Cultural Background : A Cultural Perspective As A Future Counselor

Cultural competence and ethical responsibility of counselors is an issue that holds increasing importance. To be both multicultural and ethical is increasingly challenging. The population of the United States is changing quickly from a predominately white Caucasian society to an ethnically diverse society`. The Hispanic population, which represented only 9% of the population in 1990, is projected to increase to about 25% of the population by 2050. The number of African Americans, Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders, and American Indians/Eskimos/Aleuts will continue to increase as well (Aponte & Wohl, 2000). It has been predicted that Whites, who made up three fourths of the U.S. population in 1990, will no longer be in the majority by the

The Iceberg Model of Culture describes a culture’s behaviors and practices, interpretations, and core values. This particular model is interesting to look at, because it shows, how a culture is perceived (the tip of the iceberg) and the actually culture (the 90% that is hidden). When looking at the German culture the most things that come to mind would be: beer, lederhosen and dirndls, Oktoberfest,

There’s various things that describes everyone, but there’s only a few things that make each and every one of us unique, which is, our cultural background. As far as cultural background, it defines the individual’s upbringing. The cultural background includes ones religion, race, gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic factors, linguistic and values. These values can be shaped by family, friends, society, or authoritative level. This paper is a great way for one to define my identity or at least understand who I am.

To expand upon Sue and Sue’s (2003) three primary categories of awareness, knowledge, and skill that are foundational to practicing culturally competent counseling, I believe for myself I will need to further process, explore, and ultimately find peace with multicultural issues I have encountered in my life and continue to struggle with. Often times I don’t like to go there with myself in my thoughts, feelings, and words because it makes me feel weak, less than, or other. My personal negative experiences of being pigeonholed a deviant when it comes to sexual orientation and variant with gender roles by society at large is something I am constantly reminded of and experiencing. Living as I am in a heteronormative society that operates with a sexual dichotomy has an

The journal article examines the teaching of multiculturalism as a discipline in the counseling field. No other field of study is more affected by multiculturalism then the field of counseling. “In the study research appears to confirm the importance of attending to cultural concerns in the therapeutic process as well as the efficacy of multicultural training approaches in the establishment of multicultural counseling competence”. (Fetzer, 2016) Further research also shows that racial group membership and racial identity of the student impacted engagement in multicultural counseling.

"Appearances can be deceiving”, “Don’t judge a book by its cover” and “Life is not what it seems” are three phrases heard often. One does not often think about how those phrases are played out in one’s own life on a daily basis. Typically, one thinks one’s own behavior and heritage are amiable and good. Few people ever study their own behavior as they do others; however, Brenna Yovanoff does just that.

In the United States of North America ethnic groups are easily found everywhere. As a result, the American culture is a combination of many other cultures such as Irish, Latin, African, British, etc. However, one of the most significant of these is the German culture. German influence over this country is so strong that it goes through science, to architecture, to music, to sports and entertainment.

Triandis ( 1972 in Pedersen 1994) focused on the culture ‘in our heads’ , which is composed of the shared experiences and knowledge of a self-perpetuating and continuous human group, which is part and parcel of the personal reality. Triandis, Bontemplo, Leung & Hui (1990 cited in Pedersen 1994) distinguished between demographic, cultural and personal constructs. Cultural constructs they identified as being shared by group of people, who live in the same geographical location at the same time, speak the same dialect and shared the same norms, roles, values and ways to describe experience. Demographic constructs deal with the same topics, but when shared by a particular demographic group within a culture, such as men and women, young and old. Personal constructs belong to another category of individual differences and cannot be meaningfully interpreted with references to the cultural and demographic membership. Each of the three constructs are closely related with the others, but they should be examined independently. Counselling in this case should take into account cultural and demographic differences, but work on a personal level. Contrary to this view stands Hofstede( 1986, 1992 cited in Pedersen 1996) who described three factors or dimensions that constitute and influence culture. The first concept is individualism-collectivism- a person experiences himself as a self-contained unique entity, striving to attain his or her own goals and to realize his or her

As we covered in our workshop America has had a large population of Germans for a very long time. While we were discussing German immigration and emigration, the question that stuck out to me was how did the views of the other groups in America effect how the Germans were accepted and viewed in the United States. Different times and issues have changed how Germans were viewed in America, for example both world wars and the following strong anti-German stance. While these times of strong emotion often change people’s outlook, I would argue that the positive or more neutral impression of German immigrants compared to other immigrant groups, helped Germans settle in America. While times of strong emotion often change people’s outlook, German immigrants with their slightly positive or more neutral stereotypes or ideas, helped Germans settle in America with fewer problems than other immigrants.

Texas is recognized for its rich German heritage and every year revelers gather to celebrate Oktoberfest in cities across the state. Oktoberfest was a compelling cultural event for my third field study endeavor. So what better place to celebrate one of the largest annual festivals than Fredericksburg, Texas, a city founded by German immigrants. It was an opportunity to gain valuable historical insight into the social ways of the German culture.

From the time we are little, our upbringing and life experience shapes us into who we are as adults. Part of us that is shaped is our philosophy and beliefs. We develop philosophies of how we think of the world. When we attain these attitudes they may be positive or negative depending on the person and their upbringing. As we get older these viewpoints alter and may grow either stronger or weaker.

People behave accordingly to their culture which makes them to behavior in a certain direction. Thus, it is important for to a counselor to treat a client according to his or her culture. Some peoples' culture consists of religious beliefs, certain customs, rituals, which involves social, morals and values. Likewise, the part of a researcher is to deliver knowledge about the participant’s background and lifestyle which is essential for cultural competence (Sue & Sue, 2013, p. 9745). Also, (Code # A.2.c.) a researcher must respect their client’s culture and be culturally sensitive. Thus, it is important that researchers are culture competence when participants partake in a research study (ACA, 2014, p. 3). For this reason, the researcher most

The first article Cultural Participation, Personality and Educational Inequalities that was written by Till Kaiser and Christian Schneikert was published on 31st of August of the year 2016. The article primarily focuses on examining the effect of the children’s culture, parental upbringing and the personality traits in the sphere of education whether they pose any significant advantages to a student or not (Kaiser & Schneickert, 2016). It focuses on the analysis of the different cultures and their effect on the educational qualities that are prevalent in schools. The research utilized existing statistical information which was primarily acquired from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study,

I am going to go out on a limb for this discussion post and address something that I have personally experienced, witness first-hand daily, and am concerned about for future counseling applications, which falls under the umbrella of culture. The generally identified and discussed marginalized groups, including racial, ethnic, gender, socioeconomic, etc., are usually the topic of conversation. Rubel and Ratts (as cited in Ratts & Santos, 2012) discussed not only the need for culturally-specific approaches to counseling, but also considerations made for client identity factors, as well as unique client worldviews. Working in the substance abuse field, having been incarcerated (which more often than not coincides

I recently attended an Oktoberfest event in La Mesa, CA. I had never attending an event like this before but thought it would be fun. Going into the event I figured that beer and sausages would be a key attraction based on my recent review of the German culture.