Counseling the linguistically and culturally diverse student: meeting school counselors' professional development needs

Professional School Counseling, Oct, 2004 by Pat Schwallie-Giddis, Kristina Anstrom, Patricio Sanchez, Victoria A. Sardi, Laura Granato

The literature on school counselors' perceptions of multicultural competence and the needs and challenges they face in their work with LCD students and families highlights general areas that multicultural professional development should address. The Multicultural Counseling Competencies (MCC), a framework developed by Sue, Arredondo, and McDavis (1992) for professionals engaged in cross-cultural work, can also inform multicultural professional development efforts for school counselors. The MCC address three distinct dimensions (beliefs and attitudes, knowledge, and skills) of three domains (awareness of our own worldview, awareness of the other's worldview, and appropriate interventions).

Most of the research findings in this area, including the studies cited here, used structured questionnaires that rely on a predetermined set of choices. What is lacking is an understanding of school counselors' perceptions of their work as multicultural counselors from their own perspectives and in their own words. Additionally, research is needed on school counselors' perceptions of the effectiveness of inservice multicultural professional development efforts.

METHODS

The essential questions that framed this study were:

1. How do school counselors perceive the challenges they face in counseling linguistically and culturally diverse (LCD) students and families?

2. How do school counselors define their professional development needs in the area of counseling LCD students and families?

3. How do school counselors, who work with LCD students and families, perceive the effectiveness of a 9-month, multicultural professional development program?

Researchers used a qualitative approach to explore, capture, and analyze participants' viewpoints relative to the three research questions posed above. The qualitative method used to address these three research questions and how data were analyzed are addressed below.

Sample and Participant Selection

Qualitative data were gathered through individual interviews with 13 of the 35 counselors who participated in a multicultural professional development program that consisted of seven monthly sessions during the 2001 to 2002 school year. The interviewees were selected from the pool of those program participants who had attended five or more of the seven sessions. The participants in this study were predominantly female, with the exception of one male participant. The majority (9) ranged in age between 40 and 60 years. The mean for age was 48 years. All participants had obtained at least a master's degree. Of the 13 participants, 10 were European American, two were Hispanic, and one was African American.

Participants' professional experience in school counseling was very heterogeneous. Forty percent of the participants had significant experience (10 to 20 years) working as a school counselor, while another 40 percent had less than 5 years of experience. The overall mean was 10 years of experience in school counseling.

Other than school counseling, the majority of the participants (9) had between 0 and 10 years of experience in education. The overall mean of the sample was 10 years of educational experience. Areas of expertise included teaching in K-12 education and special education.