Multicultural counselling: towards a union
Department of NaturalResources Raseborgsv., 9; 10600 Ekenäs 2010-10-01
Purba Pal “If you want to successfully lead a person to a decided goal, first you must strive to find the person where s/he stands and start right there.” - Sören Kierkegaard, 1848 (translated from Peavy, 2000)
Abstract Presence of diverse culture is prominent in all spheres of our lives and work. Since 1990s Finland has also seen an increase in the number of immigrants who have moved to Europe with different intentions, one of them being high quality education. Meeting students who share cultural differences and similarities with teachers, counsellors and/or classmates is no longer a rare sight. This study focused on finding out how the situation is at one of the many campuses of Novia University of Applied Sciences in Raseborg. Ten counsellors participated and on the basis of the answers received, importance of culture in the counselling process is unanimous. Also most agree that multicultural counselling can be practised; however, counsellors seem to disagree about which factors contribute to a better counselling and what areas they would focus on during counselling. Furthermore, it was evident that many would like to know more about the students´ background (cultural and educational) and have understanding of how they tend to use language while communicating. To conclude it was a good sign that counsellors in the current study do not stick to a particular method but vary. Concern remains whether counsellors are aware of their own cultural identity and its potential effect on the counselling process. Could recognition of your own self be a starting point for a meaningful counselling in the sense of Kierkegaard?
Introduction Intrusion of diverse culture in our lives is more evident today than ever before. A pool of different cultures that we see all around us today is a result of many things. Some of them being people are moving more than ever before, people are migrating and of course internationalisation. For several reasons Europe including Finland has seen an increase in number of immigrants who belong to different cultural, racial, ethnic groups and also are multilingual. Meeting cultural differences and similarities in counselling students is no more a rare event but the means available are unclear. Multicultural counselling: is there a need in Finland? If one asks whether there is really a need for this kind of counselling, a need arises as two people with different world view meet and try to reach a consensus. According to Puukari & Parkkinen (2005) this is central to multicultural counselling. They mean that the way we understand our world and others is based on our own world view. And to understand another person one first needs to see where s/he stands and how his/her world looks like. In the face of changing work market and growing competition in the education sector, the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture adopted a national strategy concerning internationalisation of education, research and innovation (ERI) as recently as in end of 2009. The strategy formed by a committee suggested one of means would be to attract and increase the number of foreign students in Finland. The strategy focuses on five main areas, one of them being extension of support in the growth of a multicultural society while taking a global responsibility. It also states
” There will be 10,000 - 15,000 foreign degree students in Finland, and the volume of student exchanges in higher education will be around 28,000 persons annually. In the graduate schools at least 15% of students will be from abroad. The number of students from immigrant families will have risen substantially. The number of foreign teachers, researchers and experts in Finnish HEI will be at least double the 2001 figure.” (an excerpt from minedu.fi)
All this instantly puts all Finnish higher education institutions (HEIs) and respective faculties under pressure of grabbing international students. The questions however remain 1. Whether staff at Finnish HEIs is ready to cope with this inflow of foreign students? 2. What can we working as counsellors, mentors, tutors offer to these foreign students to make them welcome, understand the Finnish system of education and culture and assimilate and adapt to prevailing conditions? 3. Are we equipped with right methods and competencies to meet these students who speak different languages, practice different religion, and belong to diverse cultural, racial and ethnic background? 4. In other words, are we prepared to see a multitude of culture in HEIs and are we familiar with multicultural counselling? This study thus focused on a small Swedish-speaking university of applied sciences (UAS) located in a picturesque town Ekenäs (Municipality: Raseborg) in the southern Finland. The school launched an international Bachelor’s programme in Integrated Coastal Zone Management in 2008. The programme now harbours a total of 30 students and contains different nationalities. These students not only study within their own programme but also take part in social, international, extra-curricular activities as well as undertake other courses with local students. This has created an international atmosphere in the school that at the same time demand extra care and attention from the staff in order to help these students settle in and feel comfortable with their studies. These international students often with limited knowledge of both Swedish and Finnish find it hard to integrate in all spheres of school, society and labour market. We as their educators and counsellors, need to help them with their academic problems, finding internship, summer jobs as well as opportunities to study further (also see Pedersen, 2002 and also Talib & Hosoya, 2008). However Finnish current age structure shows a strong need of groups of people (with special skills or higher education) who can live and work in Finland to keep up the economy, market and businesses. What is culture? According to Launikari and Puukari (2005) culture develops together with other human beings, so understanding one’s culture cannot be a ‘passive assimilation’. Also that this development starts early, often unconsciously. With this in mind one can state that culture grows collectively and deeply rooted in what we experience as children. According to Hofstede (1992 in Talib & Hosoya, 2008) culture develops as a product of two things, one is “high culture” (= music, literature etc.) and human endeavour, values, thinking, life style. “high culture” cannot itself build a person’s cultural makeup that help understanding worldview of others. The term, multiculture means existence of many different cultures that in my opinion should also help individuals to grow and learn from each other but often in reality
creates misunderstanding. Why does this happen? Is it because we individuals are not aware of our own cultural identity, values that we have acquired already as children or is it due to the strong dependence of culture on language? Definition of Multiculturalism Within psychology it has been referred as ‘fourth force’ by Pedersen (2002) after psychodynamism, behaviourism and humanism. Multicultural awareness is accepted as a relevant competence to people engaged in multicultural counselling. And this awareness should not be restricted to only minority groups but extend to all groups of people (Pedersen, 2002). So are all counselling multicultural counselling? This is what many propose and Patterson (1996) quotes Speight et al., (1991) who redefined multicultural counselling being core of all counselling, as all individuals differ in values, life styles or cultural background. Hailemariam (2006) states that all counselling bears essence of multicultural counselling as when two people meet their values, personality, cultural background confront each other. And right then one’s own culture becomes more meaningful. Peavy (2000) also meant that all counselling takes place within the cultural context. But there must be some basic characteristics are expected to be borne by all counsellors. According to Peavy (2000) he thinks that all counsellors regardless of their category or area of practice could use the following, Listen and listen from the other person’s perspective Show patience and humbleness Start where the other person stands Let the other person teach Control your own need to feel superior to the one seeking help with regard to knowledge and talent Admit your own ignorance Can constructivist counselling unite different approaches within multicultural counselling? There is indeed disagreement amongst counsellors how to meet and deal with multiculture in counselling (Peavy, 2000). However, four dimensions can be recognised within multicultural counselling are (1) trust and communication (2) cultural empathy (3) authentic, responsible, caring ethic and most importantly (4) collectivism and individualism (Peavy, 2000). Cultural empathy can be trained by counsellors just like learning a different language and it is composed of two different aspects cultural empathic understanding and responsiveness (Ridley & Udipi, 2002). The authors comment that it is vital that clients understand that his/her counsellor has understood his/her self-experience (Ridley & Udipi, 2002). This cultural empathy is also something that Sue et al., describes in their work published in 1990. In describing what characteristics a culturally skilled counsellor must possess, they mention three dimensions of competencies and they are (1) beliefs and attitudes (2) knowledge and (3)
skills of a counsellor? Cultural empathy is also included here under the category ‘knowledge’ as here Sue et al., (1990) propose a skilled counsellor is striving to understand the world view of his/her culturally different client. The authors also pointed out the process of becoming a culturally skilled counsellor is a continuous one (Sue & Sue, 1990). This conceptual framework became even more advanced in Sue et al., (1992) where authors drew a matrix of nine competencies (characteristics x dimensions) that can be either recognised or developed within multicultural counselling. Characteristics being (1) awareness of own assumptions, values and biases (2) understanding the worldview of the culturally different and (3) developing appropriate intervention strategies and techniques and dimensions being (1) beliefs and attitudes (2) knowledge and (3) skills (Sue et al., 1992). Aim and objectives Hence, this study primarily aimed to investigate what methods and skills counsellors consciously use while meeting culturally different students at Novia UAS in Raseborg. To be specific I wanted to test their awareness about multicultural counselling, willingness to incorporate cultural aspects into counselling, with which means they try to understand students’ worldviews and which areas they focus on during counselling. Besides expectations of counsellors from such students were also going to be examined. It was also interesting to see whether previous training played any significant role in counselling and conception of multicultural counselling as a practice.
Material and methods Since 1990 inclusion of Finland in EU has led the nation into a phase of accepting people from other nations into Finland, but here I am only going to focus on counselling of students who come to Finland for studying either for a short period (within an exchange programme) or for undertaking a degree. Due to time constraint and scope of the study, I decided to focus on a group of people that is working at Raseborg campus of Novia University of Applied Sciences. A questionnaire (see Appendix) with both open and close ended questions were formulated and sent to teachers, library staff, administrative staff (including students’ office) and staff working at the Institute of Research and Development, Aronia to a total of ca 40 people. Although it was accepted that all participants perhaps do not regularly function as a counsellor or meet students from different cultural background, the questionnaire intended to probe these active and less active counsellors for their opinion on how they meet cultural difference, its significance in counselling and consciousness towards using any special method. A total of ten people filled in the questionnaire and returned back to me within a week.
Results While summarizing the collected data, I observed that except for one participant rest was female. Out of these ten participants the ratio between trained and untrained counsellors was 1:1. All participants have been working between 0-20 years and also they all meet students between 5- 30 times per semester. 60% of the participants when asked considered that training
is necessary in counselling students with a different cultural background than theirs (Fig. A). One counsellor pointed out that experience is more needed than training (Fig. A). None of these counsellors conceived multicultural counselling as only a theory (Fig. B). Most see it as a reality that they can implement practically and 80% of all participants also consider culture being important in counselling (Fig. D). But when asked whether they consciously use multicultural counselling while meeting students with different cultural background, same number of counsellors was unsure as they were using it (Fig. C). Most counsellors however agree that absence of prejudice is vital while meeting students with diverse cultural background; some pointed out that language being used in communication can also play a strong role (Fig. E). During counselling counsellors seemed to have different focal areas such as the individual, keeping an open mind, communicating in a right way; instead of applying some special method (Fig. F). Counsellors also indicated that they would like to know more about their client’s (here a student) background, both cultural and educational as well as to have knowledge of how to communicate with students (Fig. G). 50% of the counsellors wanted to see students develop in diverse ways throughout the tenure of counselling (Fig. H). To elaborate on this one counsellor meant that she had no expectation at the beginning of the counselling but as they carried on with counselling she wanted to see some engagement, sincerity from the student’s side. One counsellor said that he wanted to a development towards independent, critical thinking (Fig. H).
Discussion This study shows that all counsellors engaged in multicultural counselling regard culture as an important piece of counselling, yet they do not seem to use any particular method while meeting students with different cultural background than theirs. While elaborating on their method of counselling most think having an open mind and use of right language help a lot. However, having an open mind cannot be synonymous to cultural empathy as it entails that the counsellor understands the experience of his/her client and the client recognise that s/he is understood (Ridley & Udipi, 2002). Also Peavy (2000) means that cultural empathy is to have knowledge of your client’s life situation, experience, working habits, life style etc. It is not clear from the results whether participants are in possession of such detailed knowledge regarding their students. Most counsellors think absence of prejudice as significant while counselling such students. This is what Sue et al., (1992) describes in their original conceptual framework that is three dimensional and includes beliefs and attitudes of a counsellor. Under this the authors stress that the counsellors should express their negative emotions in a non-detrimental fashion and also compare their own culture with that of their clients but without any trace of prejudice (also see Nissilä & Lairio, 2005). Again to avoid such biases a counsellor should have specific knowledge about the groups s/he is working and understand the importance of socio-political activities that may have left a scar on his/her client. Furthermore, it is necessary that a counsellor actually has knowledge of how culture, race and/or ethnicity help develop personality, affect choice of career and help-seeking behaviour (Sue et al., 1992).
A need to accept others To achieve a successful counselling moment it is vital that we counsellors are not only aware of our standpoint but also open to other views. Examples can be several as D. W. Sue writes that in many cultures restraint is considered as a virtue whereas we (in Europe) often consider it as a sign of lack of intelligence or not spontaneous. Another thing that is often commented upon by educators and/or counsellors that students don’t look into their eyes while speaking whereas in certain cultures one is taught not to look into eyes of people who are either older than you or of higher prestige/status (pers.obs.). Not only in multicultural context but also in other situations absence of preconceived ideas would help in a better communication. Awareness of your own self The most important thing that most agree about competencies in multicultural counselling is counsellor’s awareness of his/her own cultural background, values and experiences and can distinguish their limits as a counsellor. Also that counsellor feels at ease with the cultural, ethnical, racial differences that exist between him and his client (here a student) (Sue et al., 1992). In the current study no counsellor indicated that they are aware of their own belief, cultural standpoint or that s/he feels comfortable with the differences that are prominent between her and a student. It is also not evident whether these counsellors who participated in the study have the knowledge to communicate in different ways with different groups of students and the impact that has on students. It was not clear whether they knew how their own racial background and understanding affected definitions between ‘normality and abnormality’, discrimination, racism and how these affected their work and personality (Sue et al., 1992). As no counsellor actually regarded their own values to be important in the current study, indicates that many counsellors are actually unaware of their own background and how their own upbringing, experiences, values can actually form their conceptions, worldviews and also negative pictures of others (Sue et al., 1992). Conflict between individualism and collectivism In most forms of counselling that are prevailing today, focus on individual seems to be common in Europe (Pedersen, 2002 and also this study). As also Peavy (2000) points out in his book that one of the most important elements in multicultural counselling is a balance between individualism and collectivism. Unlike in USA and Europe, individuals with cultural background in Asia, Africa regard fellow feeling more important than I-feeling. Society is built on strong foundations in family, friends and relationships within. According to Sue & Sue (1990) the basic difference is that the psychosocial unit is an individual in most European and White American societies whereas in many other cultures such as Japanese, Indian societies decisions are taken by a family collectively and not by a single individual. So counsellors focused on individualism (one case noted in this study) would create hardship in counselling according to Sue & Sue (1990). One example would be in an attempt to correct any mistake by a counsellor would incur shame instead of guilt, indecisiveness if asked to make commitments in a student with a world view in collectiveness.
Gender inequality in counselling sector? Since out of ten only one participant was male the question comes to mind is whether males are less active as counsellors or does it mean they are less reluctant to participate in such studies. Peavy (2000) also points out a balance between maleness and femaleness can be important in multicultural counselling. Neither is good or bad per se but none of the element should come in conflict with the counselling process and the communication involved. Female element in counselling tend to focus more on empathy, creates a more holistic, emotional process whereas maleness is more centred on individual, actions and rational thinking (see Peavy, 2000). Are there some hinders to effective multicultural counselling? Language is one, as some participants in the current study pointed out that they often feel unsure whether they are using the ‘same language’ as the student. Another problem that has been observed by the author herself is how to encourage students with different cultural background to participate in the counselling process? Both these problems are not uncommon and can depend on many issues (see Sue & Sue, 1990). They can even be interdependent. As the language a student uses to express his/her situation may be unfamiliar to the counsellor and can thus dampen interest on both sides and the development that many counsellors wish to see in a student. Many counsellors in the current study worried about how can they communicate better or do they actually communicate. Cultural differences between a counsellor and a student are not be seen as restrictions but resources that would ease the communication (Hailemariam, 2006). As Peavy (2000) also points out that communication is bound to culture.
Conclusions The study shows that despite being aware of the importance of culture in the counselling process, most counsellors regard that use of a particular method is not necessary in multicultural counselling. This is positive as fixation to a certain method may only stagnate a counsellor and counsellors are often encouraged to use more than one method as then a counsellor can really satisfy his/her client’s needs (see Peavy, 2000). However, it is vital that we as counsellors understand that our own self is equally important in the counselling process as the method is being used. As cultural beings our own cultural background, understanding of our cultural conditioning, experiences, values as well as competencies such as cultural empathy influence the counselling process. Besides, ethic in taking responsibility, being honest to your client and a fine balance between relative and absolute ethical values could be essential in fostering a sound counselling (Peavy, 2000). As most counsellors participating in the study seem to have long experience as counsellors it would be interesting to focus on how experience with diverse culture helps a counsellor to develop certain competencies. Can it actually erase some of our preconceptions, change our values, and rebuild our interpretations of experiences? The natural next step would also be to examine whether and how counsellors at Novia UAS in Raseborg first see themselves as cultural beings.
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