Towards More Effective Service for our Multicultural Clients

Definitional and Design Issues in our Knowledge-Base

In presenting a critical review of multicultural perspectives in vocational psychology, we would like to begin with a discussion of what we mean by “multicultural” for this chapter. In the United States, multicultural psychology has referred to both international and domestic multiculturalism, with the former usually labeled as cross-cultural psychology and the latter as racial and ethnic minority psychology (Leong, Leung and Cheung, 2010). Relatedly, how is multicultural counseling different from cross-cultural counseling or are they the same? We believe that it is important to clearly define the constructs under consideration and to differentiate similar but not identical concepts. In our attempts to measure cross-cultural counseling competencies in career assessment and intervention, we need to begin with some definitions and clarifications. First, there has been a tendency in the field to use the terms multicultural counseling and cross-cultural counseling interchangeably. As has been pointed out (Leong, 1994), these are different concepts and the latter term is more appropriate for two different reasons. The first reason has to do with the concept of multicultural which refers to “many cultures.” Owing to the multiculturalism movement in the United States, many psychologists and counselors had begun using the term “multicultural counseling” inappropriately to refer to what they do when they work with culturally different clients. They have confused multiculturalism as a social movement with what they do. The more appropriate term is cross-cultural counseling since it accurately describes what they do—a counselor from one particular culture is counseling a client from a different culture.

Multicultural counseling, on the other hand, means counseling with many different cultures and this is rarely what counselors and therapists are doing unless they happened to be conducting group psychotherapy with a culturally heterogeneous group of clients (i.e., counseling with many different cultures). Another exception would be a White European therapist conducting couples therapy with a Hispanic American man married to an African American woman and her co-therapist is an Asian American. Such instances are relatively rare. A White European American counselor seeing an African American client on Monday and a Mexican American client on Wednesday is not conducting “multicultural counseling”; rather, she is conducting cross-cultural counseling each time she see a client from a cultural background different from hers. Similarly, a counselor who uses a cognitive-behavioral approach with one client on Monday and a humanistic approach with a different client on Wednesday cannot really claim that he is using a multidimensional eclectic approach to therapy with his clients.

A second and more important reason why we should not use the term multicultural counseling in place of cross-cultural counseling is the nature and extent of our knowledge-base. The majority of the studies that have examined the role of culture and its potential influence on counseling and psychotherapy have been bi-cultural, that is, they have examined and compared only two cultures. Early research in cross-cultural psychology was heavily influenced by anthropology which tended to study one culture at a time in significant depth.

Using this monocultural approach, namely the study of one culture at a time, psychologists would, for example, investigate the nature and existence of depression in different countries around the world. Cross-cultural psychologists now recognize the extreme limitations of such an approach. This approach not only did not provide for direct comparisons between cultures, which is the primary focus of cross-cultural psychology, but it also provided inferences and conclusions based on implicit and biased assumptions of the investigators who tended to be from the West. This problem in turn gave rise to the second approach in cross-cultural psychology, namely bicultural studies. These studies usually involve directly collecting data from two countries and comparing the results (e.g., depression in Britain and the United States). The limitations of this approach is that later studies could not be easily compared to earlier studies since different instruments, sampling procedures, and designs may have been used even though the same topic was studied in many different bicultural studies. The ideal approach in cross-cultural psychology was, of course, the multicultural study, where three or more cultures were studied using the same design, instruments, and procedures. The more cultures that were included the better. However, these studies tend to be very expensive to undertake and there are only a handful of them in the cross-cultural psychological literature.

The implications of this methodological dilemma (i.e., multicultural studies are best but too expensive for most investigators to undertake) is that much of the knowledge-base on which cross-cultural psychology in general and cross-cultural counseling in particular is discussed and debated is derived mainly from bicultural and not multicultural studies. This predominance of bicultural studies (only two cultural groups) is also true for racial and ethnic minority psychology. Cultural diversity in the United States is usually represented by five major cultural groups. These groups include White-European Americans, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, and American Indians. There are actually very few psychological studies of all five groups together using the same design, instruments, and procedures. In fact most of the studies use the bicultural approach where only two groups are compared. Even worse, the typical comparison group is between White-European Americans and African Americans or between White-European Americans and Hispanic Americans. There are actually very few studies comparing African Americans with Hispanic Americans and comparing Hispanic Americans with Asian Americans. In summary, we do not have a knowledge-base to guide multicultural counseling since there are very few multicultural studies.

Relatedly, given the importance of competence in working with multicultural populations, the question is whether there is a difference between cultural competence versus cross-cultural competence. We believe that this is a second critical definitional problem within our field. Most White-European American counselors and psychotherapists have always been culturally competent psychologists. To be culturally competent is to be able to adapt and function effectively in one’s culture. In the same way, African American counselors and psychotherapists are also culturally competent psychologists with reference to their African American cultural heritage. So, the problem is not with cultural competence but with limited cross-cultural competence, that is, the knowledge and skills to relate and communicate effectively with someone from another culture different from your own.

White-European American psychology has always been a Eurocentric paradigm. This characteristic is not a flaw in and of itself any more than an Afrocentric psychology or an Asian-centered psychology is inherently flawed. No, the first major flaw in White American psychology is not that it is Eurocentric, but rather it is that it does not often realize or acknowledge that it is Eurocentric. The second major flaw is that American psychology operates on the assumption that its theories, scientific data, and formulations are universal when in reality it is quite Eurocentric. In other words, White American psychology not only believes that its culture-specific theories and data are universal, but actively intervenes in the lives and societies of those who are culturally different with these mistaken or at best untested theories and models.

In essence, White American psychology is a culturally competent psychology on a WITHIN-culture level, namely, its theories and interventions are quite effective and appropriate for White-European Americans. However, it is not a culturally competent psychology when it comes to an ACROSS-culture dimension. Hence, as pointed out by Tony Marsella and Paul Pedersen, White American psychology, as it currently exists, violates it own ethical codes whenever it crosses cultural boundaries without the requisite training and competencies in cross-cultural psychology, and White cultural competence is concerned with how White American psychotherapists can function with White American clients or African American psychotherapists can function with African American clients; cross-cultural competence is concerned with how and whether White American psychotherapists can function effectively with White American clients or vice versa. In other words, what we need to research and measure is NOT cultural competence but cross-cultural competence.

These definitional issues are critical to our understanding of the state of knowledge-base with regards to multicultural theories of career development and career counseling. The design of studies within our empirical knowledge-base needs to match the theorizing that we undertake and vice-versa.

Multicultural Career Theories and Research

In an earlier review, Leong and Brown (1995) used the organizing framework of cultural validity and cultural specificity to analyze the vocational psychology literature from a multicultural perspective. They developed this framework by extending the observations about the two parallel approaches within our theories and research for individuals in the Unites States who are not of European descent. Cross-cultural psychology, as the earlier approach, was strongly influenced by anthropology and is characterized by a concern with the generalizability of laws underlying the behavior of European Americans to persons of other cultures or countries. This approach reflects the tendency of anthropologists to use countries as their units of analysis (e.g., Mead’s “Growing up in Samoa” versus the United States). As a result, cross-cultural psychologists have expressed interest, for example, in whether the inverse curvilinear relationship between anxiety and performance found in the United States exists in another country, like Japan, and what cultural factors in Japan might account for observed differences in the relationship (Leong and Brown, 1995). The main driver for such an approach was to examine and evaluate the cultural validity of Western theories and models when applied to culturally diverse populations (either minorities, a country or persons in non-Western cultures).

According to Leong and Brown (1995), the second approach of ethnic minority psychology has been concerned with racial/ethnic minority issues and has been influenced by sociology. Heavily influenced by sociology as practiced in the United States, this approach has been concerned with subgroups within a country, for example, groups at different social strata or income levels. Like sociology, ethnic minority psychology has tended to use racial/ethnic groups in this country as their primary units of analysis. As such, ethnic minority psychologists have focused on understanding, for example, why racial/ethnic minority groups are segregated into certain occupational clusters as well as the role of race in observed patterns of intergenerational occupational mobility. The approach assumes that race and ethnicity are powerful social-psychological categories that have significant consequences associated with them. A more recent offshoot of this approach is critical race theory (Delgato and Stefancic).

Leong and Brown (1995) noted that there are similarities and differences between these two approaches. For example, both approaches seek to study the nature and scope of culture’s influence on the behavior of culturally-diverse individuals, whether these individuals live in different countries or are ethnic minority group members in the same country. Furthermore, some of the variables used in both approaches cut across the different levels of analyses. For example, cultural values and inter-group dynamics are central to both approaches. Yet, there are also important differences in the two approaches. The cross-cultural psychology approach is much more influenced by the “etic” perspective which focuses on identifying universal laws of behavior across disparate cultural groups (e.g., schizophrenia is universal and found in all cultures). The ethnic minority psychology approach is much more concerned with an “emic” perspective, studying the culturally unique factors in the experiences of persons in each ethnic group that cause them to behave in certain ways.

In order to increase our understanding of the career development of culturally-diverse individuals in this country and elsewhere, Leong and Brown (1995) argued that it is important that both approaches be pursued and the results integrated. As an attempt at this integration, they reviewed the literature on cross-cultural career development and counseling, using the two dimensions of cultural validity and cultural specificity as components of a unifying theoretical framework. Cultural validity is concerned with the validity of theories and models across other cultures in terms of the construct, and concurrent and predictive validity of these models for culturally different individuals (e.g., Holland’s concept of congruence has been found to be predictive of job satisfaction among White Americans). Cultural specificity is concerned with concepts, constructs, and models that are specific to certain cultural groups in terms of their role in explaining and predicting behavior (e.g., Colorism or the level of melanin in the skin of African Americans as a variable in vocational behavior).

We believe that this conceptual framework of delineating cultural validity and cultural specificity approaches in multicultural vocational psychology remains a valuable heuristic for the field. Therefore, in this chapter we consider work and career development from the perspective of multicultural psychology using this framework. In addition, it has been increasingly recognized that the boundary conditions that limit the cultural validity of our models and necessitate the exploration and inclusion of cultural specificity approaches comes from the central role played by cultural context. These contextual variables, such as ethnicity, language, values, communication style, and time orientation, hold salience for diverse groups of people (Fouad and Arbona, 1994; Leong, 1993) and play a critical role in attempts to advance multicultural career theory and practice.

Using Leong and Brown’s (1995) framework, we will begin with a review of the dominant Western models of career development and vocational behavior from a multicultural perspective. Differential career psychology, more commonly referred to as the trait-andfactor model, emphasizes matching people to jobs that fit with their unique vocational interests, abilities, personalities, and other traits (e.g., Holland, 1997; Dawis and Lofquist, 1984). Developmental career psychology, advanced by Donald Super (Super, 1990) focuses on managing work roles over the life span relative to psychosocial roles in other life domains such as family and community. Relatedly, Gottfredson’s (1981, 1996, 2002) theory of circumscription and compromise provided a promising extension of the development paradigm with a specific focus on contextual influences and constraints along the gender and race dimensions. Social learning models of career have been dominated by the social cognitive career psychology which concentrates on the role of agency in career choice and growth, asserting that people actively shape and regulate their own work and career development (Lent, Brown, and Hackett, 2002). Finally, narrative career psychology focuses on meaning-making to articulate a clear and coherent identity that enables using work to craft a personally meaningful and socially productive life-career (Savickas, 2011).

Differential Career Theory

Following the Person-Environment Fit paradigm, Holland’s (1997) theory of vocational personalities and work environments represents the quintessential model in the differential tradition. The theory states that people seek work environments that fit with their personality characteristics. A substantial body of research has examined the cultural validity of this core proposition among diverse groups, and with mixed findings (see Worthington, Flores, and Navarro 2005). Various studies have supported the cultural validity of Holland’s (1997) theory among high school and college students across several racial and ethnic groups (Day and Rounds, 1998; Day, Rounds and Swaney, 1998). On the other hand, some researchers have questioned the theory’s cultural validity for predicting the career choices of Asian Americans (Tang, Fouad and Smith, 1999) and Mexican American girls (Flores and O’Brien, 2002). Support has been found for the cultural validity of the theory’s core concepts of congruence, differentiation, and consistency among African Americans (Brown, 1995) but not among Asian Americans (Leong, 1995). On balance, the research suggests moderate support for the cultural validity of the theory and cautions its use when applied to people of color (Leong and Chou, 1994; Leong and Hardin, 2002; Leong and Serafica, 1995). Important cultural contextual factors such as family influence and obligations, racism, classism, sexism, ageism and personal and cultural history may account for some of the variability in the theory’s cultural validity.

As an extension of the trait-and-factor theory, Holland’s (1985) theory asserts that people seek work environments that allow them to express their constellation of six personality types: realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, and conventional. The six personality/work environment types were hypothesized to form the points on an equilateral hexagon (in the order RIASEC), with the distance between points indicating the similarity or dissimilarity between types.

An important question regarding the cultural validity of this theory is whether this structure of interests holds for different groups. If not, the fundamental predictions of Holland’s model may not be culturally valid. Early research on this question was mixed, with some studies finding that the structure of interests is in fact different for European Americans and other groups (e.g., Farh, Leong, and Law, 1998; Haverkamp, Collins, and Hansen, 1994; Rounds and Tracey, 1996), and other studies finding support for the basic structure (e.g., Fouad, Harmon, and Borgen, 1997; Leong, Austin, Sekaran, and Komarraju, 1998; Soh and Leong, 2001). However, more methodologically sophisticated research using large, representative, motivated samples has found good support for the cultural validity of Holland’s hypothesized structure of interest among both high school and college students across several racial/ethnic groups (Day and Rounds, 1998; Day, Rounds, and Swaney, 1998).

In addition to examining the cultural validity of the hypothesized structure of interests, the cultural validity of the predictions made by Holland’s theory must also be considered. One of the major predictions from Holland’s theory is that persons in different occupations should also evidence different patterns of interests. A number of studies have demonstrated support for this assertion (for a review of this literature pertaining to African Americans and Asian Americans, see Brown, 1995, and Leong and Hardin, 2002, respectively). Indeed, Day and Rounds (1998) report that when researchers at ACT examined the interests of students who were “very sure” of their career choice, “they found that students who chose the same occupations landed in similar hexagon locations, no matter what their racial or ethnic group” (p. 734).

There is less evidence for the cultural validity of other predictions made by Holland’s theory, however. For example, the theory states that interests should predict career choice. However, in studies with both Asian Americans (Tang, Fouad and Smith, 1999) and Mexican American girls (Flores and O’Brien, 2002), interests were not found to be significant predictors of career choice. Holland’s theory further states that congruence (match between interests and work environment), differentiation (distance between an individual’s highest and lowest interest), and consistency (similarity among top three interests) should all predict job satisfaction. Empirical support for the congruence concept is plentiful with respect to African American populations, though some evidence indicates that African Americans and other ethnic groups may experience lower congruence relative to European Americans because of real and perceived employment barriers (for a review, see Brown, 1995). However, these predictions have found little support among Asians/Asian Americans. For example, Leong et al. (1998) found that neither congruence, consistency, nor differentiation was a significant predictor of job satisfaction among employed adults in India.

Thus, while Holland’s theory has been useful in explaining the career choice behavior of European Americans, its cultural validity for other groups, particularly for Asian Americans, is limited. There appear to be several reasons for this. First, as discussed elsewhere (e.g., Leong and Chou, 1994; Leong and Hardin, 2002; Leong and Serafica, 1995), individual interests are often much less important than factors such as familial obligations to the career decisions of individuals from more collectivist cultures. Second, occupational environments described by Holland may not be equally available to ethnic minorities (Osipow, 1975), with many non-White individuals becoming channeled into lower-level realistic jobs. Holland acknowledged this to some extent, arguing that a range of “isms” (e.g., ageism, classism, racism, sexism) restrict the range of career options available to people and that if persons are blocked from pursuing the expression of the most dominant aspects of their personalities, they will pursue the next most dominant feature. However, Holland failed to articulate what the implications for personality development might be of experiencing restricted options for an extended period of time—which is the historic experience of many ethnic groups. Relatedly, Leong and Serafica (1995) point out that Holland’s theory has not addressed the role of culture in creating and sustaining environments.

Developmental Career Theory

The life-span, life-space theory of Donald Super (1990) predominates the developmental perspective on careers. According to the theory, career development involves a lifelong series of developmental stages and tasks through which individuals seek to implement their self-concepts in work roles. An individual’s success in dealing with developmental tasks indicates a specific degree of career maturity—an organizing construct in Super’s theory. Some reviews of this model have noted little empirical research on the theory’s cultural validity (Hardin, Leong, and Osipow, 2001) whereas other scholars have also pointed out the important role that contextual factors such as social class, socioeconomic status, and discrimination likely play in self-concept development and the restriction of occupational choices (Blustein, 2006). These factors likely figure into higher levels of career maturity found for Whites relative to minorities such as African Americans and Hispanic Americans (see Worthington et al., 2005) who may not value the future time orientation, independence, and assertiveness associated with being “career mature.” It has been repeatedly noted that holding minority group status itself presents additional developmental tasks that may shape the self-concept development and implementation of persons of color in this country (Arbona, 1995, 1996; Carter and Cook, 1992; Ogbu, 1987, 1989, 1992; Leong, Chao, and Hardin, 2000). Some recent attempts have been made to enhance the theory’s cultural validity by pointing to its use of life roles and values constructs as important cultural context variables (Hartung, 2002). Whereas it is readily understood that longitudinal development research is difficult to undertake, nonetheless research is needed to support the cultural validity of life-span, life-space theory if it is to be profitably applied to multicultural populations. Similarly, empirical research is needed to evaluate the cultural validity of other developmentally-based career theories, such as the one proposed by Gottfredson (2002) that expressly attends to cultural differences, remains an important need.

As Leong and Brown (1995) had pointed out, Super’s model did not systematically address the manner in which discrimination and poverty might alter the self-concept, though such literature exists in related fields. For example, Ogbu (1987, 1989, 1992), writing in the fields of anthropology and education, has suggested that in reaction to discrimination and oppression, which is believed to be inescapable and insurmountable, and in an effort to maintain a positive sense of self, many ethnic group members (termed involuntary minorities) develop a cultural identity in which the behaviors, events, symbols, and even meanings that are viewed as characteristic of the oppressors, European Americans, are viewed as inappropriate for them and, therefore, rejected.

Leong, Chao and Hardin (2000) also discussed Ogbu’s work in their exploration of the high academic achievement of Asian Americans as a group. According to Ogbu (1987, 1989, 1992), Asian Americans, unlike African Americans and Native Americans, are voluntary minorities because their families chose to come to the United States, rather than being assimilated through slavery or colonization, and therefore perceive themselves as guests. Thus, Asian Americans may be especially likely to embrace the characteristics of the dominant group, including education, as a means to success. Further, according to Sue and Okazaki’s (1990) theory of relative functionalism, the discrimination and racism faced by Asian Americans may lead to perceptions of limited occupational mobility in many fields, and thus lead individuals to perceive education as the only route to success. This, in turn, may help to explain why Asian Americans are overrepresented in education-dependent fields, such as math and science.

The possible impact of Ogbu’s (1987, 1989) and Sue and Okazaki’s (1990) assertions for the career choice behavior of certain ethnic group members has yet to be explored empirically, however. The essential point made here is that culturally relevant experiences, not unlike any other personal experience, may introduce factors affecting the nature and development of the self-concept. Relatedly, Leong and Serafica (1995) have offered that readiness to cope with developmental tasks as well as the role the self-concept may play in cross-cultural career development may vary depending on the degree of acculturation. Super, though, has not incorporated the observations identified above into his theory.

It is true that Super (1991) did argue that socioeconomic status has a twofold effect on career development in terms of “opening and closing career opportunities, and shaping occupational- and self-concepts” (p. 229). It is possible that the experience of ethnic discrimination may not just restrict ranges and types of opportunity, as most authors commonly assert, but also shape occupational- and self-concepts. Yet, the role of socioeconomic status and discrimination on occupational- and self-concepts has yet to be investigated. Super observed in 1970 (Super and Bohn, 1970) that discrimination appears to operate the same way as do socioeconomic handicaps: by motivating some people to overcome them, deterring others from trying, and preventing others who try from achieving (cf. June and Pringle, 1977). The observation has merit because one of the problems with the literature addressing the career development of ethnic minorities is that it has assumed that all individuals react to discrimination and poverty the same way, and always to their detriment. Nevertheless, Super has failed to articulate the developmental antecedents that might account for these three patterns of occupational behavior (Leong and Brown, 1995).

Whereas Super’s assertions that there exist definable stages of career development are ideas that have not been validated with the variety of ethnic groups in this country, the concept of career maturity (how well one is meeting the tasks of each stage) has received considerable attention in the literature. On the other hand, Super’s career maturity concept has been criticized because it is correlated with socioeconomic status and, because certain ethnic groups occupy the lower socioeconomic strata, the concept is viewed as culturally biased (cf. Smith, 1975, 1983). Super (1991), however, dismissed the correlations as too low to be of practical significance.

Another problem noted with the concept of career maturity is its emphasis on independence in career decision making as a hallmark of career maturity during adolescence. Such an independent decision-making style is less culturally appropriate for many individuals with a more interdependent self-construal, such as many Asian Americans and Latino/a persons. Consistent with this view, Leong (1991) found that Asian American college students exhibited a more dependent decision-making style than their European American peers, but had no less crystallized career choices. Hardin, Leong, and Osipow (2001) further showed that the conceptualization and measurement of career maturity seem unable to distinguish between independence, interdependence, and dependence, and thus may be biased against Asian Americans.

Finally, Smith (1983) had argued that career maturity researchers erroneously assume that career maturity inventories measure vocational tasks common to all ethnic groups. Smith proposed that a person’s minority status may add additional tasks not currently taken into account, such as coming to terms with how ethnic bias may affect their career development or developing discrimination-relevant coping strategies (refer also to the work of Edwards and Polite, 1992). The concept of career maturity, then, may need to be revised and remeasured with respect to different cultural groups.

Gottfredson’s Theory of Circumscription and Compromise

Gottfredson (1981, 1996, 2002) proposed a theory that may have some relevance in explaining the career development of various diverse populations (Arbona, 1995), as it was explicitly designed to account for differences in career development due to culture (at the time, gender and social class). According to the circumscription aspect of the theory, people’s self-concepts develop as they pass through a series of stages. In the first stage, the self-concept acquires an orientation to size and power, and in the second stage, the self-concept acquires an orientation towards prevailing gender roles. Most relevant to the present discussion, self-concepts acquire an orientation to social evaluation, including social class and race, in the third stage of development. In the fourth stage, the self-concept develops an orientation towards one’s internal uniqueness. A key aspect of the theory is that as people progress through the developmental stages, they successively reject occupations as unsuitable on the basis of the self-concept and the orientations acquired. Gottfredson further stated that occupational choices are a product of perceived job–self compatibility and perceived accessibility of jobs, the latter being a function of one’s perception of discrimination in the workplace. Finally, Gottfredson proposed that because the jobs perceived as suitable to the self are sometimes not perceived to be available, persons compromise their choices by sacrificing those aspects of the self-concept most recently developed and moving towards those orientations developed the earliest.

Unfortunately, very little empirical research has examined the cultural validity of these predictions. One of the few studies that has (Leung, 1993) found several differences from the original theory in a sample of Asian Americans. For example, rather than shrinking in adolescence, as the theory predicts, the zone of acceptable alternatives expanded. Further, Asian Americans were more likely to compromise sex type for prestige, which is opposite to the prediction of the theory. This finding is consistent with other research (Leong, 1991; Leung, Ivey, and Suzuki, 1994), that has demonstrated the importance of prestige to the career decision making of Asian Americans. It also fits with more general research on the validity of Gottfredson’s theory, which has yielded mixed support at best (see Vandiver and Bowman, 1996). Vandiver and Bowman have attempted to reconcile such findings using the concept of cognitive schema. They argue that the different orientations (e.g., to sex type, interests, or prestige) represent cognitive schema, and that individuals differ on which schema are most important or accessible. Thus, for an individual highly schematic for sex type, other orientations are likely to be compromised before sex type. According to this conceptualization, the Asian American participants in Leung’s (1993) study may be thought of as being schematic for prestige. Future research could examine whether different cultural groups tend, on average, to be schematic for different orientations and how these schema relate to group differences in compromise and circumscription.

Always interested in understanding cultural diversity and within-groups differences, however, Gottfredson (2002) has more recently expanded her theory using evidence from behavioral genetics to emphasize the active role individuals play in creating their own environments. She notes that most developmental psychologists (including career developmentalists) take a purely socialization approach, arguing that an individual’s interests and abilities are shaped entirely by environment. Gottfredson argues that this view is unsupported by recent evidence from behavioral genetics, and sees this view as leaving individuals passive reactants to their environments, powerless to make change. Instead, Gottfredson embraces “nature–nurture partnership theory,” which balances the influence of genetics and environments and allows individuals to be active creators of their own environments based on the types of experiences they seek and create. Gottfredosn still acknowledges, however, that all experiences are not equally available to all individuals. Rather, she sees an individual’s cultural milieu as dictating the “menu” from which one may choose experiences and opportunities.

Gottfredson (2002) makes a strong case for the behavioral genetics evidence for the nature–nurture partnership theory of development. Further, her descriptions of the ways in which culture (including barriers based on racism or discrimination) sets the parameters on the types of experiences individuals have available to them, and thus the range of alternatives that will remain as acceptable after the processes of circumscription and compromise, make intuitive sense. However, this expanded theory does not seem to generate any new, specific testable hypotheses, which is likely to contribute to the ongoing dearth of empirical research testing the cultural validity of the theory.

Despite this lack of empirical evidence, however, the theory’s practical applications continue to make the theory relevant to understanding the career development of culturally diverse individuals. An important practical application of Gottfredson’s theory has always been to use an understanding of the processes of circumscription and compromise to investigate whether individuals may have prematurely or unrealistically limited their career options. For example, the model explicitly acknowledges that one’s perceptions of accessibility and one’s self-concept are developed, in part, as a function of prevailing racial attitudes and discrimination. Further, the theory implies that if one were able to measure perceived accessibility of occupations, this perception would be found to vary as a function of one’s ethnicity. In addition, if one were able to measure one’s ethnic self-concept, how individuals see themselves as members of an ethnic group, as well as one’s socioeconomic class, then it should be possible to document a relationship between these variables and occupational choice. While many of the needed measures exist, the proposed investigations have yet to appear in the empirical literature. However, the practical implications of the theory and of understanding the role of environmental barriers in the processes of circumscription and compromise remain. For example, clients can be encouraged to explore how their experiences of discrimination, rather than their interests or abilities, may have led them to reject certain occupations as unacceptable or inaccessible.

Social Cognitive Career Theory

Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT; Lent, Brown, and Hackett, 1994) appears to offer substantial promise in furthering our understanding of the career development of diverse groups. SCCT attempts to provide a comprehensive framework to explain career choice behavior, answering the call for greater convergence of career theories (Hackett and Lent, 1992). Based upon the work of Bandura (1977, 1986), SCCT integrates and expands on earlier theories that were also based on Bandura’s work: Krumboltz’s social learning theory (Krumboltz, 1996; Krumboltz, Mitchell, and Jones, 1976) and Hackett and Betz’s (1981) career self-efficacy theory. Briefly, SCCT posits that interests are shaped by self-efficacy and outcome expectations, all three of which influence career choice. Career self-efficacy expectations are beliefs about one’s own ability to successfully perform occupationally-relevant behaviors, and these expectations determine one’s actions, effort, and persistence in regard to the behaviors. Outcome expectations, which are personal beliefs about the results of performance, are viewed by Bandura as operating independently from efficacy expectations and are dependent upon actual performance. Further, self-efficacy and outcome expectations are thought to be affected by learning experiences, which are in turn shaped by various background and person factors, including race/ethnicity (see Lent, Brown and Hackett, 1994, for more detailed discussion of the theory).

Thus, unlike the theories reviewed so far, SCCT explicitly includes culture and makes explicit hypotheses about how culture may impact the development of self-efficacy beliefs, interests, and career choice. Perhaps because of this explicit focus on culture, empirical tests of the cultural validity of SCCT abound in the literature. Based on the earlier work of Hackett and Betz (1981), numerous studies have tested the cultural validity of the hypothesis that self-efficacy beliefs influence interests and career choice (e.g., Dawkins, 1981; Hackett, Betz, Casas, and Rocha-Singh, 1992; Post, Stewart, and Smith, 1991; Post-Kammer and Smith, 1986), with the general conclusion that, “the extant research does suggest that career and academic self-efficacy significantly predict the academic achievement and career choice of people of color” (Byars and Hackett, 1998; emphasis in original).

The cultural validity of the hypothesis that interests predict career choice, however, is poorly supported. Two recent studies, one with Asian American college students (Tang, Fouad, and Smith, 1999) and the other with Mexican American girls (Flores and O’Brien, 2002) both failed to find a relationship between interests and career choice. These findings are consistent with other authors’ suggestions (e.g., Leong and Serafica, 1995) that for individuals from more collectivist cultures, one’s personal interests and self-concept may be less important in making a career choice than factors such as the wishes of one’s family. Indeed, Tang et al. found that in their sample of Asian Americans, although interests were unrelated to career choice, family involvement was a significant predictor of career choice.

In addition, both studies found acculturation directly predicted career choice. While this is consistent with other work (e.g., Leong and Chou, 1994), it is inconsistent with SCCT as originally formulated (Lent et al., 1994), which postulated that the effects of contextual factors such as acculturation on choice should be indirect. For example, acculturation would be expected to influence learning experiences, self-efficacy, and/or interests, not choice directly. Tang et al. did find the expected relationships between acculturation and self-efficacy and acculturation and interests, while Flores and O’Brien found that acculturation was unrelated to these variables. Acknowledging results such as these, Lent and his colleagues have more recently stated that “contextual factors may assert a direct influence on choice making or implementation. For example, particularly in collectivist cultures and subcultures, the wishes of influential others may hold sway over the individual’s own personal career preferences” (Lent, Brown, and Hackett, 2000, p. 38). They went even further, noting that “In individualistic cultures, as well, career interests or goals often need to be subjugated to economic or other environmental presses. Thus, SCCT posits that, when confronted by such presses, an individual’s choice behavior may be guided less by personal interests than by other environmental and person factors” (p. 38).

Other components of SCCT, such as contextual variables (e.g., barriers) and outcome expectancies, have received less attention. Thus, less is known about the cultural validity of these aspects of the theory, and important questions remain. For example, “what types of barriers, encountered by which persons and at which stage of the choice process, will have what kinds of impact?” (Lent et al., 2000, p. 40).

Regarding outcome expectancies, Bandura proposed that the outcomes one can expect to receive for a given behavior are determined solely by the adequacy of that behavior which, in turn, is dependent upon one’s efficacy expectations. But for ethnic minorities, as Brown (1995) and Byars and Hackett (Byars and Hackett, 1998; Hackett and Byars, 1996) have observed, discrimination and other forms of systematic bias determine outcomes and/or one’s expectations of outcomes, independent of the adequacy of one’s behavior. The outcome expectations aspect of Bandura’s model may help us more than the efficacy aspect in understanding the mechanisms underlying the career development of involuntary minorities (Ogbu, 1987, 1989, 1992). According to Ogbu, the job ceiling and related forms of unfair discrimination have severely weakened people’s belief that conventional means of attaining success will work for them. As a result, involuntary minorities pursue unconventional means and sometimes societally prohibited means of attaining success, not because of the lack of ability to employ conventional methods or lack of efficacy with respect to conventional methods. Consequently, both efficacy and outcome expectations may have joint and independent effects on career behavior for ethnic group members.

Career Construction Theory

As an extension of social constructionism into the domain of vocational psychology, career construction theory (Savickas, 2002; 2011), like SCCT, incorporates multicultural psychology principles by design. The theory explains how people actively construct, direct, and make meaning of their careers through their relationships and interpretations of the world. Intended for use in a multicultural society and global economy, the theory aims to inform culturally sensitive and appropriate career interventions by focusing on individuals’ subjective and personal realities (Leong and Hartung, 2003). While incorporating multicultural perspectives into its propositions, the theory is in need of empirical research, particularly with regard to its uses of identity and adaptability among its core constructs. Research is needed to examine how well career construction explains the identity development and career adaptability of diverse groups. On the other hand, the differential and developmental aspects of career construction have been well studied using primarily individual differences methods, with mixed support as noted above. As a more recent theoretical development, there is a need to undertake studies to assess career construction’s efficacy as a multicultural career counseling scheme using qualitative and case study methods like those used in psychotherapy research. Such studies would aid us in determining the theory’s cultural validity. Since such methods emphasize narratives and stories, they may prove more relevant to people in multicultural contexts by capturing the richness of their daily lives in all of their complexity.

Multicultural Career Counseling and Assessment

Models of Multicultural Career Counseling and Assessment

A number of models and frameworks have been proposed for providing culturally sensitive career counseling with culturally diverse clients that can be applied to all clients. Significant components of these models include the attention placed on identifying cultural and contextual factors that impact on individuals’ career concerns and the identification and selection of culturally appropriate interventions. Career counselors are encouraged to become familiar with these models to inform their career counseling and assessment with culturally diverse clients.

Common Factors Across the Multicultural Career Counseling and Assessment Models: Recommendations for Practice

A review of the multicultural career counseling and assessment models in the preceding section uncovers a set of factors that are common across the models. Common factors that are central to career counseling with culturally diverse clients include: (a) developing multicultural counseling competencies; (b) utilizing best practices in multicultural career assessment; (c) establishing a strong working relationship with the client; and (d) employing a wide range of culturally-specific career counseling interventions.

Future Research and Theory Development

Our current review of both cultural validity and cultural specificity career models leaves us with an optimistic view of the future of cross-cultural career counseling. It has become widely accepted that career counseling needs to take place within a cultural context in order to be effective and beneficial for the increasingly cultural diverse population in our country. This is a factor that needs to be incorporated into our models regardless of whether clients are from ethnic minority populations or are immigrants from other countries or international students attending our universities.

This and other reviews of the multicultural career literature has taught us that our theories and models, like our clients, are dynamic and evolving rather than static entities. Although the dominant Western career models/theories are being adapted, modified, developed or extended, there is still much that needs to be done in order to fill all the cultural accommodation gaps (see Leong and Lee, 2006). Fifteen years after Leong and Brown (1995), we continue to believe that culturally valid and culturally specific research in the field of career counseling needs to be undertaken and extended. In one sense, the field has only just begun to lay the groundwork for multicultural career counseling. Some specific approaches that have arisen and continue to be developed include those of a cultural contextual nature, of a personal constructivism nature, and or a narrative nature. These are good and promising beginnings.

Our review also identified the need for more careful use of concepts with appropriate definitions in terms of monocultural, bicultural or multicultural studies that underlie our models or our intervention programs. Similarly, as we implement the cross-cultural competence perspective into the training of future generations of career counselors, we need to be careful in referring to cross-cultural competence vs. multicultural competence.

Thomas Kuhn’s (1996) concept of the structure of scientific revolution is also relevant to our current discussions. According to Kuhn, scientific paradigms shift when sufficient phenomena at the fringes accumulated beyond the capacity of the dominant paradigm to assimilate or account for them. We do not believe that the field of vocational psychology is witnessing a paradigm shift but perhaps they do adapt to changes. As our society becomes more multicultural and we encounter the effects of globalization, Western/Eurocentric theories and models of career development and career intervention may need to undergo cultural adaptation much in the same way that their counterparts in psychotherapy have had to adapt. For the interested reader, Bernal and Domenech-Rodriguez (2012) provide an excellent overview and discussion of cultural adaptation in psychological intervention. Therefore, the convergence of the cultural validity and cultural specificity approaches may be best integrated within the field of vocational psychology by undertaking such cultural adaptation of our current Western/Eurocentric models of career development and vocational behaviors

In reviewing the extant models of multicultural career counseling, we are also reminded of Spokane’s observation that we have theories of career development but lack theories of career counseling. Yet, our review has identified some promising models of multicultural career counseling, though empirical studies of these models are sorely needed in relation to their efficacy and effectiveness. Many of the methodological developments in psychotherapy process and outcome studies can be fruitfully applied to these multicultural career counseling studies to be undertaken. Following Leong and Lee’s (2006) Cultural Accommodation Model, these theories of career counseling can also identify culture-specific constructs that they need to accommodate within their paradigms in order to be relevant to a culturally diverse clientele. To put the theory and the practice together, we also need more translational research which helps us with the critical step of “theory into practice.”