“Let’s Say I’m Truly Lost”: Support Experiences of School Counselors Working in International Schools in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Though the literature on Saudi school counseling is sparse, the picture it paints of the state of the field has remained consistently bleak since the 1980s. According to those findings, counselors remain underqualified, their role remains unstandardized, and any growth in the field has fallen stagnant. However, the research’s validity is limited not only by the its datedness and scarcity, but by its individualistic approach towards understanding school counseling shortcomings as well as its exclusion of important counselor populations. This paper adopts a more modern, organizational approach towards investigating the support experiences of a previously unstudied population of practitioners, counselors working in international schools in Saudi Arabia. Semistructured interviews were conducted with five participants working at a variety of educational levels at one international boys school and four international girls schools in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Thematic analysis was used to identify the factors that most supported or hindered international school counselors from enacting their roles effectively. Inspired by Savitz-Romer and Nicola’s (2022) use of Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological systems model in the school counseling context, the themes were presented via the same framework. Implications of the results were discussed along with limitations of the study, recommendations for school counselor support projects, and recommendations for future research.