Rachael D. Goodman

Is There a “Hierarchy of Oppression” in U.S. Multicultural Teacher Education Coursework?

Thirty years ago Audre Lorde famously argued that there is no, or ought not to be, a “hierarchy of oppression”; that the notion that one identity or oppression trumps another is, itself, oppression. Around the same time, many multicultural education theorists and practitioners, initially focused largely on race, began to incorporate other equity concerns. Despite todays widely, although not universally, shared notion that it is concerned with all forms of equity, research has shown that a hierarchy of oppression remains visible in multicultural education theory and practice. In this study the authors analyzed course schedules from a sample (N = 41) of multicultural teacher education (MTE) course syllabi and data from a survey (N = 122) of people who teach MTE courses to ascertain whether a systemic hierarchy of oppression exists in MTE coursework. The authors found that such a hierarchy does, indeed, exist. Implications are discussed from an intersectionality theory perspective.

The transgenerational trauma and resilience genogram

The understanding of trauma within counseling has expanded to include the salience of ecosystemic factors and to acknowledge the importance of multicultural and social justice considerations. Transgenerational trauma and resilience offers a framework that examines trauma across generations, attends to ecosystemic concerns, and adheres to a strengths-based perspective. However, given the complexity of trauma counseling and attending to the multitude of ecosystemic factors, counselors and psychologists may struggle to conduct comprehensive assessments and interventions with their clients. Genograms have long been used to clarify complex family and psychological patterns through visual representations, and are, therefore, a promising tool to meet this need. The Transgenerational Trauma and Resilience Genogram (TTRG) was created as a dynamic tool that can assist practitioners in conducting compressive trauma assessment and intervention from a transgenerational trauma and resilience framework. The TTRG emphasizes an ecosystemic view of trauma, culturally relevant and strength-based interventions, and attention to sociopolitical concerns that may impact trauma and recovery. The author explicates the use of the TTRG in trauma counseling, including the theoretical foundations and implications for trauma and recovery. A case example of the use of the TTRG and implications for counseling practice using the TTRG and its guiding principles are provided.

Decolonizing Traditional Pedagogies and Practices in Counseling and Psychology Education: A Move Towards Social Justice and Action

While numerous scholars in the fields of counseling and psychology have called for the implementation of social justice counselor education and training, there remains concern that both multiculturalism and social justice are only embraced superficially and may not truly be enacted in counseling and psychology training programs. Often, counseling and psychology education programs include multiculturalism, diversity, and even social justice in their mission statements, but they fail to offer their students the depth and breadth of training experiences required to actually provide such an education. For instance, most programs have one course that addresses multiculturalism, but this concept is only occasionally mentioned in other courses and social justice is rarely discussed at all. This gives the false impression that counseling and psychology education programs are addressing diversity, when in actuality these programs are not preparing students to practice in ways that attend to the unique experiences of the diverse clients they will serve or to address to the complex ways in which social injustice manifests in the lives of clients, particularly those from marginalized social groups. Further, since multiculturalism and social justice have become popularized in the counseling and psychology lexicon, we now see regular attempts within counseling and psychology education programs to actualize these concepts, but in ways that are often superficial and simply reinforce the status quo.

A Liberatory Approach to Trauma Counseling: Decolonizing Our Trauma-Informed Practices

Over the past 15 years, human service providers have begun using the term “trauma-informed” to describe the delivery of services that are informed by an understanding of trauma. This marks an important shift in that social service providers are now regularly acknowledging the impact of trauma and the importance of addressing traumatic stress in clinical practice. Without this focus counselors and psychologists are likely to implement services that are focused solely on intrapsychic concerns, ignoring the complex and often long-lasting impacts of traumatic events.

Introduction: Toward a Decolonized Multicultural Counseling and Psychology

Multiculturalism was a significant step forward in the fields of counseling and psychology. As a result of the pioneering work of scholars and activists in this area, we find ourselves spending less and less energy trying to convince colleagues of the merits of approaches that acknowledge difference and to challenge the imposition of Euro-, cis-male-, Christian-, or hetero-centric norms onto counseling and psychology. While we appreciate the risks taken by scholars and practitioners who worked tirelessly to move multiculturalism and other diversity-acknowledging frameworks from the margins toward the center of our disciplines, we believe we are now at a critical juncture in regard to social justice. We do not lack frameworks and approaches for deconstructing problematic counseling and psychology paradigms and practices, nor do we lack counselors and psychologists who desire to adopt the paradigms and practices that will help them connect more effectively with the full diversity of humanity and create a more equitable and just world. The danger, however, is that too often “multicultural” counseling and psychology are practiced or theorized in ways that actually replicate the power arrangements they ought to be dismantling. We worry that these paradigms and practices have been nudged closer and closer to the center of counseling and psychology discourses only after they’ve been scrubbed of their transformative natures. Although developed, perhaps, in attempts to enact social justice, many of these practices are softened or reshaped to comply with the very sorts of marginalization they were imagined to counteract.