International Immersion in Belize: Fostering Counseling Students’ Cultural Self-Awareness

International cultural immersion provides an in vivo, authentic, cross-cultural experience that can enhance multicultural awareness, knowledge and skills. This article examines the impact of an international immersion on graduate counseling students’ cultural self-awareness using a qualitative approach. Five graduate counseling students participated in a 3-week study abroad in Belize where they interacted with persons from diverse cultural backgrounds and settings. Four major cultural self-awareness themes emerged from the analysis of participants’ journals, (a) discrimination and prejudice, (b) cultural pride and appreciation, (c) cultural sensitivity, and (d) self-awareness. The findings are presented along with implications for future research and the use of international immersion as a viable experiential teaching strategy to enhance counseling students’ cultural self-awareness.     

Clinical Supervision of International Supervisees: Suggestions for Multicultural Supervision

An increase of international students in various settings has been noted in a range of disciplines including counseling and other mental health professions. The author examined the literature on international counseling students related to their experiences in counseling training, particularly in supervision. From the counseling literature, five different themes were identified: (i) acculturation and cultural difference, (ii) language barriers, (iii) social isolation, (iv) cultural perceptions of the profession and transferability, and (v) multicultural discussions. In addition, a critical lens is provided to situate the literature through a holistic and ecological perspective.     

Multicultural Training Experiences as Predictors of Multicultural Competencies: Students' Perspectives

The authors surveyed a national sample of master's‐level counseling students regarding their multicultural training experiences and their multicultural counseling competencies. A series of hierarchical regression models tested the prediction of inventoried competencies from measures of selected training experiences: (a) program cultural ambience or learning environment, (b) multicultural instructional strategies, and (c) multicultural clinical experiences. Perceptions of program cultural ambience or learning environment predicted all multicultural competencies: knowledge, skills, awareness, and relationship. Additional findings support the importance of clinical training experiences in the context of effective multicultural training.     

Expectations of and Attitudes toward Counseling: A Comparison of Asian International and U.S. Graduate Students

This study examined Asian international graduate students’ expectations of and attitudes toward counseling by using U.S. graduate students as a comparative reference group. Survey data from 189 Asian international and 186 U.S. students were subject to analyses. Results indicated that Asian international students, in comparison with U.S. students, indicated less exposure to counseling, less self-perceived need for counseling, greater discomfort/shame with counseling, less openness to counseling, a greater preference for a directive style, and a greater preference for a flexible counseling format. Language and cultural concerns were barriers to seeking counseling. Implications for culturally responsive services were 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.     

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.     

Impaired graduate students: A process model of graduate program monitoring and intervention

Psychological impairment is an area of concern in training graduate students in counseling programs. This article reviews the potentially harmful consequences of impaired graduate students to graduate programs, faculty, other graduate students, and the counseling profession. The paper provides an overview of existing trends, policies, and procedures regarding student screening, remediation, and dismissal from graduate training programs within a Western framework. A process model for monitoring and intervention is presented.     

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.     

论多元文化视野下的大学生文化自觉意识

文化的自觉层面在于超越文化模式,追求文化精神。在此基础上,大学生的文化自觉应该包括大学生的自我觉悟、觉醒,对本民族文化的认同和反思,对国外文化的借鉴与批判,进而发挥在文化参与和文化创造中的主体性,逐步实现对文化精神的追求。大学生文化自觉的实现有利于多元文化的和谐发展,两者是互为影响的。     

Physical Dimensions of Counseling: Perspective for the Helping Professions

Fifteen graduate students in the helping professions registered in a course that teaches helpers to use physical fitness as a counseling medium. The enrolled graduate students were matched with controls in four relevant areas, and both groups were pretested on 7 physiological and 11 psychological variables. The experimental students were given a 10-week treatment of physical fitness training, counseling in health habits, a life-style of well-being, and instruction in how to deliver these kinds of treatments to clients. For eight weeks the students used the skills in working with real clients. The experimental and control groups were posttested on the same variables; and multivariate and univariate analyses revealed significantly positive changes made by the experimental group. This article reports implications for graduate programs in the helping professions.     

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.     

Group Counseling with International Students: Practical,Ethical, and Cultural Considerations

International students in higher education represent a diverse population with unique mental health needs. Foreign students commonly experience a host of adjustment issues, including acculturative stress, language difficulties, cultural misunderstandings, racial discrimination, and loss of social support. Despite their challenges, few international students seek individual counseling. The purpose of this article is to present counseling groups as a treatment modality for addressing international students' adjustment concerns. Special attention is directed to the practical, ethical, and cultural challenges of conducting group counseling with this population, in addition to presenting recommendations for future practice and research.     

Multicultural Discussion as a Moderator of Counseling Supervision-Related Constructs

International students’ needs and experiences in counseling training and supervision has been an area of interest for several decades; however, there is a lack of research regarding effective approaches for supervising international students. Previous studies concerning the international counseling student population have mainly utilized bivariate analysis, and inconsistent results have been observed among studies examining the same relations, which makes applied implications questionable. More complex analysis to determine the relationships among constructs, which will assist in applied implications, are long needed. Thus, this study was a response to the need to determine if a moderation effect could be observed among key counseling supervision-related variables. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether international counseling supervisees’ perceptions regarding the degree to which the construct of multicultural discussion occurring in their university supervision moderated the relationship among key supervision-related variables, including acculturation, counselor self-efficacy, supervisory working alliance, and role ambiguity in supervision.     

Communication Between College Counselors and Academic Faculty When Supervising Graduate Student Trainees

College counseling centers play an important role in the training and supervision of counselor trainees. This article addresses the importance of communication between college counselors and academic counseling program faculty when college counselors supervise graduate students from academic counseling programs. As the authors discuss, effective communication contributes to positive and productive training experiences for graduate student trainees. Suggestions are offered for successful communication between counseling center staff and program faculty.     

Using Personal Growth Groups in Multicultural Counseling Courses to Foster Students' Ethnic Identity Development

This study was designed to examine the relationship between personal growth group (PGG) experiences in multicultural counseling courses and counseling students' ethnic identity development. Differences in ethnic identity development were compared between counseling students who participated in a PGG experience as part of a multicultural counseling course and those who did not. Group session impacts were also examined. Results indicated that counseling students who participated in PGGs as part of a multicultural counseling course experienced significantly greater ethnic identity development than did counseling students not participating in such groups. Recommendations for further research are provided.     

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.     

Memory Research in Counseling: A Perspective and Some Hypotheses

The purpose of this article is to outline a perspective for memory research in counseling. The primary audiences were graduate students and supervisors of students planning research plus counseling researchers interested in investigating memory issues in counseling. The importance of memory processes in counseling is briefly reviewed. The authors then present a broad perspective for memory research in counseling and levels of processing, and examine a series of hypotheses that are tied into current work in counseling. The overall heuristic of levels of processing is followed by an examination of the reformulations of the position and how these may result in testable counseling hypotheses. This type of thinking should be valuable to counselor educators as they conduct their own research and help their students plan research programs. In addition, there is potential for applications of memory research to training and practice.     

Role Communication Skills Training for Counselor Graduate Assistants

The City University of New York (CUNY) has offered counseling for educationally and economically disadvantaged students at its 10 senior colleges since 1968 through the Search for Education, Elevation, and Knowledge (SEEK) Program. Recently, however, funding for SEEK counseling was reduced, resulting in a dramatic increase in the counselor-client ratio. The University's solution to the increased ratio was to provide the SEEK Programs throughout CUNY with graduate assistants (GAs). The challenge then was to develop methods of training graduate assistants and using the assistants in ways that best served SEEK students.     

Counselor Clinical Training With Client-Actors

This article explores how beginning graduate counseling students can gain valuable in vivo counseling experience by working with actors who are trained to serve as clients.