Multicultural Counseling

This week’s readings focused on multicultural ideas in career counseling.  This is a very important topic for future counselors in any field, whether it’s career or not.  As I learned in the Multicultural class here, as well as in the article by Byars-Winston and Fouad (2006), and the Brown textbook, metacognition and self-reflection on the counselor’s part is extremely important.  It is important because we often have unconscious ideas and biases about people of different races that are different than our own.  Byars-Winston and Fouad (2006) said counselors “may hold detrimental views of culturally different clients” and that it “occurs outside conscious processing, often occurring automatically,” (pg. 189).  Because it is unconscious, we won’t always realize we are making the assumptions, so it’s important to be aware that it happens, so we can adjust accordingly.  Some questions we can ask ourselves might be, “What are my own cultural values and how might those influence my thinking with this client? or How might my own experiences with a person of this background affect the way that I view his or her concerns?” (Byars-Winston & Fouad, 2006, pg. 191). 

                Every client is different.  Even those of the same ethnic background as us have different experiences and values.  So we really just need to be proactive in understanding every individual client without making assumptions about anything.  But this becomes even more important with clients of different ethnicities.  It is our responsibility to do research on the backgrounds of our clients, but more importantly, to ASK them.  If they are interested in a particular career field, they should feel they have equal access to those career aspirations.  However, as the Byars-Winston & Fouad article mentioned, this is not happening.  Their research found that although the career aspirations of different racial/ethnic groups did not differ from White/European aspirations, the racial/ethnic groups perceived fewer career opportunities and greater career barriers.  I understand why they feel this way, but regardless, I would encourage my clients to pursue whatever aspiration they have no matter what they may perceive. 

                It’s also important to note that counselors need to engage in an ongoing self-reflective process.  This awareness doesn’t happen overnight and it doesn’t last if we get complacent and lack awareness.  I haven’t had any experience in working with clients of different ethnicities.  So, it’s easy for me to say that I would engage in the self-reflective process and be a culturally-competent counselor.  I can start this reflective process now, but I really won’t get to practice the models until I begin counseling. 

Byars-Winston, A.M. & Fouad, N.A.  (2006).  Metacognition and multicultural competence: Expanding the culturally appropriate career counseling model.  The Career Development Quarterly, 54, 187-198.

Chapters 4&5, Metacognition Article

An obvious overarching theme of these three readings was multicultural counseling and the strategies and ethics behind it. Brown (2012) lists seven ethical principles referring to the American Counseling Association (ACA) Code of Ethics (2005). I felt that most of these principles were pretty straightforward, however, the one that applies to me the most and I believe is of utmost importance (without disapproving the others), especially in school counseling, is principle number seven: advocating for clients in need. Brown (2012) notes that the ASCA National Model for School Counseling Programs places extreme importance on advocacy. That being said, advocacy as it pertains to multicultural counseling is important because of the limitations or struggles due to the common dilemmas suffered by minorities in our culture today.

What I want to stress is the importance of advocacy for ALL clients, despite of cultural, ethical, religious, or various other differences. The counselor-client relationship is not successful unless true advocacy really exists. Brown (2012) contends that the “ultimate aim of advocacy is the empowerment of the group or individual being represented in a matter that will allow them to represent their own interests in the future” (p. 85). It is asserted by Brown (2012) in both Chapters 4 and 5 that advocacy involves some degree of risk taking. Brown (2012) also contends that professionals in the field must become allies outside of the office. This was an idea that I wish was further developed.

In Chapter 5, Brown (2012) gives an outline of the values-based approach to career counseling. Step 8 of this approach is advocacy. This is where Brown (2012) develops his idea further with specific “levels” of advocacy. This begins with identifying barriers that might come in between the client and their career development process because of their cultural diversity. At this point Brown (2012) again mentions the importance of risk taking, which I think will be a hard part of advocacy for me as a future counselor.  I don’t like to take a lot of risks, I like things to be done in a way that I know they will work, so I know I will have to work on this.

Finally, I have noticed from other classes and this one the importance of metacognition in counseling, not just for the client, but also for the counselor. Byas-Winston & Fouad (2006) expanded the Culturally Appropriate Career Counseling Model (CACCM) with many metacognitive process questions. I appreciated and think their process questions will be extremely beneficial when dealing with multiculturalism in the counseling situation. I’ve also learned from a previous class, in which I wrote a paper about my personal cultural constructs, the importance of this knowledge as well. This was also asserted in the article, as well as the idea of the overconfidence effect, one that I’ve never thought about but certainly agreed with.

There are so many other things I could say about all three of these readings, but to stop myself from rambling, I’ll save those comments for class! 

Brown, D. (2012).  Career information, career counseling, and career development (10th ed.).  New York: Pearson Education Inc.

Byars-Winston, A. M., and Fouad, N. A. (2006). Metacognition and Multicultural Competence: Expanding the Culturally Appropriate Career Counseling Model. The Career Development Quarterly, 54, 187-201.

Weekly Insight 8

            Last week’s class project helped me gain better knowledge on the importance of accessing occupational systems on the internet and how to guide a client that may need to change their career because of life situations.  Also, this week’s reading on Metacognition and Multicultural Competence: Expanding the Culturally Appropriate Career Counseling Mode gave me great insight on being aware of culture-specific assumptions.  I would, of course, have to further my own education in multi-cultural counseling to gain more expertise in working with minority clients.  

During class, it was helpful to learn how to use the internet to assist the “client” in finding a new career.  Having access to systems like O*Net are important in helping a client because of the information offered on the site.  Some information offered is the job title, tasks, income levels, Holland Codes (personality traits), and other occupations related to their choice.  This information is vital to the client in deciding if the occupation chosen for them meets their ability to complete the tasks, income requirements to take care of their household, match their personality traits, and possibly other occupations they did not even think would be available to them.

The article was very informative on helping a counselor becoming aware of their culture-specific assumption by going through a self-reflective process. “By engaging in this ongoing self-reflective process, they will be more likely to make accurate assessments of their counseling effectiveness based on active self-awareness and multiple sources of data from the client and be challenged to actively build their repertoire of culturally appropriate intervention strategies with racial and ethnic minority clients.” (Byars-Winston & Fouad, 2006, p. 197) I believe the intentions of the article are to help a counselor relate more with minority clients and help guide them through career decision-making based off the client's beliefs and barriers. While this is a great concept, I have researched our local school district (School District of Lancaster) to find out their graduation rates.  I chose this school district because the majority of students are minorities.  Considering the article was published seven years ago, it looks as if not much has changed as far as minority students’ graduating high school.  "During the school year 2010-2011 the graduation rate was 74%.  Of those who graduated 49% were Hispanic, 24% Black, 7% Asian, and 18% White." (Pennsylvania Department of Education, 2011) While career decision-making is important, looking at these low graduation rates, it seems career counselors have not come far in assisting minority high school students in obtaining post secondary education.  Maybe money should be spent researching how to assist minority students through to graduation.

Byars-Winston, A. M., and Fouad, N. A. (2006). Metacognition and Multicultural Competence: Expanding the Culturally Appropriate Career Counseling Model. The Career Development Quarterly, 54, 187-201.

Pennsylvania Department of Education. (2011) 4-Year Cohort Graduation Rates. Retrieved from      http://www.education.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/pennsylvania_department_of_education/7237/info/757639

Week 8 Blog Byars-Winston article, Brown Ch. 4 and 5

       I really enjoyed the partner activity we did last class, Exploring, Finding, and Understanding Career Information.  I had never used those websites before.  I liked being able to come up with three different careers that fit my case's story.  I liked getting practice using the different websites to find information about each career.  I thought the O*NET Online had the most information and was the easiest to use.  I will be able to recommend this website to my future clients who are looking for a career.
    
      The article for this week talked about career counseling for ethnic and racial minority clients (Byars-Winston & Fouad, 2006).  To be a competent counselor, counselors need to look at their own cultural thoughts, values, and views, or use metacognition.  I think this is a necessary step to becoming a competent counselor.  In my counseling theories class in undergrad, I was required to write a ten page paper on my cultural views.  It opened my eyes to how I really see and think of people from other cultures.  I also had to write about where my opinions originated from.  This helped me to see that these opinions are just opinions that I heard from someone else and not any actual negative behaviors that I saw someone from another culture do.  I was upset with myself at first.  However, I now know that I can use that knowledge to help myself not judge my clients.  I can learn more about different cultures.  I have to admit if I have a judgment about another person before I can go about changing it.  I also realize that we are all human beings, including counselors.  We need to admit that we make mistakes too.
     
     The textbook readings were about ethical and legal guidelines for career development (Brown, 2012).   I took Ethics and Professional Practice over the summer.  We learned about the APA code of ethics.  The textbook discusses the ACA code of ethics.  They seem very similar.  Principle one is above all, do no harm.  I think this is a difficult one for people to understand.  If you put your beliefs onto your client and you do not empathize with them to try to see their problem from their frame of reference then you are harming that client.  Most people only think of physical harm and emotional harm, such as yelling at the client.

     The textbook also talked about a multicultural approach for career counseling (Brown, 2012).  I get very nervous when I see information on nonverbal communication preferences and verbal styles with different cultures.  I am concerned that I will not remember and I will accidentally offend my client, especially with interruptions being unacceptable to clients who are Native American, Hispanic, and Asian American.  I think I might need to interrupt them during a session.  I also think that we may be stereotyping clients from these cultures.  Maybe some people in those cultures are not offended by being interrupted.

References

Brown, D. (2012).  Career information, career counseling, and career development (10th ed.).  New York: Pearson Education Inc.

Byars-Winston, A. M., & Fouad, N. A. (2006).  Metacognition and multicultural competence: Expanding the culturally appropriate career counseling model.  The Career Development Quarterly, 54(3), 187-201.

week 8

I think that it is great that the Bryars-Winston article mentioned the need for counselors (not even just career counselors) to explore their own cultural background, which I believe should include an examination of the view that you hold about your own culture and the culture of others. This is not always a fun process and can lead to feelings of guilt about how you see other human beings who happen to be different than you in some ways. People tend to assume, naturally, that there is only one 'right' way to do things and it is their way. I think it should be necessary for any type of counselor to be non-judgemental and to know where their weak points are. If someone has another way of doing something, we should be accepting of that. Also, we cannot assume that just because a person is in a cultural group, that they will fit the stereotype. I don't fit every Euro-American stereotype, so why do I think that say, a Hispanic person will fit in a neat and stereotypical box?

I am relatively surprised that there are not more studies done on people of different ethnic groups. We have the information based on general cultural findings, so why haven't we come up with a plan yet? I'm okay with modifying current treatments to fit the culture and needs of the client, but it would be a lot easier to do if I had evidence to back me up.

I also think that it is common sense to research a client's culture before or soon after meeting them. It also doesn't hurt to ask, as this shows that you respect them enough to do so. My Euro-Asian best friend gave me the advice of being informed but not making any assumptions. Everyone has their own preferences in counseling -it's not just a cultural thing. That's what makes it exciting, yet difficult, the fact that every client is unique and requires a different plan of action.

Brown, D. (2012). Career information, career counseling, and career development (10th ed). New York : Pearson Education, Inc.

Byars-Winston, A. M., & Fouad, N. A. (2006). Metacognition and Multicultural Competence: Expanding the Culturally Appropriate Career Counseling Model. Career Development Quarterly, 54(3), 187-201.

Metacognition Article

  First off, I do not think there was enough time last week to process our in class activity. I gained a lot of knowledge using the different websites to find career information regarding our assigned case study. I wish that I would have known about the websites while I was in high school and undergrad because there is just so much useful information contained within those websites. I also liked the way we had a visual organizer to compare and contrast different occupations that fit within the individual presented to us. Again, this would have been useful at an earlier age in my life to help weigh pros and cons of different occupations.

    As for the article this week, Byars-Winston & Fouad (2006) discussed career counseling with a focus on ethnic minorities. As a student currently enrolled in multicultural counseling, I found the information to be overlap the chapters that I am currently studying. As we are progressing into the semester I am learning more and more about becoming more culturally competent as a future therapist and also about the discrimination that is still going on in the world today.

                One of the most valuable pieces of advice that I have gained from this article as well as multicultural counseling is how to be a culturally competent therapist. Counselors are encouraged to understand their awareness of their own cultural assumptions and how to address those assumptions. Therapy would be detrimental if a counselor was not able to understand the client’s way of life or way of thinking because of a cultural barrier.  A culturally competent counselor is also one that is able to monitor their own cultural understandings during sessions, as well as allow the client to explain and define themselves in regards to their culture. A counselor should be curious and ask questions about the client’s background to understand them better but also to help build rapport.

                Lastly, I liked that the article touched on ways to make career counseling more effective such as incorporating life experiences and world view of the client into the different interventions. I learned that another way to be more effective when working with clients is to self-disclose. In Multicultural Counseling we learned that another way to be more effective, when working with minority clients, is to self-disclose. I was confused about that because in Psychotherapy and Interventions we were told never to self-disclose unless the helper is 100% comfortable with doing so, and that the self-disclosure will aid in the interventions/recovery of the client. However, I think that self-disclosure is a way for the therapist to seem more “human like” and make the client feel more comfortable speaking with you. 

Week 8 and 9

Week 8 & 9

I found last week’s class assignment very helpful due to the hands on nature applied to critical thinking about the topic.  I find this approach would be helpful to apply to the contents of chapter 4.  Ethical guidelines can seem like a lot of wordy-legal language or common sense; however, discussing them in groups would be helpful.  At the recommendation of a previous professor, I always make a point to read the Legal/Ethical article in the American School Counselor Association publication. I find writings about real cases help prepare me for a decision that may need to be made in a split second where the line between right and wrong becomes blurred.

Chapter 5 integrated what I am learning right now from Multicultural counseling with the Career Theories we have been discussing.  One dimension of analysing theories which some utilize, includes a cultural analysis. For example, a lot of developmental models were based on caucasian participants, and depending on how old the model is, based on men. We touched on that briefly at the start of this course, but I would be interested to go back and look at each theory through a multicultural lens. In some ways I would critique the book for focusing a bit too much on absolutes.  I feel a lot of assumptions lie under the choice of when to use the SOLER technique (Brown, 2012).  Without truly exploring one's assumptions about the world and exploring one's own biases, it could be easy to get caught up in following a rule book of behavior instead of truly taking a multicultural perspective and building a good relationship. I have more praise that critique, but I do think it is important to note that this chapter too has its limits.  

This chapter is balanced by the article by Byars-Winston and Fouad (2006) which focuses on the counselor engaging with his/her own set of assumptions and worldview.  As someone who has been actively engaged in multicultural and anti-racism community work for for over 10 years, I can personally say the journey is never over.  I am still learning ways in which I need to put my biases in check.  I still catch myself saying very eurocentric things under the air of an absolute instead of acknowledge it is simply a cultural perspective,  Byars-Winston & Fouad challenge us grow instead of giving us a list of facts and cultural norms to memorize about various cultures.  I like that this article focuses on the two-way dynamic of the counselor and client instead of just a one directional conversation about change.  

Brown, D. (2012). Career information, career counseling, and career development (10th ed). New York : Pearson Education, Inc.

Byars-Winston, A. M., & Fouad, N. A. (2006). Metacognition and Multicultural Competence: Expanding the Culturally Appropriate Career Counseling Model. Career Development Quarterly, 54(3), 187-201.