Enabling Culturally Sensitive Career Counseling through Critically Reflective Practice: The Role of Reflective Diaries in Personal and Professional Development

Abstract

In this chapter I examine the role of critically reflective practice in enabling client-centered, empathic, and nonjudgmental career counseling. For practitioners this means having a high level of self-awareness in relation to their attitudes and values, so as to be able to set them aside in order to practice in a nonjudgmental and culturally sensitive way. In particular, the chapter focuses on the role of diary writing in the development of reflective skills in counselors. To enable this process, I have included an analysis of, and extracts from, my own reflective diary kept during my visit to India. Here, my own experiences in India are used as a case study in order to discuss the theme of reflective practice and the diary extracts are used as a tool for analysis and as a means of illustrating a range of reflective practice theory. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: chapter)