Perceptions of Intercultural Social Challenges: Towards Culturally Competent Counselling Practice

Increasing ethnic and cultural diversity worldwide and especially in Australia requires that psychologists and counsellors cultivate the knowhow to interact and work effectively with clients and stakeholders in cross-cultural contexts. This study aimed to identify and compare themes regarding challe...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Australian journal of guidance and counselling 2015-12, Vol.25 (2), p.183-199
Main Authors: Mak, Anita S., Shaw, Tamara L.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Australia
Barriers
Barriers to implementation
Comparative Analysis
Counseling
Counseling Techniques
Counsellors
Counselor Client Relationship
Cultural Awareness
Cultural interrelationships
Focus Groups
Foreign Countries
Intercultural competence
Interpersonal Competence
Multiculturalism
Psychologists
Student support services
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Increasing ethnic and cultural diversity worldwide and especially in Australia requires that psychologists and counsellors cultivate the knowhow to interact and work effectively with clients and stakeholders in cross-cultural contexts. This study aimed to identify and compare themes regarding challenging intercultural social scenarios experienced by supervising, practising and intern psychologists. Transcripts from five focus groups were open-coded on four occasions and the final themes compared with the EXCELL (Excellence in Cultural Experiential Learning and Leadership) program's six key sociocultural competencies (Mak, Westwood, Barker, & Ishiyama, 1998). We found that many challenges reported by psychologists (regardless of their qualifications) were related to difficulties — for psychologists and clients — in executing one or more of key sociocultural competencies: seeking help or information, participating in a group, making social contact, giving feedback, refusing a request, and expressing disagreement. We also identified barriers to cultural competence in therapeutic relationships, including cultural identity issues, needing to address difficulties in intimate relationships, cultural variation in values/beliefs/social norms, mismatched expectations, psychologists’ perceived deficit in intercultural training, and challenges in self-reflection. Based on our findings, we propose a model of culturally competent counselling practice and discuss implications for counsellor and psychologist training, and for future research.
ISSN:2055-6365
1037-2911
2055-6373
1839-2520
DOI:10.1017/jgc.2015.13