Self-Perceived Multicultural Counseling Competencies in South African Psychologists: A Basis for Practice Guidelines

Abstract

The study sought to explore multicultural counseling competences that are relevant for the South African context, in order to advance appropriate multicultural competent theory and practice. A total of 271 psychologists on the national register participated 109 Clinical, 79 Counselling, 60 Educational, 12 Industrial and 11 Research Psychologists, of whom 191 were women and 80 men, with 206 English, 50 African and 15 Afrikaans home language speakers. Data were collected using questionnaire and also discourse analysis methods. Themes that emerged from the analysis included competencies with regard to the relationship, understanding, respect, innovation of training programmes, use of culture fair tests, contextually grounded research and intervention, tolerance, trust, empowerment, community internships and celebration of diversity. These themes are relevant to the development of guidelines for multicultural counselling competencies for South African psychologists.

Keywords:

• competencies
• counseling
• diversity
• guidelines
• multicultural
• South Africa