Guidance counsellors' work as a transformative activity: supporting social justice through advocacy

Advocacy has been identified as a relevant way for counsellors to respond to the social inequalities in the world of work and education in today's neoliberal context. This article draws on a qualitative study conducted with three groups of guidance counsellors in school settings in Quebec, Canada, to analyse their advocacy work as a world-transforming activity from a social justice perspective. Analysing counsellors' activity helps underline not only systemic barriers that guidance counsellors try to address in their day-to-day work in schools, but also the particular way they perform advocacy in line with their professional genre. The study highlights the urgent need to create collective conditions within the profession to overcome the organisational constraints associated with the ubiquity of economic rationality in education.