Cultural diversity and cultural competence has been on m y mind over the past few weeks.  After meeting with my interviewee, I realized how much culture plays a part in career, thoughts about counseling, education and social and psychological development.  Reading the article Metacognition and Multicultural Competence (Byars-Winston & Fouad, 2006), brought together concepts from my multi- cultural counseling class as well.  I am learning that my thoughts about culture and diversity play a huge role in how I treat individuals in a counseling arena.  Self awareness, self concepts and thoughts about cultures outside of my own are key factors in learning how to counsel individuals.   

Byars- Winston and Fouad (2006) discuss the idea of counselor metacognition.   The idea of understanding the mind set domains: available knowledge about culture, my ability to process information about this knowledge and the ability to monitor’s my own thoughts was very interesting to me (Byars-Winston & Fouad, 2006).  Often times, I think I place cultural identity to the back of my mind.  I used to have this mindset that I do not see color and that everyone is equal in my mind.  Multicultural counseling is opening my eyes to new ways of thinking about race and culture.  It is helping me see how important it is to talk about and learn about each other’s race and culture and to not be afraid to learn and experience other’s cultures.  I think this article fulfilled some of the ideas that I am learning in multi-cultural counseling.  Self awareness about my own thoughts and ideas about culture must be addressed before heading into a counseling session.  I realize the importance of learning about my client’s race and ethnicity and bringing that knowledge into the counseling session.  I think sometimes, we as counselors have assumptions about another person’s culture or try to understand another person’s culture based on our own upbringing.  This could create some barriers for the client if we are not sensitive to their cultural background.  Discussing differences and gaining knowledge about the individual will only help myself as the counselor offer the best ideas and solutions to the client. 

When I met with my interviewee for the upcoming paper, I realized how much culture played into his career development and reading this article has helped me challenge some of my thinking about the importance of race and ethnicity in the counseling arena and in my social life.

Byars-Winston, A. and Fouad, N. (2006). Metacognition and multicultural competence: expanding the culturally appropriate career counseling model.  The Career Development Quarterly, (54), 187-201.