Decolonizing Traditional Pedagogies and Practices in Counseling and Psychology Education: A Move Towards Social Justice and Action

Abstract

In this chapter, we explore how counseling and psychology training programs may unintentionally perpetuate colonizing practices through the very pedagogies and practices used to address multiculturalism and social justice. For the purposes of this chapter, we define colonizing practices in counseling and psychology training as educational practices that reproduce the existing conditions of oppression by failing to challenge the hegemonic views that marginalize groups of people, perpetuate deficit-based ideologies, and continue to disenfranchise the diverse clients and communities with whom our students will work. Further, we envision cultural competence as counseling that is congruent with a client's cultural values and norms, and consistent with the meaning of well-being and healing from their cultural perspective— not as superficial knowledge about a particular population. We define social justice as having shared basic values in a democratic context that promotes fair and equal access and opportunity without limitations that are based on race, ethnicity, culture, socioeconomic status, gender, sexual orientation, physical abilities, education, or language. In the counseling program in which all the authors are faculty members, we have worked to infuse a multicultural- social justice framework throughout the program over the past 13 years. While we continue to grow and face challenges, in this chapter we will describe some of the practices that we have found to be successful and provide recommendations for how our profession can revision and decolonize our educational practices. The chapter will focus on five areas that we see as critical in decolonizing the practice of counseling and psychology education: banking education versus education for critical consciousness, 'othering' multiculturalism and social justice versus infusing multiculturalism and social justice throughout the curriculum, voyeurism versus voice, community as an afterthought versus community as integral, and political neutrality versus political engagement. We provide examples from our own practice as educators that we hope others can expand on and continue to improve in order to better develop future social justice-oriented counselors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)