Cultural Competence As A School Psychologist

Cultural Competence as a School Psychologist To be culturally competent is to understand how the culture of others effects and influences everything in a person’s life. From race, to religion to socioeconomic status, to gender, to sexual orientation and so on. Having the ability to understand and respond in a respectful manner to people with a multitude of backgrounds is to be culturally competent. The articles all touch on the idea that every school psychologist working with children need to be culturally competent to truly be able to understand the psychopathology of children and their parents. To gather this information about diverse students a school psychologist must take into account their own biases, the biases of different assessment …show more content…
The assessment tool helps gather questions about what all is affecting the child inside and outside the school. Doing this can provide a way for school psychologists to gain an understanding of what students are going through. Gathering this type of information during the initial assessment can better the types of interventions a child receives, keeps a healthy and open dynamic between the parents and the school, as well as assures that any assessment will be culturally informed. Furthering this idea it’s important to note the debates on assessments and classifications. Schools have been seen as being biased and having an overrepresentation of ethnic minority students involved with referrals and special education. Debates on whether the classification system for psychological disorders are universal or culturally specific. Labeling anyone with a psychological disorder can have long lasting effects that aren’t always positive. The fact that culturally diverse students seem to be overrepresented in having some of these disorders could mean one of two things. One could be that due to the fact that the cultural aspect of a psychological assessment isn’t included or sensitive or that these disorders would show up no matter the cultural group. It’s important to be aware of this because as school psychologists we need to be aware of the reason …show more content…
Every article touched upon this fact that as therapists and school psychologists who will be working with people we need to know ourselves. Every article over the fact that to know oneself is to know all the cultural factors that play into a person. These factors include SES, age, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, and so on. Roysircar explains how having self-awareness is an important aspect for therapy. Suzuki explains how professional organizations such as APA state the importance of cultural competent counselors and therapists when addressing the needs of diverse populations. The articles go on to explain that knowing about our own biases towards other cultures will help us be able to be more effective in counseling, therapy, and for assessment cases. Being aware of our own cultural biases provides an insight on how they may affect relationships with others in therapy. If a therapist holds biased beliefs about homosexuals that oppose the ideas of the client it’s important to be aware of this. Having self-awareness can stop the limitation of possibilities that happen in therapy. The Roysircar article mentions how if therapists are uncomfortable talking about a subject even if the client brings it up it can cause a rift in that relationship. The articles claim that self-awareness can help close that rift because it can give a way for therapists to be aware of their limitations