Promoting Ego Development and Multicultural Competence During Internship

This research involved an exploratory intervention to determine the effectiveness of using a deliberate psychological education (DPE) approach that incorporated issues of ethics, multicultural competence, oppression and diversity. The study attempted to discern if the DPE model used could make a difference in the promotion of ego development (which subsumes moral development) and multicultural knowledge and awareness of counselor interns. The intervention group showed significant gains compared to comparison groups in ego development as measured by the Washington University Sentence Completion Test (WSCT) (Loevinger 1985 ) as well as significant gains on the Knowledge subscale of the Multicultural Counseling Knowledge and Awareness Scale (MCKAS, Ponterotto et al . 2002).