Chapter 12 - Training School and University Personnel to Work with Cross-Cultural Ethnic Minority Populations

Abstract

This chapter puts emphasis over training school and university personnel to work with cross-cultural ethnic minority populations. The goal of the chapter is to train all school personnel to be competent, sensitive, and knowledgeable of the critical factors related to issues of cultural diversity to best serve the culturally different minority populations. This knowledge, sensitivity, and awareness ought to be built into the existing graduate training programs. The chapter proposes a bio-cultural model that aims to work with culturally diverse children. Cross-cultural factors that affect consultation and supervision—such as interracial therapist differences, language or dialectical differences, social and occupational status differences, and differences because of cultural isolation—are discussed in the chapter. Therefore the curriculum should take on a more interdisciplinary approach, utilizing contributions from related fields, such as social work, psychiatry, and anthropology. Focusing on areas—such as psycholinguistics, multicultural education, cross-cultural theory, and cross-cultural counseling—is to develop cross-cultural competence. A multicultural curriculum should be multifaceted, consisting of a combination of assessment, review of the ethnic literature, personal involvement, and the development of a small classroom group project. To prevent the marginalization of the education and psychology professions, there is a dire need to make some serious changes to address the growing change in the population demographics, in particular in the metropolitan areas.