Culture and Career Counseling

Paper Summary:

Culture is a critical variable in career counseling and should enter into every part of the career counseling process. This paper explains that, in order to effectively utilize a valid frame of reference in which to place cultural variables, counselors need to be familiar with theories of acculturation, world-views, aspirations and expectations, societal barriers and intra-group socialization, and racial and ethnic identity development.The writer explains that it is clear that career counselors working with multi-cultural students must be trained in such a way as to ensure that they are completely sensitive to and well-versed in matching individual students to the appropriate work environment. It discusses how career counseling is a process occurring between two or more individuals and designed to help students reach a career decision. It concludes that, in order to be effective as a career counselor with racial and ethnic minority students, counselors must become skilled in cross-cultural counseling.

From the Paper:

"Good career counseling always takes place within a cultural context, which is true regardless of ethnicity. Current theoretical models may not be adequate to explain the career behavior of racial and ethnic minorities. Vocational assessment has to be culturally sensitive, and only culturally appropriate tools should be used in vocational assessment. The goal of career counseling is to help clients make career choices that are culturally appropriate, rather than to try to have all clients make the same choices. Today, with the changes in the balance of ethnic representations in the United States, and a greater recognition of the changing needs of racial and ethnic minority members, it is generally agreed that counselors must be competent to work with a diverse population and effectively deliver vocational counseling services to racial and ethnic minorities."

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