Early definitions of cultural diversity focused primarily on race/ethnicity, with subsequent inclusion of age, gender, sexual orientation, class, religion, geography, and a combination of positionalities. More recently, social justice has resurfaced as a component of cultural diversity to explain experiences of people of color, women, and marginalized groups. This article examines the movement to include cultural diversity and social justice in rehabilitation education, and offers a model for curriculum development in light of the new CORE standards.

Purpose: To conduct a content analysis of the rehabilitation counseling literature to identify articles published on aging.

Method: To determine the number of articles that were published on aging in rehabilitation counseling journals, a content analysis of articles from 2000 through 2012 was performed. For purposes of this review, only full-length, peer-reviewed articles (i.e., research studies, literature reviews, and program descriptions) with abstracts were included for analysis.

Results: The prevalence of articles addressing aging in the mainstream rehabilitation counseling literature is limited over a 13-year period. Since 2000, only 24 (l.3 %) articles in rehabilitation journals account for content on aging.

Conclusion: Several facts are clear regarding older individuals, including their increased life expectancy, extended stay in the workplace, and living with a disability. Given those realities, the field of rehabilitation counseling must be poised to respond with evidence-based research to address the needs and demands of the aging population with disabilities in the workplace, around quality of life issues, and within a sociopolitical context of globalization.