Multicultural Counseling Theory in Session

Framework	Core idea	What it asks of the counselor	Session move
MSJCC	Four domains and power	Name status before you interpret	Ask which domain is in this hour
Sue tripartite model	Awareness, knowledge, skills	Check bias, facts, and the question	Name one assumption, then ask
Racial identity (Cross, Helms)	Status, not a score	Stay with the sentence you heard	Repeat their words before yours
RCID (Atkinson, Morten, Sue)	Attitudes to self and groups	Notice whose group you defend	Ask what they want from this clinic

It’s 11:20. Elena has not sat down. You already typed “irritable with authority” from the referral, and she is still talking about the meeting where she was the only Latina in the room.

Multicultural counseling theory is the named framework you reach for before that sentence hardens. You pick one row. You examine what that row asks of you. You make one session move. You do not score Elena.

How you use multicultural counseling theory in the hour

You do not run the whole table. Multicultural counseling theory is useful only for the row the hour actually stressed.

If power, privilege, or a barrier outside the room is sitting in the chair, start with MSJCC. If the miss is yours (a bias you did not notice, a fact you did not have, a question that made her smaller), start with Sue tripartite model. If a stage name is already forming in your mouth, start with an identity development model and do not say the name out loud.

One examination. One move. Then write the move in the words you will need next week.

MSJCC

Framework: Multicultural and social justice counseling competencies (Ratts, Singh, Nassar-McMillan, Butler, and McCullough).

Core idea: Four developmental domains: counselor self-awareness, client worldview, the counseling relationship, and counseling and advocacy interventions. Quadrants in the same framework highlight identities and the dynamics of power, privilege, and oppression.

What it asks of the counselor: Name your status and hers before you interpret the story. If the next step is contact on behalf of an identifiable client, ACA Code of Ethics A.7.b requires client consent first. Confirm A.7.b and your board chapter before you treat that as settled.

Session move: Ask which domain is in the room this hour. For Elena, that is client worldview, not advocacy. She has not asked for a letter. She has asked you to stop importing the school’s word.

You can check those domain names against the 2015 AMCD and ACA PDF. The AMCD Executive Council endorsed that document on June 29, 2015. The ACA Governing Council endorsed it on July 20, 2015. If you later need a supervision question for each competency area, use the multicultural and social justice counseling competencies checklist.

Sue tripartite model

Framework: Sue, Bernier, Durran, Feinberg, Pedersen, Smith, and Vasquez-Nuttall (1982), organized for the profession by Sue, Arredondo, and McDavis (1992).

Core idea: A culturally skilled counselor works three sides at once: awareness of their own assumptions, knowledge of the client’s worldview, and skills that fit this client rather than one generic method.

What it asks of the counselor: Separate the three. Awareness is the assumption you brought in (“authority problem”). Knowledge is the fact you still do not have (what the meeting was for, what the search meant in her workplace). Skills is the question you actually ask.

Session move: Name one assumption out loud, then ask. “I almost wrote irritable. What word would you use for that meeting?” Do not follow a silence with a cultural inventory.

The 1992 paper is the document most courses mean when they say tripartite model. It organizes the 1982 awareness, knowledge, and skills work into competencies. It is not the 2015 MSJCC document. Do not supervise from a handout that has no date.

Racial identity development

Framework: Cross’s revised nigrescence model, as Vandiver, Fhagen-Smith, Cokley, Cross, and Worrell describe it, and Helms’s White identity statuses.

Core idea: A racial identity development model names how a person comes to understand race. Cross’s revised model and Helms’s statuses are language for that work. They are not a diagnosis.

What it asks of the counselor: Stay with the sentence you heard. Do not assign Elena a nigrescence stage. Do not assign yourself a Helms status in the chart. If the sentence that closed the topic was yours, that is still your row.

Session move: Repeat her words before you add yours. “You were the only Latina in the meeting, and they searched your bag.” Then stop. If she wants to stay with it, stay. If she wants the panic at 3 p.m., follow that goal.

Racial and cultural identity development

Framework: Atkinson, Morten, and Sue’s racial and cultural identity development model: conformity, dissonance and appreciating, resistance and immersion, introspection, and integrative awareness.

Core idea: Attitudes toward self, own group, other groups, and the dominant group can shift. The list is a supervision and formulation aid. It is not a score.

What it asks of the counselor: Notice whose group you are defending. If Elena rejects a clinic suggestion because it came as a rule, your job is not to win the rule.

Session move: Ask what she wants from this clinic, not a cleaner ending. “What would make this hour usable, given that meeting?” Do not recruit her into a coalition frame she did not request.

When the hour needs a different tool

Some hours are not a theory row. If you are arguing with yourself about a stance, humility on one side and a competence checklist on the other, use the comparison of cultural humility and cultural competence. If the question is how you build cultural competence as a practice over time, go there. If the argument is which identity name fits the language you heard in supervision, use racial identity development models.

You can hold more than one. You cannot do all of them well in the last six minutes. Pick the one the hour stressed.

Write the move before they leave

The chart answers what you and Elena did about the goal. It does not need a framework abbreviation. Multicultural counseling theory did its job if the next session starts from her words, not the referral’s. Write the correction, the question you asked, and the next step.

If you want that line kept with the rest of the clinical record, the note features show where a draft sits until you sign it. You still pick the framework. The software does not assign a domain or a stage.

References

• American Counseling Association. (2014). ACA code of ethics. American Counseling Association, Section A.7.b.
• Ponterotto, J. G., Rieger, B. P., Barrett, A., Harris, G., Sparks, R., Sanchez, C. M., & Magids, D. (1996). Development and initial validation of the Multicultural Counseling Awareness Scale. In G. R. Sadowsky & J. C. Impara (Eds.), Multicultural assessment in counseling and clinical psychology. Buros Institute of Mental Measurements.
• Ratts, M. J., Singh, A. A., Nassar-McMillan, S., Butler, S. K., & McCullough, J. R. (2015). Multicultural and social justice counseling competencies. Association for Multicultural Counseling and Development.
• Sue, D. W., Arredondo, P., & McDavis, R. J. (1992). Multicultural counseling competencies and standards: A call to the profession. Journal of Counseling & Development, 70(4), 477-486.
• Sue, D. W., Rasheed, M. N., & Rasheed, J. M. (2016). Racial/cultural minority identity development. In Multicultural social work practice: A competency-based approach to diversity and social justice (pp. 151-177). Wiley.
• Sue, D. W., Rasheed, M. N., & Rasheed, J. M. (2016). White racial identity development. In Multicultural social work practice: A competency-based approach to diversity and social justice (pp. 179-206). Wiley.
• Vandiver, B. J., Fhagen-Smith, P. E., Cokley, K. O., Cross, W. E., Jr., & Worrell, F. C. (2001). Cross’s nigrescence model: From theory to scale to theory. Journal of Multicultural Counseling and Development, 29(3), 174-200.