Abstract
Counselor educators with international backgrounds (CEIBs) play critical roles in counselor education by mentoring international students, conducting important cross-cultural research, developing international partnerships, increasing institutional focus on diversity, and promoting higher work environment satisfaction among non-international faculty members. Yet, higher education systems have too often ignored the barriers to success faced by faculty with international backgrounds, which can cause CEIBs to experience complex and challenging journeys. In this online photovoice (OPV) study, we utilized the accessibility of photography and online data collection and participant-informed interpretative phenomenological analysis to explore the professional identity development of CEIBs to promote greater awareness in counselor education and amplify CEIBs’ voices. Additionally, OPV provided opportunities for counselor educators and stakeholders to engage with the CEIBs’ photographs and stories in exhibitions to help address discrimination and injustices experienced by CEIBs as well as highlight the strengths of their complex and multicultural identities. Themes resulting from our data analysis process included mentorship, advocacy, empowerment, shifted positionality, and acculturation positioned in a complex interchange of personal development and professional experience. Implications for counselor education resulting from this study include the need for culturally sensitive faculty mentoring, the importance of expressions of valuing and accepting of CEIBs’ cultural identities by the counseling profession, and greater awareness of the complex and divergent ways participants viewed their intersectional identities in positive terms.