A Review of the Literature on Promoting Cultural Competence and Social Justice Agency Among Students and Counselor Trainees: Piecing the Evidence Together to Advance Pedagogy and Research

Abstract

Go To DigestThere is a call for research on to effectively foster cultural competence and a social justice advocacy orientation among counselor trainees. A multi-disciplinary review of the literature reveals a body of anecdotal and empirical evidence in support of the use of pedagogical strategies grounded in critical theory to this end.The promotion of multicultural competence is an established professional training standard in industry and higher education (Musil, 1996). As a fourth force phenomenon within the counseling profession, multicultural education is intimately tied to advancing social justice (Arredondo & Perez, 2003) for trainees in the context of their studies (Ratts & Wood, 2011), and through populating our profession with culturally competent counselors. Its value in training has been empirically validated, yet much is left to discover about to most effectively deliver multicultural education and ensure that counselors are able to engage in ethical and competent counseling and advocacy with diverse populations (Coleman, 2006; Manese, Wu, & Nepomuceno, 2001; Seto, Young, Becker, & Kiselica, 2006; Smith, Constantine, Dunn, Dinehart, & Montoya, 2006).More recently advocacy competence has been recognized as a distinct professional standard for counselors with the American Counseling Association's (ACA) endorsement of the Advocacy Competencies (Lewis, Arnold, House, & Toporek, 2002), the recognition of Counselors for Social Justice (CSJ) as a division of ACA, the 2005 ACA Code of Ethics, and the 2009 Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP) standards. As such, there is a growing body of literature with respect to the promotion of advocacy competence among counselor trainees grounded largely in critical theories (Bemak, Chi-Ying Chung, Talleyrand, Jones, & Daquin, 2011; Brubaker, Puig, Reese, & Young, 2010; Constantine, Hage, Kindaichi, & Bryant, 2007; Goodman, Liang, Helms, Latta, Sparks, & Weintraub, 2004; Green, McCollum, & Hays, 2008; Hof, Dinsmore, Barber, Suhr, & Scofield, 2009; Lewis, Arnold, House, & Toporek, 2002; Ratts & Wood, 2011; Steele, 2008; Toporek & Reza, 2001). Naturally, counseling research on the relationship between multicultural counseling competence and advocacy competence (Manis, 2008) and effective training methods for promoting advocacy competence (Hays, Dean, & Chang, 2007; Lewis, Davis, Lenski, Mukhopadhyay, & Taylor Cartwright, 2010; Murray, Pope, & Rowell, 2010; Odegard & Vereen, 2010) is early in its development.Thus, while echoing the synergistic relationship between multicultural counseling competencies and social justice advocacy, Odegard and Vereen (2010) recently concluded how counselor educators teach these constructs to students is a mystery (p. 145). Their conclusion resonated with earlier expressions of this conundrum within and beyond the mental health professions. Palmer (2004) spoke to this challenge, indicating that the question of to teach the constructs had been pondered and studied across disciplines.In fact, a multi-disciplinary review of the literature on multicultural education, social justice advocacy and critical pedagogy revealed not only a paucity of research on effective training practices in counselor education and supervision (Odegard & Vereen, 2010; Toporek, Lewis, & Cremar, 2009), but also a lack of attention and investment in training for social justice advocacy within counselor education programs (Hays et al., 2007; Nilsson & Schmidt, 2005; Ratts, 2006; Ratts & Wood, 2011). It further provided a pragmatic rationale for infusing attention to culture and social justice throughout program curricula (Brubaker, Puig, Reese, & Young, 2010; Dinsmore & England, 1996; Goodman et al., 2004: Green et al., 2008; Hays et al., 2007; Hill, 2003; Paylo, 2007; Ratts & Wood, 2011; Stadler, Sun, Cobia, Middleton, & Carney, 2006; Sue, Bingham, Porche-Burke, & Vasquez, 1999; Watts, 2004), and empirical evidence that suggested theoretically grounded pedagogies could be twice as effective as ungrounded approaches in delivering multicultural education (Smith et al. …