Increasing Personal Cultural Awareness Through Discussions With International Students

Pairs of first year master’s level students in the “Counseling Diverse Populations ” course led discussion groups with international students about U.S. culture. The fundamental purpose of this assignment was to increase awareness of the counseling students ’ culture, as called for in the Multicultural Counseling Competencies. Advance preparation resulted in a combined class list of questions. Each session was video taped and feedback was provided. In this paper, segments of a discussion group transcript, student reflection paper, and professor feedback are provided. Over three years, students have rated this assignment as one of the most valuable assignment of the semester. Across many higher education disciplines, attempts are being made to broaden cultural awareness (Bardhan