The Effect of Ethnicity on Multicultural Competence

The Relationship Between Mindfulness and Multicultural Counseling Competence

“…Specifically, results revealed that racial/ethnic minority counseling students self‐rated their multicultural awareness and knowledge higher than did their racial/ethnic majority counterparts. This finding supports the results of previous studies (Constantine, 2001b; Ivers, 2012) and may be related to “the potential salience” (Constantine, 2001b, p. 460) of racial and ethnic issues in the daily lives of racial/ethnic minority students. Even though Latina/o participants composed the majority of participants in this study and in their counseling program, because of their racial/ethnic minority status in the United States, they likely still are exposed to culturally contrastive values and institutions on a daily basis, which may heighten their awareness of their own culture and other cultures.…”

“…This is consistent with how previous researchers (Chao, 2013; Chao, Wei, Good, & Flores, 2011) examined race and ethnicity in relation to MCC. As mentioned in the introduction, race and ethnicity have been shown to relate to or affect MCC (Chao, 2013; Constantine, 2001b; Ivers, 2012). For Step 2, we entered multicultural course completion into the equation.…”

Second Language Acquisition: Cultural, Cognitive, and Clinical Considerations for Counseling Practice

“…As the previous studies suggest, it is plausible that their "biculturalness" could afford them some cognitive advantages not normally enjoyed among monocultural individuals. Counselors whose ethnic group encompasses another language may see the advantages significantly proliferate (N. N. Ivers, 2012). This proliferation is undoubtedly catalyzed by factors extant in the research on multicultural exposure and bilingualism, but it is possibly also a result of the wider gap that bilingual individuals must bridge in the diverse cultural paradigms that language difference serves to exacerbate.…”

“…Results revealed that Latino Americans self-rated their overall multicultural counseling competence higher than did African Americans and European Americans. N. N. Ivers (2012) postulated that language, particularly speaking English and Spanish, contributed to Latino Americans' higher multicultural counseling competencies compared with their African American and European American counterparts. In other words, he suggested that sustained exposure to and interactions with not only diverse cultures but also different languages may further enhance multicultural counseling competence.…”

“…Members of the counseling profession, as in all fields, possess varying degrees of cross-cultural exposure. Many members of ethnic-minority groups who have mastered the ability to function professionally in the wider, majority culture have acquired enhanced multicultural counseling abilities (Constantine, 2001;N. N. Ivers, 2012), and many of them are truly bicultural.…”