Theoretical Orientation, Empathy, and Multicultural Counseling Competence in School Counselor Trainees

As the 21st Century unfolds, school systems in the United States are becoming increasingly composed of racial and ethnic minority children (Durodoye, 1998; Johnson, 1995). This situation mandates that school counselors possess competence in working effectively with a range of culturally diverse students (Hobson & Kanitz, 1996; Lee, 1995; Reynolds, 1999). Such competence is commonly referred to as multicultural counseling competence (Sue, Arredondo, & McDavis, 1992). Few studies in the school counseling literature, however, have examined issues related to multicultural counseling competence. In one such investigation, Constantine (in press) found that higher levels of racism and less advanced White racial identity attitudes were each related to lower levels of self-reported multicultural counseling competence. In another study, Constantine and Gushue (2000) reported that higher tolerance towards other ethnic groups was associated with higher multicultural case conceptualization ability (i.e., the ability to conceptualize a clients presenting concerns from a multicultural perspective), and that higher racism attitudes were related to lower multicultural case conceptualization ability. Constantine and Yeh (2001) found that previous multicultural training and having an independent self-construal (i.e., a tendency to base one's self-definition on one's unique attributes and abilities and on the importance of distinguishing oneself from others) were each significantly predictive of self-perceived multicultural counseling competence in female school counselors. Constantine and Yeh's findings suggested that school counselors' self-perceptions or self-conceptualizations might have an important impact on how they think about or understand multicultural issues related to their students. One mechanism by which school counselors conceptualize the presenting concerns of culturally diverse students is through their theoretical orientation. Specifically, school counselors' theoretical orientations affect the ways in which they make sense of various issues associated with multicultural students, including these students' academic functioning, career development, and personal and interpersonal functioning (Sue, Ivey, & Pedersen, 1996). Theoretical approaches to counseling may create the necessary structure to help school counselors work within the counseling process (Nystul, 1999). There is a wide array of theoretical orientations to counseling that has been formulated over the course of the 20th Century, including psychodynamic, humanistic, and cognitive-behavioral approaches. However, these types of orientations have been criticized at times for being dated, being biased toward a White middle-class model of counseling, and failing to sufficiently consider contextual and cultural issues in clients' lives (Nystul, 1999). Thus, in recent years, there have been trends in the direction of modifying traditional counseling approaches to include attention to issues of diversity and, increasingly, towards integrating various counseling theories (Lazarus & Beutler, 1993). Theoretical integration involves the blending of two or more counseling theories, and appears to have stemmed, in part, from the notion that no one theory can comprehensively address the diverse needs of clients (Norcross & Newman, 1992). Some theorists assert that using an integrative or eclectic counseling approach may help counselors to more meaningfully consider salient cultural issues in clients' lives (Sue et al., 1996). However, little empirical information is available regarding the extent to which school counselors' theoretical orientations may reflect their selfperceived ability to work with culturally diverse students. This study examined theoretical orientation as a predictor of self-reported multicultural counseling competence in school counselor trainees. Of additional interest in this study was the extent to which school counselor trainees' ability to accurately empathize with the experiences of others would relate to their perceptions of their own multicultural counseling competence. …