Training Culturally Competent Counselors: Can We Meet the Challenge?

This paper discusses a preliminary study aimed at examining counseling students' cultural identity development. The primary goals of this project were to develop a rubric for assessing racial cultural identity growth; to provide a personal and meaningful paradigm for the trainee to explore racial cultural identity development and a format for self assessment; and to develop instrumentation that is resistant to the influences of social desirability and political correctness. Graduate counseling students' affective and cognitive development, as related to cultural competence, was examined. Students also maintained reflective journals that were used as self-assessment tools for examining their abilities to handle the dynamics of difference influenced by racial and cultural diversity. Journaling enhanced the counseling students' abilities to define their own cultural attitudes, values, and biases; articulate the potential influence of those attitudes, values and biases on the cross-cultural counseling relationship; and conceptualize and identify areas for professional development related to increasing self-awareness, gaining cultural knowledge, and developing counseling intervention. The rubric developed from this study provides a qualitative tool for assessment of cultural identity development. Appendix A provides the journal assignments; Appendix B provides the rubric. (MKA)