Exploring the Role and Job Areas of Rehabilitation Counselors in Special Education

The purpose of this study is to explore and analyze the role of rehabilitation counselors for the disabled in the special education field in order to clarify the role of rehabilitation counselors for the disabled in the special education field to help students with disabilities in career and vocational support and to lay the foundation for activities. The Delphi survey method was used to conduct the study. Based on the analysis of previous studies, the first Delphi survey consisted of 41 task contents in 6 areas, collected opinions on the question, and conducted the survey by reviewing the appropriateness of academic experts in vocational rehabilitation, scholars in special education, and rehabilitation counselors for the disabled in special education before the first Delphi survey was conducted. In addition, to increase the completeness, content validity (CVR), convergence, and consensus were derived. The 2nd Delphi survey was composed of 5 work areas and 28 task contents by collecting the results of revised opinions and content validity obtained from the 1st Delphi survey, and the survey was organized by deriving content validity, convergence, and agreement. Finally, as a result of extracting the results of the 2nd Delphi survey, it consisted of 5 work areas and 17 tasks to conduct an importance survey and derive results. Overall, it is analyzed that the role of rehabilitation counselors in the special education field mainly plays a role in vocational counseling, vocational evaluation, business development, employment support, and post-employment support. In a large framework, it is not significantly different from the scope of the role of rehabilitation counselors for the disabled who work in the welfare field for the disabled. However were some differences in the scope of some roles as they were limited to the role of supporting career and vocational activities of students with disabilities within the scope of not overlapping the role of special teachers in the special education field. Through vocational counseling and vocational evaluation, case management and case meetings can help special teachers establish an individualized education plan (IEP), and externally, the role of special education students in cooperation with local community-related organizations was mainly identified. However, in the field of special education, the role of rehabilitation counselors in the field of rehabilitation administration and rehabilitation policy was found to be limited. The results of this study could be the basis for the expansion of rehabilitation counselors for the disabled in the field of special education and could serve as the basis for further research such as the development of work manuals necessary for the field