Language matters in counselling diversity

Abstract

The paper presents a personal view of some issues around therapeutic conversations involving difference and minority experience. Language, discourse and mother-tongue are explored from different theoretical standpoints and considered alongside concepts of difference, otherness and the unvoiced. Intercultural counselling offers a framework for unpacking the meaning of decolonising practice in conversations with clients or counsellors from ethnic or other minorities undertaking counselling or supervision. I discuss possibilities for practice informed by existential and hermeneutic phenomenology, including gestalt therapy interventions to bring in the body alongside discourse, and phenomenological empathy as a non-colonising resource in working across difference and diversity.

Cultural diversity in secondary school: the response to immigrant students in Spain from a counselling perspective

“…It remains significant that, although the teaching staff, acknowledge that the diversity of immigrant students is mainly marked by their culture and language, they basically attend to the linguistic diversity of the pupils, but from a compensatory and assimilationist standpoint. In this regard, our research coincides with the previous work by Alcalde (2008); Berry (2005); Berry et al (2006), Lee (2017) and Rodríguez-Izquierdo & Darmody (2019). The aim is for immigrant children to learn Spanish as soon as possible, in order to compensate for their academic difficulties, thus precluding the availability of learning opportunities to all students that comes from having a great diversity and richness of languages in the school.…”

“…Lin & Clay, 2002;Robinson et al, 2000;Sue et al, 1992). It is acknowledged that counsellors manage cultural diversity despite the difficulties and obstacles involved (Goh et al, 2007;Lynn et al, 2012;Tatar, 2012), and play an essential role in matters related to interculturality, inclusion and diversity (Awe & Portman, 2009;Lee, 2017;Monk et al, 2008;Ponterotto et al, 2010).…”

Educational Counseling and Temporary Language Adaptation Classrooms: A Study through In-Depth Interviews

“…Coinciding with [66][67][68], the key to getting schools to commit to educational inclusion lies not only in the role played by the counselor as manager and promoter of cultural diversity, or other specialists, but also in the inclusive leadership that the school institution is capable of implementing. To this end, the involvement of all members of the educational community is essential, with school counselors (due to the skills and functions they deploy and perform in the management of cultural diversity) as key figures in the achievement of a school for all.…”

“…Counselors' role is key for the promotion of change in schools; their work is essential to helping schools manage cultural diversity, interculturality, and inclusion in the best possible conditions. The role that these professionals play is key to promoting change and enabling schools to be in the best conditions to manage cultural diversity [66] and because of that, play an essential role in matters related to interculturality, inclusion, and diversity [67,68].…”