TPC Journal V8, Issue 2 - FULL ISSUE

206 The Professional Counselor | Volume 8, Issue 2 reflective journals to include a crucial missing piece (i.e., participation of the clients themselves in reflective discourse on the counseling process). DDR as a Tool for Developing Cultural Competence The practice of DDR is particularly useful for the development of culturally competent counselors who serve racially diverse youth, where there is a greater likelihood of divergent cultural backgrounds between counselor and clients. Programs situated in urban settings will more often experience enrollment of counseling candidates with cultural backgrounds that are significantly dissimilar from the lived experiences of clients they will eventually serve. A portion of students enter such preparation programs with minimal, if any, practical cross-cultural and relationship-building skills that are needed to engage meaningfully with racially diverse groups and youth clientele. Even if students enter graduate programs with aptitude to intervene effectively with youth, they may lack the experiences in communicating with culturally diverse youth in a reflective and culturally responsive manner. Preparing for DDR as a tool for developing cultural competence can include guided experiences such as (a) relevant critical readings; (b) group reflective exercises related to equity and social justice issues; (c) the faculty supervisor’s appropriate modeling of critical self-analysis related to cultural competence; (d) role playing of DDR among students; and (e) rapport building with clients prior to digital recording. The pre-recording phase of DDR is an ideal opportunity for faculty supervisors to reinforce, through discussions and modeling, the developmental and cultural considerations of communication and engagement between young people and school-based helping professionals. Thus, the DDR process supports the development of cultural competence and intergenerational communication skills of counselors-in-training. Preparing for Reflective Discourse The DDR process (see Figure 2) begins with collaborative-reflective discourse between a counseling student and a client. Student and client collaborative dialogue reflecting on the counseling process is likely enough of a departure from therapeutic conversation that it requires some initial preparation for both students and clients. As faculty supervisors, we need to first prepare students to shift their interactions with their clients so that the reflective dialogue, or discourse, between them is a collaborative exchange of reflections on previous counseling sessions and processes. In doing so, faculty supervisors need to emphasize that this is intended to be a collaborative-reflective conversation and not an interview, therapeutic or otherwise. In preparing for DDR within a field course, the faculty supervisor and students generate a list of questions to be used during the reflective conversations. These questions are by no means comprehensive, nor should they be rigidly adhered to, but rather provide a starting point for the reflective conversation between students and their clients. Additionally, faculty supervisors need to work with counseling students in order to prepare and train them to explain to their clients not only each of their new roles, but also the nature and purpose of the reflective conversation or discourse. One approach that can be applied to this preparation and training of counseling students is role-play, which can first be modeled by the faculty supervisors and then rehearsed among the student counselors themselves. Examples of questions might include: What did you expect when you entered into this counseling relationship? When was a time that you wish you had responded differently to something during the counseling process? And, how has this experience changed how you feel about counseling? Following adequate preparation, counseling students can engage in reflective discourse with their clients. If they have not already done so, counseling students should first describe and discuss with