School Counselors' Multicultural Self-Efficacy: A Preliminary Investigation

Abstract

Self-efficacy theory is a popular framework for which to examine human motivation (Graham & Weiner, 1996), primarily because of its predictive power and application for practically any behavioral task. For this reason, we have selected self-efficacy theory as the basis for understanding professional school counselors' motivation and capabilities to perform tasks that are relevant and specific to equity and diverse student populations. We believe that school counselor multicultural self-efficacy is an important construct because it could predict professional school counselors' perceptions of their capability to perform specific tasks and their likelihood to overcome obstacles that might prevent them from achieving or completing those tasks in schools. We believe this is a critical aspect of professional school counseling that must be examined, given the increasing student diversity of U.S. schools and the movement to restructure school counseling programs for higher achievement among minority student populations. If professional school counselors do not perceive that they are capable of performing tasks related to equity and diversity, then they will likely avoid those tasks or downplay the importance of such tasks.

One School, Many Differences: An Assessment Tool for School Counselors and Multicultural Counseling

“…The Reflection of Personal Culture domain also replicates previous research insight suggesting the importance of counselor self-awareness and understanding how their own cultural identity may influence their perceptions, actions, beliefs, and biases (Constantine, 2001;Holcomb-McCoy, 2005;Holcomb-McCoy et al, 2008). The final domain, Interpersonal Relationships, emphasizes school counselors' ability to build effective interpersonal relationships with students, parents, community agencies, faculty, staff, administration, and other stakeholders.…”

Stigma of mental illness and multicultural counseling self-efficacy : investigating the implications of the multicultural training environment, mental health literacy, and empathy.

“…Investigation of gender as a variable has led to mixed findings, with some researchers reporting significant differences in multicultural counseling self-efficacy by gender and others finding no differences based on gender (Barden & Greene, 2015;Holcomb-McCoy et al, 2008;Wei, Chao, Tsai, & Botello-Zamarron, 2012).…”

“…Studies have suggested that multicultural counseling self-efficacy is a related but separate construct from multicultural counseling competence, that it depends upon interpersonal and intrapersonal mechanisms that differ from those of multicultural counseling competence (Holcomb-McCoy et al, 2008), and that it may be an important piece of multicultural training that cannot be thoroughly measured with existing assessments of multicultural counseling competence (Barden & Greene, 2015;.…”

“…Multicultural counseling self-efficacy was chosen as a construct of interest for the current study in an effort to differentiate the construct from multicultural counseling competence, a related but separate construct (Holcomb-McCoy et al, 2008). Although research of the factors that are directly related to multicultural counseling self-efficacy is limited (Barden & Greene, 2015), it has come to be considered an important piece of multicultural training that cannot be adequately or accurately measured with instruments developed to measure multicultural counseling competence (Hill, Vereen, McNeal, & Stotesbury, 2013).…”

“…Among the factors investigated as being related to multicultural counseling self-efficacy are length of time in graduate school , amount of multicultural training (Holcomb-McCoy et al, 2008), and number of experiential training opportunities (Barden, Mobley, & Shannonhouse, 2014;Sheu et al, 2012).…”