Rafidah Aga Mohd Jaladin

Barriers and challenges in the practice of multicultural counselling in Malaysia: A qualitative interview study

Counsellors face a lot of problems and stressors in their daily lives. As a person, counsellors may face challenges to deal with their personal expectations and responsibilities in life, work, family and community. As a professional, counsellors may face difficulties in dealing with professional issues and ethical dilemmas in their professional practice such as countertransference and value conflicts. These raise issues concerning their perceived multicultural competence and the adequacy of their training. Informed by a multicultural counselling perspective and drawing on semi-structured interviews with 12 professional counsellors in Malaysia, this study discusses the types of barriers and challenges faced by Malaysian counsellors and how these challenges were manifested and addressed in the cross-cultural counselling sessions. Results revealed five emerging themes based on participant counsellors’ responses on the barriers and challenges encountered in their practice of multicultural counselling in Malaysia. These were challenges related to counsellors’, clients’, presenting issues’, third-party and specific contexts’ characteristics. Research implications for the education and training of counsellors in the specific Malaysian socio-political context are also discussed.Counsellors face a lot of problems and stressors in their daily lives. As a person, counsellors may face challenges to deal with their personal expectations and responsibilities in life, work, family and community. As a professional, counsellors may face difficulties in dealing with professional issues and ethical dilemmas in their professional practice such as countertransference and value conflicts. These raise issues concerning their perceived multicultural competence and the adequacy of their training. Informed by a multicultural counselling perspective and drawing on semi-structured interviews with 12 professional counsellors in Malaysia, this study discusses the types of barriers and challenges faced by Malaysian counsellors and how these challenges were manifested and addressed in the cross-cultural counselling sessions. Results revealed five emerging themes based on participant counsellors’ responses on the barriers and challenges encountered in their practice of multicultural counselling in Malay...

HIGHER EDUCATION SYSTEM IN MALAYSIA: EXPLORING STRATEGIC TRENDS AND CHALLENGES IN POLICY IMPLEMENTATION FOR NEW MALAYSIA

This research aimed at exploring and identifying the strategic trends and challenges that have emerged in higher education in Malaysia. A qualitative research approach was used to identify these trends and challenges using documentation and semi-structured interviews as the main data collection methods. The documents were books, newspaper articles, journals, and education blueprints. The interview samples were four education scholars who are leading figures from the Ministry of Education and public universities. To analyse the data, document examination and content analysis were carried out to identify emerging trends which involved several cycles of coding. These trends were found to be parallel to the changes in the Malaysian higher education system in an attempt to upgrade its quality and sustainability, and to keep abreast with the current waves of globalisation, internationalisation and societal change. They are part of processes adopted by the Malaysian Education Ministry in ensuring that the country is not left behind in providing quality tertiary education for the nation. The ramifications of these trends and their associated challenges were discussed within the Malaysia Higher Education Blueprint framework. The implications for improving the quality of higher education are also included.

Exploring Online Collaborative Reflective Practice for Teaching and Counseling Internship

Professional training or internship is the first platform for pre-service teachers and counsellors to translate their theoretical understanding into practices. This experiential learning by-doing is normally supervised by experts in the respective fields such as lecturers or sometimes called academic supervisors. This study explored the use of online collaborative reflective practices among interns in teaching and counselling programs. Results showed some potential challenges and contributions of online collaborative reflective practice in enhancing the interns’ professional experience and practice. Despite some practical challenges, both groups of interns benefitted a lot in the use of such modality in sharpening their professional skills. Some suggestions for better practices in the use of online collaborative reflection are included.

Challenges and Useful Strategies in Contextualizing Applied Psychology Research: From Malaysian Perspective

In most research studies, international researchers tend to adopt or adapt Western-based theories to generate meaningful knowledge in their specific cultural contexts. In the field of applied psychology, a similar trend is happening in the community of international researchers. By contextualising their research through a dialogical process between the West and non-West, they manage to address conceptualisation issues and methodological biases that are associated with their respective studies in the specific cultural context other than the context of knowledge production. This chapter discusses the challenges in contextualising applied psychology research as experienced by Malaysian researchers studying abroad. Translating Western-made instruments, dealing with fieldwork barriers and challenges, and communicating research findings to a globalised world are some of the critical challenges faced by these Malaysian researchers. Throughout their PhD journeys, they also learnt some useful strategies and tips to deal with these challenges. This chapter also incorporates a discussion of these strategies to assist other international researchers in the process of contextualisation of research. Some implications for theory, practice and research are also included in the chapter. To conclude the chapter, several conclusions were drawn from the discussion that may become a useful guide for international researchers in similar disciplines.

Counseling Supervision for Counselor Development in Malaysia

A mounting body of research confirms the clinical wisdom that supervision is a critical component of counselor development. Recent supervision research has unraveled some of the important elements of supervision that can contribute to the effectiveness of and satisfaction with counseling supervision. The process and characteristics of counseling supervision have been extensively studied in the western countries and many theoretical approaches and models of supervision have been developed. Notwithstanding the broad acceptance of supervision, there has been little empirical investigation in the local context that explores this topic. This lack of normative information makes it difficult for Malaysia to develop its own model of counseling supervision that is agreed upon by most institutions. Encouraging news for the supervisors is that the Malaysian Board of Counselors or Lembaga Kaunselor Malaysia has taken the initial step in training supervisors suggesting an awareness of the importance of quality supervision. This paper draws on recent literature to illustrate the need for quality research in counseling supervision to contribute to counselor development. Some issues and challenges in developing the Malaysian model of supervision are also discussed. Suggestions for future research are also presented to tie-up the whole discussion. Keyword - Counselor Education, Supervision, Malaysian counseling, professional development.