Flexibility: A Primer for Multicultural Counseling

The place of multicultural counseling in counselor education programs should be studied for the continuous growth of the profession. A flexible approach affirming both the similarity and differences of people is important.     

A Study of Multicultural Counseling Training at CACREP-Accredited Counselor Education Programs

This article presents an exploratory study to determine the status of multicultural counseling training in counseling programs accredited by the Council for the Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP).     

Transforming Counseling Courses: From Monocultural to Multicultural

This article discusses multicultural counselor training and outlines strategies for infusing counseling courses with multicultural content. It also describes how a counseling theories course was transformed to infuse multicultural perspectives.     

Multicultural Career Counseling: Ten Essentials for Training

In the past 20 years, several changes have taken place within the field of counseling and psychology with regard to practice and research with individuals from racial/ethnic groups. At the same time, the United States population has experienced a dramatic shift in its composition. Both have contributed to transformations in graduate training. This article will highlight salient aspects from the multicultural literature regarding culturally competent practice and apply it to the training of vocational counselors.     

Taking a Universal Approach to Multicultural Counseling

This article takes a universal approach to multicultural counseling by exploring the commonalities of the “minority” experience and proposing transcultural models for multicultural counseling training.     

Multicultural Counseling: Does It Belong in a Counselor Education Program?

Multicultural counseling has the support of various groups, including accreditation bodies. Counselor education programs may, however, be adopting a movement that is not consistent with previously held beliefs about counseling. Is information about a specific subculture helpful in counseling a client who is labeled as being from that subculture? Or are the differences within groups possibly as great as the differences between groups? The author's experience in one multicultural setting suggests that counseling is more effective with clients of another culture when it is unaided by the use of generalized information about that culture.     

Critical Incidents in Multicultural Counseling Supervision: A Phenomenological Approach to Supervision Research

This article focuses on the potential usefulness of eliciting “critical incidents” that occur in multicultural supervision. Survey results from a pilot study of visible ethnic minority psychology interns are discussed.     

Teaching Interpreted Counseling Practice: A Step Toward Multicultural Competence

We conducted an interpretative phenomenological analysis of five counseling students' experiences collaborating with American Sign Language–interpreting students during counseling practice sessions. Themes were identified in developmental domains of counselor self-awareness, counseling relationship, and advocacy interventions. Interdisciplinary collaboration led students to address cultural deficiency models and increase multicultural competency and efforts in social justice.     

A Not So Provincial View of Multicultural Counseling

A narrow, focused, and thorough view of multicultural counseling that focuses on both individual characteristics and unique cultural group membership characteristics is advocated.     

Multicultural Personality and Multicultural Counseling Competency in Counselor Trainees

The authors hypothesized that multicultural personality and ethnic identity would significantly predict variance in multicultural counseling competencies in counselor trainees, beyond the variance predicted by demographics, multicultural training, openness, and cognitive racial attitudes. Results showed multicultural personality predicted multicultural counseling competency, but ethnic identity did not. Results and implications are discussed.     

Negotiating Change for Multicultural Education: A Consultation Model

Recent demographic changes in our society have wrought new challenges for schools as growing numbers of students from diverse racial and linguistic backgrounds move toward becoming the majority in public schools. Because schools are slow to change and may lack the internal expertise in multicultural education, consultants are needed who can provide assistance to teachers and administrators attempting to respond to these new challenges. The purpose of this article is to provide a framework that consultants can use for communicating and negotiating change in schools. In this consultation model, consultants work with educators, community members and students to: (a) define terminology and agree upon the parameters of the consultation process; (b) recognize the 'impact of ideology; (c) transform the language of schools; (d) focus on group empowerment; (e) negotiate power conflicts; (f) involve the community; (g) transform staffing, decision making, and resource allocation; and Oa) recreate an inclusive classroom environment.     

Developing Counseling Students' Multicultural Competence Through the Multicultural Action Project

The Multicultural Action Project (MAP) is a cultural immersion project that requires counseling students to engage with diverse cultural communities on 3 levels: observation, information seeking, and action. To ascertain if participating in MAP improved the multicultural competence of graduate counseling students, the authors conducted an evaluation in which narrative analysis was used to examine the experiences of 3 graduate counseling students who participated in MAP. Through their narratives, the participants reported increased knowledge, awareness, and skills. The importance of sustained contact and interpersonal relationships in improving student learning outcomes is discussed and recommendations are provided.     

Mentoring Within the Field of Counseling: A Preliminary Study of Multicultural Perspectives

Although the concept of mentoring is receiving increasing attention in the counseling field, the intersection between multiculturalism and mentoring has not been formally addressed. This article explores mentoring relationships between faculty and students within counselor education from a multicultural perspective. Semi-structured interviews were used to explore African American, Asian American and Latina/o American counselor education graduate students’ perspectives on mentoring. Three similar themes (trust/comfort/honesty; respect; and teacher/student/guide) emerged for all three racial/ethnic groups as important key elements in the mentoring relationship, but with some distinctive culturally relevant variations in emphasis. Also, all three groups to some degree reported that having a mentor who was culturally competent and sensitive was helpful, adding further weight to the view that cultural issues play a role in mentoring relationships. Implications of the findings are discussed.     

Developing Multicultural Counseling Competencies Through Experiential Learning

Counselor educators are challenged to prepare students for working with culturally diverse clients. The recent attention paid to multicultural counseling competencies has defined domains of learning; however, training methods to support the development of multicultural counseling competencies have received less emphasis. This article focuses on experiential learning as a teaching and learning methodology to increase students' multicultural counseling competencies. The authors outline ethical and practical suggestions for using experiential learning in multicultural counseling curriculum.