Master of Arts (Counselling & Guidance)

There has been an increasing need for school counsellors to develop multicultural awareness, knowledge, and skills. However, there have been limited studies addressing multicultural counselling competencies of school counsellors in an Asian context. To fill the gap in the literature, a qualitative investigation, based on the Jennings et al. (2012) study, was conducted to explore how culturally competent Singaporean secondary school counsellors conceptualized and conducted multicultural counselling. Five Singaporean full-time secondary school counsellors, recommended by the Ministry of Education (MOE), were interviewed regarding how they worked effectively with culturally diverse students. Thematic grouping was conducted to analyze the data. Ten themes within categories of ‘Multicultural Knowledge’ and ‘Multicultural Skills’ were identified. Three themes (‘Self Knowledge’; ‘Cultural Knowledge’; and ‘Cultural Immersion’) were organized under the ‘Multicultural Knowledge’ category and seven themes (‘Respect’; ‘Suspend Judgment and Avoid Imposing Values’; ‘Ask, Don’t Assume’; ‘Work on Similarities’; ‘Empathy’; ‘Genuineness’; and ‘Curiosity’) were identified under the ‘Multicultural Skills’ category. Implications of the findings were discussed. Limitations of the study and the directions for future studies were considered as well.