International Journal of

ADVANCED AND APPLIED SCIENCES

EISSN: 2313-3724, Print ISSN: 2313-626X

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 Volume 10, Issue 10 (October 2023), Pages: 189-199

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 Original Research Paper

Relationship between multicultural experiences and multicultural counseling competencies among Malaysian counselor trainees

 Author(s): 

 Maizatul Mardiana Harun 1, *, Wan Marzuki Wan Jaafar 1, Asmah Ismail 1, Mohd Shahrul Kamaruddin 2

 Affiliation(s):

 1Department of Counselor Educator and Counseling Psychology, Faculty of Educational Studies, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 UPM Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia
 2Program of Counseling, Faculty of Cognitive Sciences and Human Development, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, 94300 Kota Samarahan, Sarawak, Malaysia

 Full text

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 * Corresponding Author. 

  Corresponding author's ORCID profile: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8892-087X

 Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

 https://doi.org/10.21833/ijaas.2023.10.021

 Abstract

The multicultural counseling course attended by counselor trainees is expected to enrich their multicultural experience through the academic environment, as they come from different backgrounds and personal multicultural experiences. While most multicultural counseling courses focus on the three components of multicultural counseling competence, counselor trainees should be provided with more multicultural exposure and interactions during classes to develop skills to work with diverse clients. Therefore, this descriptive-correlational study explores the relationship between multicultural experiences (personal and academic) and multicultural counseling competencies (self-reported and observer-rated) among Malaysian counselor trainees. All four instruments had been adapted and translated into the Malay language before being completed by 208 randomly selected counselor trainees. This study reported that counselor trainees scored at low levels of personal multicultural experience, high levels of academic multicultural experience, moderate levels of self-perceived multicultural counseling competence, and high levels of observed multicultural counseling competence. The findings showed no significant relationships between personal and academic multicultural experience and self-perceived and observed multicultural counseling competence. In conclusion, the findings imply that there are practices of experiential pedagogy in delivering multicultural counseling courses in counselor education programs. However, more research is needed to identify the underlying variables, such as counseling self-efficacy or self-introspectiveness, which may link the study variables, as this will serve as the most critical aspect in sustaining the counselor trainees’ multicultural counseling competencies.

 © 2023 The Authors. Published by IASE.

 This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

 Keywords

 Counselor trainees, Multicultural experiences, Self-perceived, Observed multicultural counseling competence

 Article history

 Received 21 May 2023, Received in revised form 27 September 2023, Accepted 7 October 2023

 Acknowledgment 

The author(s) expresses the utmost gratitude to the Universities, faculties, and counselor trainees who participated in this study.

 Compliance with ethical standards

 Conflict of interest: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

 Citation:

 Harun MM, Jaafar WMW, Ismail A, and Kamaruddin MS (2023). Relationship between multicultural experiences and multicultural counseling competencies among Malaysian counselor trainees. International Journal of Advanced and Applied Sciences, 10(10): 189-199

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 Tables

 Table 1 Table 2 

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