Library · Domain 1. Professional Development & Counselor Self-Awareness · 1A. Professional Development
Task 1A.8
Training for work with different cultures and populations
“Engage in training related to working with different cultures or populations” (NBCC, 2027 task 1A.8)
Multicultural competence is built over a career through training, self-examination and experience with the people a counselor serves. Counselors seek training when they work with populations whose culture, identity, language or circumstances differ from their own or from what their education covered. The exam tests cultural humility, the Multicultural and Social Justice Counseling Competencies, and cross-cultural fairness in assessment and treatment.
Key points
- The Multicultural and Social Justice Counseling Competencies (MSJCC) describe four developmental domains: counselor self-awareness, client worldview, the counseling relationship, and counseling and advocacy interventions, each with attitudes and beliefs, knowledge, skills and action.
- Cultural humility means an ongoing, self-critical stance toward one's own assumptions and a willingness to learn from each client, rather than claiming mastery of a culture.
- Training should address the counselor's own biases and privilege as well as knowledge about specific groups.
- Avoid stereotyping: knowledge about a group gives hypotheses to explore with an individual client, not conclusions.
- Cross-cultural fairness includes using assessments normed on comparable populations and considering cultural idioms of distress before diagnosing.
- The ACA Code of Ethics asks counselors to gain knowledge, personal awareness, sensitivity and skills for working with diverse clients, and it prohibits discrimination.
- Seek training proactively when the community you serve changes, for example after new immigrant groups settle in an area.
In practice
A counselor at a community agency sees a growing number of clients who are refugees. She completes training on trauma in refugee populations and on working with interpreters, and joins a consultation group led by a counselor from the community.
After a training on the MSJCC, a counselor reflects on how his own middle-class background shaped his assumptions about clients who miss appointments, and he begins asking clients about transportation and work schedules before labeling missed sessions as resistance.
Check yourself
What are the four developmental domains of the MSJCC?
Counselor self-awareness, client worldview, the counseling relationship, and counseling and advocacy interventions.
How does cultural humility differ from cultural competence as mastery?
Cultural humility is an ongoing, self-reflective openness to learning from each client rather than claiming complete knowledge of a group.
How should a counselor use general knowledge about a client's cultural group?
As hypotheses to explore with the individual client, because applying group knowledge as fact leads to stereotyping.
NBCC's knowledge and skills for 1A. Professional Development
Knowledge of: Cross-cultural fairness; Continuing education requirements; Levels of advocacy and social justice.
Skill in: Engaging in clinical consultation; Engaging in clinical supervision; Selecting appropriate continuing education resources.
A study guide written by ExamDragon from NBCC's published task; not NBCC material and not part of the exam.