TPC-Journal-V4-Issue1

73 The Professional Counselor \Volume 4, Issue 1 oping the relationships, they fail to offer requisite skills that are necessary when developing relationships with culturally diverse clients. For example, the authors espouse using the model to “promote culturally effective relationships, particularly in interpersonal counseling” (Arredondo et al., 1996, p. 55); however, the competen- cies emphasize only that diverse relationships should be considered, not how they are to be achieved. Given that the TM is the preeminent model in which most multicultural courses are grounded, emphasis on relationships between the client and counselor and relationships between minority clients and majority society is minimal, highlighting the need for alternate conceptualizations and models that emphasize the therapeutic alliance (West, 2005). Researchers suggest that often counselors teach clients how to best operate within the majority culture, fail- ing to address the significance of contextual factors (e.g., socioeconomic status, education, literacy) that may be related to client distress (e.g., Comstock et al., 2008). When contextual factors are overlooked, the coun- selor and client are at increased risk for perpetuating cultural misunderstandings and negative attitudes toward counseling (Hartling, Rosen, Walker, & Jordan, 2000). Specifically, failing to attend to contextual factors may lead to disconnection, feelings of being misunderstood, and potential for weakening the therapeutic alliance, which increases the likelihood for treatment withdrawal (Duffey & Somody, 2011). In sum, there is heightened importance for multicultural pedagogy to increase focus on the relational and contextual factors when working with clients from diverse backgrounds. Therefore, it is imperative to teach counselors-in-training specific skills regarding how to be attentive to contextual factors. Researchers (Roysircar, Gard, Hubell, & Ortega, 2005; Sodowsky, Kuo-Jackson, Richardson, & Corey, 1998) have found that exposure to varied multicultural experiences—both inside and outside of the classroom—in- crease various aspects of multicultural competence. Sodowsky et al. (1998) assessed multicultural competence while controlling for social desirability, race and attitudes of social inadequacy and locus of control. The authors found that multicultural training variables including minority client load, number of research projects, and mul- ticultural training courses significantly contributed to overall multicultural counseling competency. In another study, Roysircar et al. (2005) used a mentoring program in which counseling students in a multicultural course were exposed to middle school students in an English as a Second Language course to develop trainee multicul- tural awareness. Counseling students in the study reported increased multicultural awareness as a result of the exposure to different cultures (Roysircar et al., 2005). It can be inferred from these studies that the inclusion of multicultural experiences during counselor training can contribute to student development in regard to the TM. In sum, counselor educators have adapted to CACREP requirements through the application of several teach- ing models for multicultural competency including didactic (Abreu, 2001; Kim & Lyons, 2003) and experiential (Platt, 2012; Tomlinson-Clarke & Clarke, 2010) models for teaching multicultural competence. However, the efficacy of many of the existing models is unknown. Therefore, it may be helpful to employ a common standard across counselor education curricula to ensure that counselors-in training are receiving similar emphasis on the development of multicultural knowledge, awareness and skills. This common standard already exists in the mi- croskills training that are used in counseling techniques courses. Microskills Microskills training is the primary pedagogy used in counselor education training. Counselors-in-training are taught the building blocks of counseling through discrete skills used to simplify abstract concepts (Mol- len, Ridley, & Hill, 2003). The training model was developed as a result of work began by Truax and Carkuff (1967), who noticed that beginning and highly experienced counselors were equally skilled in facilitating thera- peutic change, an anomaly given an experienced counselor’s increased time in the field. The authors concluded that counseling students were being taught the importance of the relationship in counseling, but not how it is achieved; therefore experienced counselors had the knowledge base but lacked the ability to demonstrate respec-