Week 1 Discussion 1

“Introduction to Multicultural Counseling” Program Transcript

FEMALE SPEAKER: Hello, and welcome to multicultural counseling. My name is Dr. [INAUDIBLE]. I'm a core faculty member at Walden University and a professional counselor. This term you will have the opportunity to increase your level of awareness, knowledge, and skills as they relate to multicultural counseling and the delivery of services. We will begin the course exploring the meaning of cultural competences.

You will have an opportunity to examine your own cultural world views, biases, values, and beliefs. You will also have an opportunity to assess how these aspects may potentially affect your interactions in the counseling relationship. We will take some time and look at the literature and review quite a few multicultural counseling theories. These theories will focus on cultural, ethnic, racial identity development. We will also review for a variety of multicultural constructs like ethnocentric monoculturalism.

What's important is you'll have an opportunity to relate these particular theories and constructs to the real world issues. During the course, we will examine the unique issues that individuals face as they relate to gender socialization, sexual orientation, religion, disability, age, and class. By the end of the course, you will hopefully have a better understanding of what it means to be culturally competent. A culturally competent counselor has the opportunity to affect positive social change. I look forward to an exciting term with you.

© 2012 Laureate Education, Inc.

©2012 Laureate Education, Inc. 1