Transnational Family Therapy Training: A Collaborative Learning Experience in Cultural Equity and Humility

Abstract

Transnational training experiences offer future family therapists unique possibilities to challenge habitual ways of learning, test their knowledge in new contexts, and develop meaningful tasks that foster critical thinking and timely application of knowledge and skills. This training incorporated global and local issues of equity, history, and social positioning from a collaborative learning perspective to develop family therapy competency in cultural equity, reflexivity, and collaborative responsiveness. This article describes the development and implementation of a transnational immersion training in Cali, Colombia using a dialogical framework involving U.S. family therapy students and Afro-Colombian women.

KEYWORDS:

• education
• multicultural
• supervision
• training
• transnational family therapy

Notes

¹ We use the term transnational to refer to a process of continued interconnectivity between instructors, supervisors, clinicians in training, and community members across national borders following Bryceson and Vuorela (2002, p. 154) use of the term transnational families, as those who “live some or most of the time separated from each other, yet hold together and create something that can be seen as a feeling of collective welfare and unity, namely ‘familyhood’, across national borders.”