Practising counsellors’ identity salience in clinical supervision

Abstract

We live in a multicultural society. Every person belongs to multiple sociocultural groups and has their own unique multicultural make-up. Due to the infinite possible combinations of sociocultural identities, clinical supervision is always intercultural. This article will review the findings from a multifaceted quantitative study that explored which social or cultural identity supervisees named as most important in the supervisory relationship and whether the salient identity was of minoritised or marginalised status. The respondents were post-master's practising counsellors in the United States seeking full licensure in their respective localities. The results revealed the importance of respectful inquisitiveness and supervisor readiness to consider a variety of salient social and cultural identities. | Identity salienceIdentity salience has been defined as 'the probability, for a given person, of a given identity being invoked in a variety of situations' (Stryker, 1968(Stryker, , p. 556, [1980(Stryker, ] 2003; in other words, 'the probability that a given identity will be involved in social interaction ' (Brenner et al., 2014, p. 232). Jones and McEwen (2000) explained that the more salient a social identity is to a person, the more important it is to the core sense of self for the individual (Hurtado et al., 2015). Often,