Transitions in Professional Training

Multicultural competency exemplars and practice demonstrations are now available to all professional psychologists to facilitate professional psychological practice. These information resources, published guidelines, and training program applications provide transitions toward more adequate mental health care for global populations. Despite their availability, these transitions predicated on good ethnic science have not prepared students and professionals adequately for practice with existing and new multicultural populations in the United States and internationally. In fact, the acquisition of basic skills and professional competencies has become less adequate for practice not only with mainstream homogeneous populations but especially for resident multicultural populations. In addition, training for practice with existing and new multicultural populations is fragmentary and incomplete due to residuals of a monocultural perspective. Bridging the gap between professional education and responsible multicultural practice necessitates multicultural education that nourishes the scientific and human skills necessary to develop sensitive, credible, and sustainable relationships with clients.

This chapter suggests how programs can realize a multicultural perspective by expanding the existing triadic model to four factors, building upon unrealized implications of the recent Cube Model competency domains for individual and cultural diversity, and developing an overarching context for multicultural competency training. A four-factor expansion of the triadic model not only acknowledges new domains recognizing multiple identities within multicultural nations and a global society but also incorporates an overarching social justice philosophy as a basis for training and practice. Unique and distinctive historic program environments provided training resources for demonstrable competencies that were readily evaluated and augmented during internship (Dana, 1978; Dana, Gilliam, & Dana, 1976). However, these training outcomes have now been eclipsed and diluted by a business model of behavioral health care. The Cube Model endorses a return to professional competency within a comprehensive plan that interrelates foundational and functional domains within an orderly sequence of practice oriented developmental stages over time. However, the Cube Model is silent on the mechanics of a multicultural competency training model that describes existing and novel human and program ingredients and examples needed to fulfill education and training expectations in this new millennium.