A Multicultural Framework for Counselor Supervision

Attention to multicultural issues within supervision is essential to training counselors who are able to conduct ethical and eective practice with diverse clientele, as well as ensuring that supervisors are attending to the needs of diverse supervisees and clients. Research suggests that counselor trainees oen possess racial, gender, and sexual orientation biases, limited self-awareness, and a lack of knowledge regarding multicultural counseling (Ancis & Sanchez-Hucles, 2000; Ancis & Szymanski, 2008; Johnson, Searight, Handal, & Gibbons, 1993; Ponterotto, 1988). Moreover, research has demonstrated that supervisees may perceive their supervisors as lacking in multicultural sensitivity toward clients, as well as toward supervisees (Fukuyama, 1994; Ladany, Lehrman-Waterman, Molinaro, & Wolgast, 1999). Perhaps not coincidentally, many current supervisors likely did not receive multicultural counseling training (or even training in supervision). us, supervisees may be more knowledgeable about multicultural counseling than their supervisors (Constantine, 1997; D’Andrea & Daniels, 1997). Overall, although the relevance of multicultural issues within supervision is rather clear, these issues have generally not been addressed in the supervision literature (Brown & Landrum-Brown, 1995; Kaduvettoor et al., 2009; Leong & Wagner, 1994).