Group Counseling/Psycology - Article Example

GROUP COUNSELING/PSYCHOLOGY Counselor Preparation: Using Personal Growth Groups in Multicultural Counseling s to Foster Ethnic Identity Development By P. Clay Rowell & James M. Benshoff SUMMARY The present study, on the topic of Multicultural Counseling Competence Program, serves as perhaps the first published study on the effectiveness of personal growth counseling groups (PGGs) in order to find out relationship between multicultural counseling courses and students’ ethnic identity development.

One hundred and ninety nine Masters level students were selected as participants in this research. The main purpose for conducting this research was to discover how much the course effects on the skills of the counselors. The data was gathered through mailed questionnaire, and the findings were collected for the interpretation of results. Multicultural counseling competence programs have been introduced in psychology courses in order to prepare the students for exploring personal biased feelings on the one hand, and the distinguished traits and characteristics universally attributed to divergent racial and ethnic groups of the world, so that the psychologist-counselors could comprehend with the problems faced by the individuals belonging to diversified cultures in the contemporary multicultural social establishment.

Rapidly changing socio-cultural situation has increased the responsibilities of the trainers and mentors to a great extent, and they are bound to train the future counselors with the help of various cultural identity models that could prove vehemently effective while their dealing with the clients belonging to different cultures of the globe. The personal development and racial-ethnic identity models, offer in-depth analysis opportunities to the learners, as applying of these models wide open wide horizons of learning and understanding to the under-training counselors.

Consequently, the talent and skills of the counselors are developed through multiple methods including group discussions, field experiments and exploration of personal views etc, so that they become capable of providing counseling services to the patients coming of divergent regions, races, religions, ethnicity, age, gender, sexual orientation and socioeconomic statuses. The trainers pay particular heed to self-awareness, which becomes supportive in making comparisons of one’s personal beliefs and prejudices with those of others.

All the measurement models concentrate upon self-awareness, psychological insight, and interpersonal relationships with the people of other cultural groups, and solving of the problems as well. These above-mentioned four aspects turn out to be helpful in the exploration of the personality traits of the individuals belonging to divergent communities and cultural groups on the one hand and for the achievements of personal goals and targets on the other. The results show that the course has laid significant impacts upon the participants particularly in emotional awareness and problem definition.

Thus, the research proved the efficacy of multicultural counseling program that not only polishes the skills of the counselors, but also improves their command over dealing with the people of every class, community and culture. There is an immediate need for the conducting of researches on the same topics for the introducing of similar counseling programs. Several group counseling theoretical frameworks can be applied in the present study, which includes cognitive development theory by Piaget & Vygotsky, Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, Frankl’s Existential therapy, Analytical theory by Karl Jung, Maslow’s Need Hierarchical Theory and others.

Main reason behind applying these theories is this that since the research carries vastness of scope in it and focuses upon analyzing several aspects related to the exploration of both personality and cultural diversity, cognitive, analytical and hierarchical theories can be applied for the present study. Reference Rowell, P. Clay & Benshoff, James M. 2008 Counselor Preparation: Using Personal Growth Groups in Multicultural Counseling Courses to Foster Students’ Ethnic Identity Development Counselor Education & Supervision Volume 48 2-15