Lesson 3 — Multicultural and Social Justice Framework

Welcome to Lesson 3 where we get over the hump of Career Work is Justice Work! How is this course for you thus far? Are you spending the necessary time to self-reflect? Can you find movement in your own thinking and perspective? Keep working at it either way…

I do not have a third keynote speech to share today but will kick this session off with a cartoon to direct our minds to a useful place. View The Unequal Opportunity Race on the right.

https://youtu.be/vX_Vzl-r8NY

Let’s take 2 minutes and submit an entry to your journal. What aspects of the cartoon did you connect/engage with? Which did you mentally push away/reject? In what circumstances would you use this cartoon with a client in your practice?

ACA/ AMCD’s new Multicultural and Social Justice Competencies provide the counseling profession’s “industry standard” for assessing and operationalizing social justice work in various helping relationships. 
Read the introductory article found here. .

Of particular interest to us today, are the four quadrants that help us better understand the career services professional/ client dynamic. These are:

Quadrant I: Privileged Counselor–Marginalized Client
Quadrant II: Privileged Counselor–Privileged Client
Quadrant III: Marginalized Counselor–Privileged Client
Quadrant IV: Marginalized Counselor–Marginalized Client

Helping professionals can use the conceptual framework to identify the relationship dynamic and predict potential communication disruptions, belief system differences, and outcome expectations and plan accordingly.

Furthermore, your review of the four domains below will hopefully illuminate the structure of this course. I have changed the terms specific to counseling to be inclusive of career services professionals (any person who delivers these services including coaches, facilitators, consultants, human resources professionals, counselors, psychologists, and workforce educators). These are:

1.      Career services professional self-awareness.

2.      Client worldview.

3.      Career services relationship.

4.      Intervention and advocacy choices.

This framework is a useful place to begin thinking about the relationships we maintain with our diverse, multi-identity clients. The reality is that the career service profession draws from research, theory, and information that represents more narrow perspectives than this framework. View the video below to dig a little deeper into this history.

https://youtu.be/l32CLyenGyQ

This content rich class session comes to a close now. For the final two sessions we will give you things to try out in your own personal work (Lesson 4) and with your clients (Lesson 5). I believe that we have now laid the foundation to do this work by deeply considering ideas such as claiming what is yours by human right (Lesson 1) and thinking about the structure we have constructed around the world-of-work (Lesson 2) while providing several important elements in this session including Four Quadrants for understanding difference between career services professional and client, four domains for understanding inclusivity in our work, Blustein’s 3 needs that are met by work from the Psychology of Working, and the concept of alterity or otherness.

You will have a lot of things to try after Lesson 4!

Complete items 7-11 before going on to Lesson 4. Don’t forget to mark this lesson COMPLETE.