Examining the Individual and Systemic Factors Associated With School Counselors\u27 Leadership Practices

School counseling leadership is essential in addressing systemic inequities and barriers that negatively impact students\u27 personal/social, academic, and college and career development. The American School Counseling Association has long-identified school counseling leadership as a cornerstone and has primarily operationalized this construct through program implementation. As such, the profession\u27s empirical understanding of school counseling leadership is still in its infancy. Specifically, there is a dearth of literature that has conceptually or empirically identified or examined the individual and systemic factors, specifically through an ecological lens, that influence school counselors\u27 leadership. Thus, using hierarchical regression analysis, this study examined the relationship between sociocultural factors (i.e., gender, race/ethnicity, childhood socioeconomic status, current socioeconomic status, and age), interactions between sociocultural factors, professional developmental experiences (i.e., leadership experience, leadership training received, supervision received, mentorship received), intra- and interpersonal factors (i.e., leadership self-efficacy, multicultural competence, psychological empowerment), and school climate as a systemic factor and the leadership practices of school counselors. Results from the analyses of 647 school counselors revealed that sociocultural factors, interactions between sociocultural factors, professional developmental experiences, and intra- and interpersonal factors significantly predicted the leadership practices of school counselors. Conversely, school climate was not found to be significantly influential on school counselors\u27 leadership practices. Implications for counselor education, school counselors, and future research are discussed