Make It Personal: A Qualitative Investigation of White Counselors’ Multicultural Awareness Development

Abstract

In this qualitative research study, we explored the multicultural awareness development of 12 multiculturally adept non-Latino White counselors. Using a grounded theory approach, we found that early personal experience with diversity was the most important contributing factor in developing understanding and empathy for oppression among White counselors. This factor appeared to lay the foundation for an ongoing personal initiative to develop multicultural awareness. Subsequently, counselors tried to maximize what they could learn from their culturally diverse clients, work environments, coursework, supervision, and mentoring opportunities. Their personal initiative also inspired them to persevere despite the difficult emotions and conflict inherent in this developmental process. Results suggest the need to incorporate personally transformative experiences in counselor training and to prepare counselors for the emotional challenges of multicultural awareness development.

Counseling Students’ Emotions During Cultural Immersion: Impact on Reactance

“…Of note, the emotion items enthusiastic and afraid fell from significance with the Bonferroni correction in place, suggesting that guilt and excitement have both practical significance and incrementally more statistical significance (see Table 2). Thus, we concentrated our focus on these two particularly relevant emotions (i.e., guilty and excited), given their strong correlations with reactance under our conservative parameters and their resonance with the literature (e.g., Atkins et al, 2017; Spanierman et al, 2008).…”

“…Of note, the emotion items enthusiastic and afraid fell from significance with the Bonferroni correction in place, suggesting that guilt and excitement have both practical significance and incrementally more statistical significance (see Table 2). Thus, we concentrated our focus on these two particularly relevant emotions (i.e., guilty and excited), given their strong correlations with reactance under our conservative parameters and their resonance with the literature (e.g., Atkins et al, 2017;Spanierman et al, 2008). In a hierarchical regression conducted to address the second research question, we entered guilty in the first step and excited in the second step to determine their relative influence on reactance scores (all remaining analyses were set to a standard alpha level of .05).…”

“…Emotions and difficult realizations are particularly ubiquitous in cultural immersion projects (e.g., Hipolito‐Delgado, Cook, Avrus, & Bonham, 2011; Ishii, Gilbride, & Stensrud, 2009), one of the most popular multicultural instructional strategies (Barrio Minton, Wachter Morris, & Yaites, 2014; Priester et al, 2008). Cultural immersion activities place students in a tailored learning situation, within a real‐world context, thus providing meaningful contact that challenges cultural encapsulation (Atkins, Fitzpatrick, Poolokasingham, Lebeau, & Spanierman, 2017; Barden & Cashwell, 2013). These projects vary widely in terms of length and depth of the immersion experience as well as where they occur (i.e., local community or internationally; Barden & Cashwell, 2013).…”

“…The benefits of cultural immersion are empirically linked with its experiential, affectively engaging quality, such that students have opportunities to build self‐awareness, other‐awareness, empathy, and self‐efficacy (Atkins et al, 2017; Barden & Cashwell, 2013; Barden, Mobley, & Shannonhouse, 2014; Hipolito‐Delgado et al, 2011; Ishii et al, 2009; Suthakaran, 2011). Furthermore, cultural immersion has been connected to increased multicultural relationship scores (i.e., the quality of interaction between counselors and culturally different clients) for trainees (Dickson & Jepsen, 2007).…”

“…These projects vary widely in terms of length and depth of the immersion experience as well as where they occur (i.e., local community or internationally; Barden & Cashwell, 2013). According to scholars (Atkins et al, 2017;Barden & Cashwell, 2013;Hipolito-Delgado et al, 2011;Shannonhouse, Barden, & Mobley, 2015), key elements of immersion experiences for enhancing MCC include extended firsthand contact, opportunities to form meaningful relationships, critical reflection, consideration of sociopolitical factors, and attention to both commonalities and differences between self and those belonging to the cultural group.…”