A Qualitative Study of Therapist Trainees’ Multicultural Counselling Competence in Response to Working with Refugees Clients: Implications for Theory-Building, Research, and Practice

Abstract

This study qualitatively examined the evolving experience and change process occurred when 14 clinical psychology doctoral trainees worked directly with refugee clients as part of their multicultural counselling training (MCT). The trainees’ post-session critical incident journals were collected and analyzed based on the Grounded Theory Method. A superordinate theme emerged from the data analysis in response to the research questions of this study - Increased Awareness and Responses to Make Cultural Adaptations to Therapy. This superordinate theme, with its 8 subthemes, suggest that in learning how to respond to and build relationship with refugee clients, trainees experienced a dynamic developmental progression, involving elements of cultural awareness, knowledge, and skill. A three-progned ‘Cognitive-Affective-Behavioural’ model was also identified and hypothesized to help conceptualize the effects/impacts on trainees’ overall development of multicultural competence through building relationship and offering culturally-informed therapy to refugees. Implications for MCT theory-building, research and practice are discussed.