Culture, Decision-Making, and Assessment: Ethical Issues

As we have learned throughout this course, most career counseling theories have not taken into account the influences of race, ethnicity, gender, cognitive disabilities, mental health status, etc.

Bingham and Ward (1993) provided a multicultural approach and assessment that emphasized contextual factors that limited career choice and stereotypes and hindered career development.

This assessment introduced counselors to racial identity.

The Multicultural Career Counseling Checklist (MCCC) is still widely valued today. Take the MCCC in the Bingham and Ward (1993) article.

The article and instructions are under the required readings for this week. After completing the assessment, reflect on the questions below:

• What was your experience taking the assessment? Was the assessment useful to you? Did it help you to obtain a better understanding of your multicultural awareness?

• How accurate were your results in terms of your perceived cultural awareness?

• Identify situations in which this assessment would be particularly useful.

• What benefits can you identify in using this assessment in the career advisement process?

Your journal entry should be 700- to 1050-words (2-3 pages) in length.

Introduction

To begin this week, reflect on the following questions:

As access to technology grows, should the role of the career counselor change? Should personal interaction, in this case between the career counselor and the client, always hold a higher value than Internet-based tools and resources?

Your perspective on these questions will frame your answers in this week's discussion. This week you will consider the advantages and disadvantages of widespread access to Internet-based career resources.

To build on your understanding of career challenges related to diversity, you will analyze the impact that culture has on the decision-making process and the significance of the career counselor's culture in client-counselor interactions.

Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this week, students will be able to:

1. Assess the effectiveness of self-administered, Internet-based career assessments. (Aligns with CLOs 1, 3)

2. Analyze the impact of Internet-based career assessments on the decision-making process. (Aligns with CLOs 1, 3)

3. Critique the impact culture has on the career decision-making process. (Aligns with CLOs 1, 2)

4. Create appropriate short-term career and educational goals for a case study example. (Aligns with CLOs 2, 5)