Relationship between multicultural experiences and multicultural counseling competencies among Malaysian counselor trainees

Abstract

The multicultural counseling course attended by counselor trainees is expected to enrich their multicultural experience through the academic environment, as they come from different backgrounds and personal multicultural experiences. While most multicultural counseling courses focus on the three components of multicultural counseling competence, counselor trainees should be provided with more multicultural exposure and interactions during classes to develop skills to work with diverse clients. Therefore, this descriptive-correlational study explores the relationship between multicultural experiences (personal and academic) and multicultural counseling competencies (self-reported and observer-rated) among Malaysian counselor trainees. All four instruments had been adapted and translated into the Malay language before being completed by 208 randomly selected counselor trainees. This study reported that counselor trainees scored at low levels of personal multicultural experience, high levels of academic multicultural experience, moderate levels of self-perceived multicultural counseling competence, and high levels of observed multicultural counseling competence. The findings showed no significant relationships between personal and academic multicultural experience and self-perceived and observed multicultural counseling competence. In conclusion, the findings imply that there are practices of experiential pedagogy in delivering multicultural counseling courses in counselor education programs. However, more research is needed to identify the underlying variables, such as counseling self-efficacy or self-introspectiveness, which may link the study variables, as this will serve as the most critical aspect in sustaining the counselor trainees’ multicultural counseling competencies.