TPC-Journal-V4-Issue1

72 The Professional Counselor \Volume 4, Issue 1 lower levels of skill acquisition, potentially perpetuating the issue of counselor graduates not feeling adequately prepared. Although knowledge and self-awareness are critical components in developing cultural sensitivity, it is imperative to teach counselor trainees skills that will aid them in therapeutically connecting with their clients (West, 2005). Counselor preparation programs are responsible for training students how to work with clients from all back- grounds; however, multicultural pedagogy has been found to be lacking in key areas (Braden & Shah, 2005), including focusing primarily on obtaining multicultural knowledge and awareness related to working with diverse groups, while failing to reinforce training in discrete skills (Priester et al., 2008). Knowledge alone does not lead to behavior or attitude change among counselor trainees and may actually reinforce culturally insensi- tive practices (Alberta & Wood, 2009; Arredondo & Toporek, 2004), creating a significant gap in education; while counselors-in-training are taught effective practices for personal multicultural development, they may not be given the necessary skills to use their new knowledge with diverse clients. Therefore, it is imperative to introduce new theories and integrate current theories into counselor education curricula to ensure that students are receiving well-rounded instruction in relation to multicultural competence. To this end, the purpose of this paper is to highlight the use of RCT (Miller, 1986) as a vehicle to develop skills and integrate existing emphasis of knowledge and awareness in multicultural courses. The authors will begin with a brief overview of multicultural pedagogy and current approaches to multicultural instruction, fol- lowed by an introduction to microskills and a brief overview of RCT. The manuscript will close with a case study which integrates the concepts of the TM, microskills, RCT, implications for the field of counseling and conclusions. Multicultural Pedagogy As counseling professionals have become more aware of the complexity and interactions of culture on counseling relationships (Daniel, Roysircar, Abeles, & Boyd, 2004), several models have been developed that make recommendations for what constitutes a culturally competent counselor (Buckley & Foldy, 2010; Col- lins & Arthur, 2010; Sue, 2001). Although these models were pioneered by recognized experts in the field of multiculturalism, many authors agree that the central model in the field remains the TM, developed by Sue, Arredondo and McDavis (1992) (Holcomb-McCoy & Myers, 1999; Mollen, Ridley, & Hill, 2003). The TM has influenced major counseling bodies such as ACA and CACREP, standardizing multicultural content in counselor training ethics and accreditation (Holcomb-McCoy, 2000). Additionally, the TM has largely influenced current literature on multicultural pedagogy, placing considerable emphasis on teaching multicultural knowledge, skills and awareness to counselors-in-training (Hipolito-Delgado, Cook, Avrus, & Bonham, 2011). Essentially, the TM asks that counselors (a) have the necessary cultural knowledge of the population they will be assisting; (b) be aware of any cultural biases that the counselor may have regarding the client’s culture and biases their client may have due to the counselor’s perceived culture; and (c) have the necessary skills to assist clients of that par- ticular culture, including understanding when to refer to more knowledgeable colleagues. The TM has been refined on three occasions (1992, 1996, 2001), but past refinements have failed to address some of the major limitations of the model (Arredondo et al., 1996; Sue, 2001; Sue et al. 1992). Criticisms of the model are based on the lack of supporting literature to ground the three-dimensional model, difficulty mea- suring the factor structure of the model, and lack of relevance for practical application (Constantine, Gloria, & Ladany, 2002). Furthermore, although the TM provides a helpful framework in conceptualizing multicultural- ism, it fails to highlight the importance of the therapeutic alliance when working with clients from diverse back- grounds. Extensions and applications of the TM include the development of the multicultural competencies (Sue et al., 1992). While the multicultural competencies highlight the importance of considering culture when devel-