Three current and two former faculty members of the Master of Arts in Counseling at Arcadia University published “Evaluation of a Multicultural Competence Curriculum in a Psychology-based Counseling Program” in Training and Education in Professional Psychology, a journal from the American Psychological Association (APA). 

The group of researchers consisted of Dr. Lauren Reid, program director and assistant professor; Dr. Hsin Hua Cathy Lee, associate professor; Dr. Michael Morrow, professor; Dr. Angela Gillem, former professor of Psychology; and Dr. Elenora Bartoli, former Counseling program director and professor.

The group noticed a gap in the empirical assessment of the effectiveness of multicultural competent training and aimed to fill it. They designed a multicultural curriculum for a psychology-based counseling program that was assessed from 2010 to 2019. The article analyzes this program in depth.

To evaluate the program, 95 students completed self-report measures of their awareness and knowledge along with an evaluative assessment of their multicultural competence. All students completed these measures before engaging with the curriculum and after it was completed. 

The group’s findings show that the multicultural curriculum was associated with growth in self-reported awareness and knowledge of multicultural issues and situations. However, findings did not indicate growth in multicultural competence knowledge as evaluated by the standardized test. 

Out of all components of the curriculum, a clinical skills course with an accompanying self-awareness component was most associated with greater changes in self-reported awareness. On the other hand, baseline self-reported knowledge could potentially impede gains in self-reported awareness. 

Overall, the study and its results show the importance of combined awareness and skill development for continuous learning. It provides an example of a multicultural curriculum, and while the program was psychology-based counseling, the findings apply to a variety of other fields. 

It is an ethical imperative to provide training, in all multiculturally competent fields. Even so, training programs have a vast variation in the implementation of this imperative. This study provided empirical analysis of one such program, and such analysis needs to continue across various multiculturally competent programs.