Multicultural Counselor Training in a Single Course: Review of Research

Affective and developmental transitions: qualitative themes in multicultural counseling journals

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to examine how multicultural counseling students expressed their understandings about themselves and others in relation to diversity. The authors wanted to know how cognitive development, affective development, and sense of self-evolved during a multicultural counseling class to examine all aspects of growth.

Design/methodology/approach

– Themes from a phenomenological qualitative analysis of journals from a multicultural counseling class suggest that students struggle with cognitive challenges (dealing with ambiguity, internalizing multicultural concepts, and self- and other-acceptance) and affective challenges (anger, guilt, and fear) in attaining multicultural growth.

Findings

– This expanded view of multicultural growth that includes affective challenges can fill a prior gap in understanding how multicultural learning occurs.

Research limitations/implications

– Implications are explored for counselor educators and supervisors.

Originality/value

– Recent use of journals to provide empirical insights into student growth include a study by Cohenet al.(2015), who used qualitative analyses of journal contents to examine growth in student attitudes toward geriatric clients, death, and dying. Knowing that student journals can provide insights into changing multicultural attitudes, and that qualitative methodology can provide tools for analysis, the authors decided that it might be possible to better understand multicultural growth by studying the journals written in a multicultural counseling class.

Multicultural Therapy Practicum Involving Refugees

Multicultural scholars have long noted the value and the need to incorporate multicultural counseling practica into diversity-social justice training. This article describes an ongoing, systematic model of multicultural therapy practicum in which clinical psychology trainees provide direct psychotherapy to community-referred, culturally and linguistically diverse refugee clients, under culturally grounded supervision. As a university–community collaboration, this practicum embodies the principles of multicultural counseling competencies, social justice, community outreach and service, experiential learning, and trauma therapy. In this article, we describe the target refugee population, the theoretical/conceptual bases, the learning conditions, the organizational structure, and the evaluative research of this practicum. Next, we present a former trainee’s narrative account of working with a male Afghan refugee from an autoethnographic qualitative framework to illustrate the dynamic learning process and the intricate cross-cultural interactions between the client and therapist. Finally, implications of this practicum for future practice and research on experiential multicultural training are discussed.

Self-Knowledge and Identity in a Mexican American Counseling Course: A Qualitative Exploration

This study explores the lived experiences of Mexican American graduate students who completed a course on Mexican American counseling and mental health. The experiences of Mexican American students taking a mental health course that focuses on their own ethnic group has not been previously discussed in the literature. Given the history of exclusion in the educational system and the increase in the U.S. Latina/o population, it is important to give voice to the experiences of these students. A phenomenological approach is utilized to reveal the essence of the students’ experiences. A total of 3 female and 3 male Mexican American graduate students participated in the study, and five themes emerged: history matters, personal connection, self-discovery, LGBT Mexican Americans, and “Wow!” The results of this study suggests that the course had academic and personal significance for these participants. Furthermore, these experiences may inform future course construction and training in the area of Latina/o mental health.