Cultural Variables in Career Counseling for Minority Students

Introduction: Culture and Career Counseling

Good career counseling always takes place within a cultural context, which is true regardless of ethnicity. However, because traditional career counseling has been shaped primarily by White counselors and researchers, the cultural encapsulation embedded in that counseling is often difficult for counselors to recognize (Fouad & Bingham, 1995, p. 332). Current theoretical models may not be adequate to explain the career behavior of racial and ethnic minorities. Vocational assessment must be culturally sensitive, and only culturally appropriate tools should be used. The goal of career counseling is to help clients make career choices that are culturally appropriate, rather than to impose a uniform set of choices on all clients (Fouad & Bingham, 1995).

The population of the United States is continually growing more diverse, both ethnically and racially, and is predicted to become even more so over the next decade. The workforce clearly reflects those demographic changes. The job of a career counselor is to help individual students decide which career or job is the right fit for them. Yet quite often, when counselors are trained to provide vocational services, they are trained using models based on the dominant U.S. culture (Fouad & Bingham, 1995). With the changing balance of ethnic representation in the United States and a growing recognition of the needs of racial and ethnic minority members, it is generally agreed that counselors must be competent to work with a diverse population and effectively deliver vocational counseling services to those communities.

Acculturation and Vocational Behavior

Culture is a critical variable in career counseling and should enter into every part of the career counseling process. In order to effectively utilize a valid frame of reference for placing cultural variables, counselors need to be familiar with theories of acculturation, world-views, aspirations and expectations, societal barriers and intra-group socialization, and racial and ethnic identity development. Career counseling is a process occurring between two or more individuals and designed to help students reach a career decision. To be effective with racial and ethnic minority students, counselors must become skilled in cross-cultural counseling.

Individual variables most commonly assessed in career counseling include interests, needs, values, abilities, personality variables, skills, decision-making style, self-concept, and self-efficacy. However, environmental variables that should also be considered include parental and societal influences, racism, acculturation, cultural values, and political and economic systems. As Fouad and Bingham (1995, p. 334) note, "the role that environmental influences play in the career decisions of minority students differs from that of many Caucasian students. This difference is typically not anticipated by career counselors and is therefore not adequately integrated into their career counseling." It is important for career counselors to understand that existing theories tend to under-explain the role of environmental influences in the career behavior of minority clients.

Acculturation is regarded by various scholars as a highly important variable in understanding the behavior of Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans (Arbona, 1990). It is the process by which immigrants adapt to the socio-cultural and psychological characteristics of the host society, and can also be described as "a complex interactional process in which members of the incoming cultural group and members of the host culture may experience change" (Padilla, 1980, p. 48). The two fundamental components of Padilla's acculturation model are cultural awareness and ethnic loyalty. Cultural awareness refers to an individual's knowledge of the cultural material — such as language, values, history, art, and foods — of both the culture of origin and the host culture. Ethnic loyalty is the individual's adherence to one cultural orientation over the other. Preferences act as behavioral indicators of both cultural awareness and ethnic identification, conveying considerable information about the extent of an individual's acculturation (Padilla, 1980).

Acculturation has always been regarded as a complex process in which cultural, interpersonal, and intra-personal variables are foundational. It is an inevitable result of contact with a non-native culture and has been defined as a process of culture learning and behavioral adaptation that occurs when individuals are exposed to that culture. In the acculturation process, basic psychological factors — such as attitudes and behavior — undergo change (Padilla, 1980). Acculturation is affected by a number of factors, including age, intent of immigration, kinship structure, religious beliefs, job skills, generational status, income and educational level, birthplace, years of U.S. residence, and mental health. Language use, however, appears to be the variable most closely tied to successful acculturation (Miranda & Umhoefer, 1998).

World-Views, Aspirations, and Expectations

Acculturation levels of Asian American students are related to many aspects of life and play a critical role in their career choices. Highly acculturated students tend to identify with mainstream U.S. culture, while less acculturated individuals identify more strongly with their culture of origin (Tang, 2002). Within Hispanic populations, acculturation — which is tied to socioeconomic status and ethnicity — appears to be an extremely important influence on both educational and career attitudes and behaviors (McWhirter, 1998). For Latinos specifically, the best predictors of career self-efficacy are acculturation and language use. Higher acculturation levels and greater use of English may contribute to a stronger belief in their competence to perform any desired job, regardless of educational level, length of U.S. residence, or age (Miranda & Umhoefer, 1998).

A world-view is the lens through which one experiences life. Among the first writers in the counseling field to delineate features of varying world-views was Nobles, who described both an African and a European world-view. In the African world-view, the focus is on the group or tribe, the survival of the group, and harmony with nature. The European world-view, by contrast, emphasizes individual survival, competition, and control of nature — an orientation that is assumed to be predominant in the dominant U.S. culture. Individuals raised within diametrically opposed frames of reference are highly likely to express their interests, values, and attitudes in very different ways (Nobles, 1976).

Racial and ethnic minorities hold world-views that differ from those of many European Americans. A world-view encompasses all of the cultural norms, mores, and folkways passed on to successive generations within a group. Values, interests, and familial and interpersonal relationships are largely defined by those world-views, which in turn often influence career choice (Sue & Sue, 1990). Students with an African world-view, for example, may be more likely to subordinate individual goals to the goals of the group, making it difficult to choose a career without considering its effect on their racial or ethnic community (Fouad & Bingham, 1995). One influential definition frames a world-view as "how a person perceives his or her relationship to the world (nature, institutions, other people, things, etc.)" (Sue & Sue, 1990, p. 137), focusing on internal versus external locus of control and responsibility.

Aspirations and expectations also shape career choice. Racial and ethnic minority individuals generally hold high career aspirations, and levels of aspiration do not differ significantly across groups. There are often more gender differences than ethnic or racial differences in individual aspirations and expectations (Arbona & Novy, 1991). Nevertheless, despite high levels of expectation, ethnic groups remain both over- and under-represented in various career fields (Fouad & Bingham, 1995). Some minorities may self-limit their career choices because of their perceptions of the sexism and racism they are likely to encounter in certain professions. Vicarious learning — observing others succeed — is an important source of individuals' beliefs about their own likelihood of success (Tang, 2002). A different configuration of factors thus influences the career development of persons from different cultural and racial backgrounds, and individuals from different cultural backgrounds can be expected to vary in the expectations, aspirations, and values they bring to the career development process (Tinsley, 1994, p. 115).

Conclusion: Toward Culturally Competent Career Counseling

In general, it is clear that career counselors working with multicultural students must be trained to ensure that they are completely sensitive to, and well-versed in, matching individual students to the appropriate work environment. They must be familiar with theories of acculturation, world-views, aspirations and expectations, societal barriers and intra-group socialization, and racial and ethnic identity development. A multiculturally competent counselor must be aware of his or her own biases and attitudes, possess knowledge about different cultures, and have developed specific intervention strategies for working with culturally diverse clients.