Multicultural training on American Indian issues: Testing the effectiveness of an intervention to change attitudes toward Native-themed mascots.

Abstract

This study investigated attitudes toward Native-themed mascots in the context of color-blind racial attitudes. Results indicate that higher color-blind racial attitudes are related to lower awareness of the offensiveness of Native-themed mascots. The researchers tested the effectiveness of a training intervention designed to produce attitudinal change among master's level counseling students. Results demonstrate that the training intervention produced significantly greater attitudinal change than did a general training session on culturally sensitive counseling practices with American Indian clients, particularly among students with high color-blind racial attitudes. Results also indicate that this training intervention on Native-themed mascots contributed to lower color-blind racial attitudes, thus increasing the students' awareness of societal racism. Psychological training programs may benefit from augmenting their multicultural counseling curriculum by specifically addressing the offensive nature of Native-themed mascots. An awareness of the marginalization of American Indians, particularly as it involves racialized mascots, can reduce color-blind racial attitudes, and may provide psychologists with a more comprehensive understanding of aspects of the reality of American Indian clients that contribute to their worldview.

Cultural Competency Training and Education in the University-based Professional Training of Health Professionals: Characteristics, Quality and Outcomes of Evaluations

“…Medical students were the most common student group targeted, with five studies targeting this student group [12][13][14]22,24]. Four studies targeted nursing students [19,20,23,27], three health science students 16,18,26] and two each psychology [17,25] and pharmacy students [15,21]. The sample size of study participants ranged from 31 to 1974 students.…”

“…Education sessions were delivered using didactic and/or interactive sessions of 45 minutes 60 minutes and 3 hours duration [25][26][27]. Measured outcomes related to cultural competency included knowledge of cultural concepts, attitudes to and awareness of racial stereotypes and cultural sensitivity [25][26][27]. All three studies assessed prepost changes in outcomes measured, with statistically significant improvements in students' cultural knowledge and attitudes towards racially offensive behaviour and cultural diversity [25,27].…”

“…Table 1 summarises the sixteen studies evaluating cultural competence training and/or education interventions targeting university based training health professionals and describes the characteristics of their evaluations. Eight of the sixteen intervention studies were conducted in Australia [13,17-19,21-24,] and eight in the United States [12,[14][15][16]20,[25][26][27] Fourteen studies targeted undergraduate and two postgraduate university-based training health professionals. Medical students were the most common student group targeted, with five studies targeting this student group [12][13][14]22,24].…”

“…Education sessions were delivered using didactic and/or interactive sessions of 45 minutes 60 minutes and 3 hours duration [25][26][27]. Measured outcomes related to cultural competency included knowledge of cultural concepts, attitudes to and awareness of racial stereotypes and cultural sensitivity [25][26][27].…”

“…Three studies delivered cultural education to students in nursing, health science and counselling fields [25][26][27]. Education sessions were delivered using didactic and/or interactive sessions of 45 minutes 60 minutes and 3 hours duration [25][26][27].…”