learner (ELL) services (Kindler, 2002). In addition to educational gaps that exist between ELLs and their non-ELL peers, ELLs often experience significant barriers to academic success (Williams & Butler, 2003). The importance of school counselors in the success of ELLs has been described as essential and pivotal (McCall-Perez, 2000), but they do not feel prepared to meet the needs of the ELL population (Schwallie-Giddis et al., 2004).;The purpose of this study was to create and test the School Cultural Capital Game (SCCG) (c) as a means of addressing the professional development awareness needs of school counselors regarding the ELL population and as a means of enhancing school counselors' self-efficacy with ELLs and attitudes toward immigrants. A secondary purpose that arose, due to the lack of appropriate instrumentation, was to develop and validate an instrument that could assess school counselor self-efficacy with ELLs: the School Counselor Self-Efficacy with ELLs (SC-SELL) (c).;Grounded in the theories of cultural capital, self-efficacy, and experiential learning, the SCCG is a simulation exercise aimed at stimulating participants' awareness of the cultural capital system that exists in schools, with the goal of increasing sensitivity and insight into the experience of ELLs. Participants experience what it might be like being a school-aged ELL.;In order to test the effectiveness of the SCCG, a pre/post quasi-experimental study design was employed, with a control and treatment group composed of school counselors. Both groups took the following instruments as part of the pre- and posttest surveys: School Counselor Self-Efficacy (SCSE; Bodenhorn & Skaggs, 2005), SC-SELL (Paredes, 2009a); Working with Immigrants (WIM; Paredes, 2009b; adapted from Horenczyk & Tatar, 2002), and a demographic questionnaire. The treatment group rated the effectiveness of the SCCG during the posttest and the control group described any professional development activities engaged in during the collection period. The treatment group participated in an administration of the SCCG.;Preliminary findings regarding the effectiveness of the SCCG are discussed. Development of the SC-SELL and initial validation results are described.