Culture-Infused Career Counselling

A person’s culture is determined by a combination of some or all of "ethnicity, gender, religion, ability, sexual orientation, age, and social class" (Arthur & Collins, 2011, p. 147). Developed in Canada, the Culture-Infused Career Counselling (CICC) model (Arthur & Collins, 2011, Arthur, 2019) is based on the premise that a person's culture and identity are relevant to career concerns and must be considered to provide a fair, just career intervention (Arthur, 2019). CICC provides a framework - model - to incorporate culture into our practice as "cultural influences are inextricably woven into a [client]’s career development" process (Arthur & Collins, 2011, p. 147). CICC "focuses on establishing an effective and culturally sensitive working alliance with clients" (p. 148).

The CICC model has four stages, as follows:

1. "Gaining awareness of personal cultural identities" (Arthur, 2019, p. 22)
2. "Gaining awareness of the cultural identities of other people" (p. 22)
3. "Understanding cultural influences on the working alliance" (p. 22)
4. "Implementing culturally responsive and socially just career interventions"  (p. 23).

As career practitioners, we need to be awake to our personal cultural approach in our client work, where those clients come "from nondominant populations" (Arthur & Collins, 2011, p. 148). Further, we must ensure that any interventions we choose will have an appropriate meaning and purpose "within the cultural contexts of [our] clients’ lives" (Arthur, 2019, p. 27). 

Finding information on what is 'appropriate' for our client norm group may be difficult to determine because of the lack of applied research in the Antipodes, but, following the CDANZ code of ethics (2016), considering the following elements will lead us to good practice:

• "Respect - the dignity and personal rights of the client involved and the client’s right to self-determination, and treat the client honestly, and with respect, empathy, and integrity at all times" 
• "Ensure – that any ethical and cultural dimensions relevant to the client are respected" 
• "Remain - fully aware of their social responsibility and the impact of their recommendations and actions" (CDANZ, 2016).

It is our role to ensure we "keep ethics and culture in dialogue with each other" (Agee et al., 2011, p. 29). It reminds us that if we are working with a client who is of a different culture to ourselves, whose shoes we have not walked in, we need to be very careful not to make ‘assumptions’.

Eleanor

References:

Arthur, N., & Collins, S. (2011). Infusing culture in career counseling. Journal of Employment Counseling, 48(4), 147-149. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2161-1920.2011.tb01098.x

Arthur, N. (2019). Chapter 3: Culture-Infused Career Counselling: Connecting culture and social justice in career practices. In N. Arthur, R. Neault, McMahon, M (Eds.) Career Theories and Models at Work: Ideas for practice (pp. 21 – 30). CERIC.

Agee, M., Crocket, K., Fatialofa, C., Frater-Mathieson, K., Kim, H., Vong, C. & Woolf, V. (2011). Chapter 1.3 Culture is Always Present: A conversation about ethics. In K. Crocket, M. Agee, S. Conforth (Eds.) Ethics in Practice: A guide for counsellors (pp. 28-32). Dunsmore Press.

CDANZ. (2022). Code of Ethics. Career Development Association of New Zealand. https://cdanz.org.nz/ModularPage?Action=View&ModularPage_id=26

* Eleanor Blakey has kindly prepared most of the material for this post