Creating Connections: Using a Narrative Approach in Career Group Counseling With College Students From Diverse

Cultural Backgrounds

Mary Ann Clark, Lisa Severy, and Shanaz Ali Sawyer

Changes in the world of work as well as demographic shifts toward a more diverse college population and workforce require changes in the way career counseling i s provided on college campuses. The authors propose using a narrative group counseling approach to serve college and university students from various cultural backgrounds. Through this approach, students develop their own careerllife stories, incorporating their cultural values, family and community considerations, and life roles.

or the past several decades, colleges and universities have reported marked increases in the diversity of their students. Notably, the cultural diver- F sity among students more and more reflects the diversity of American

society (Miller, 2002), in which a homogeneous majority is becoming less domi- nant (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1998). Given these changes, traditional methods of career counseling may need to be adapted to meet the specific needs of nontraditional students. Although the term nontraditional student has been used to refer to a variety of student characteristics, including age, culture, and socioeconomic status (Kim, 2002), the focus of this article is specific to issues of culture as they relate to career counseling.

Because career counseling not only facilitates the selection of an academic major and potential career but also helps to clarify students’ values and lifestyle considerations, including the influences of the family of origin, cultural values often strongly influence the decisions made. Indeed, cultural variables-includ- ing worldviews, identity development, family, and structure of opportunities- are fundamental aspects of career counseling (e.g., Fouad, 1993). Career coun- selors should therefore have an accurate understanding of both their own cul- ture and their clients’ cultures, including recent information and appropriate techniques that have been recommended with those particular populations. Similarly, counselor educators, supervisors, and trainers can assist counseling trainees to acquire the Multicultural Counseling Competencies (Roysircar, Sandhu, & Bibbins, 2002) and the revised Career Counseling Competencies (National Career Development Association [NCDA], 1997), with particular attention to the interface between the two (Evans & Larrabee, 2002). Competencies from

Mary Ann Clark, Deportment of Counselor Education, and Liso Severy and Shonoz A l i Sawyer, Deportment of Counselor Education ond Career Resource Center, University of Florido. Lisa Severy is now in the Deportment of Counselor Education, University of Florido, ond ot Career Services, University of Colorado. Shonaz Al i Sawyer is now in the Deportment of Counselor Education, University of Florido. and at Santo Fe Community College. Cor- respondence concerning this article should be addressed to Mary Ann Clark, 1215 Norman Hall, Department of Counselor Education, Box I I 7046, Gainesville, FL 326 I 1-7046 (e-rnail: rnaclark@coe.ufJ.edu).

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both the multicultural and career literatures must be learned and applied for the services provided to meet the needs of a diverse student population.

Given this need to integrate multicultural and career competencies, new models of service delivery will need to be described and evaluated. The purpose of this article is, therefore, to examine one such emerging career counseling approach i n working with nontraditional, multicultural student populations. Specifically, we propose using a narrative group counseling approach in helping clients develop their own career/life stories, incorporating their cultural values, family and community considerations, and life roles.

A Postmodern, Narrative Approach to Career Counseling With Multicukural Populations

The last two decades have brought a new, evolving paradigm shift in the world of work and in the concept of career development. The stable and predictable career path provided by the industrial economy ofthe past does not exist for most people in the current information-based economy (Peavy, 1996; Savickas, 1993). The scien- tific “matching models” advocated by career counselors in the last century have become less meaningfiil in an era in which both the person and workplace change continually (Savickas, 2000).

In light of this, the positivist search for truth is slowly being replaced by a more postmodern search for meaning and consmicted reality (Savickas, 2000). This change is especially important given the multicultural nature ofthe current information-based economy. As professions become more diverse, decision-making assessments based on norm groups are less relevant, particularly because “objective” norm-referenced tests have often failed to adequately represent those outside of the norm (Cochran, 1997). Recognition of this and other limitations of positivistic models has led to in- creased support for models of service delivery based on postmodern perspectives.

From a postmodern perspective, individuals are seen as constructed selves, created through action and interpretation and continually evolving (Polkinghorne, 1990). Rather than a set of traits or factors to be measured, individuals are the continually changing result of ongoing narrative interpretation (Savickas, 2000). In this way, differing themes can be explored in career counseling on the basis of the values of the client rather than on a prescribed set of criteria.

Narrative, or storied career counseling, has emerged from this theoretical basis (Niles & Hartung, 2000). The process of authoring life stories embraces all elements ofself, including work and life outside ofwork, as well as multiple life roles such as family member, worker, student, and community member.

Proponents of narrative career counseling believe that this new model will help to address multicultural concerns that are often difficult to address (or are not addressed) in traditional positivistic models (Niles & Hartung, 2000). Because the career counseling process focuses on emerging stories, clients select aspects of themselves to celebrate and honor themes that they believe must be included in their narratives (Savickas, 2000). Furthermore, postmodernism and niulticulturalisni both recognize individual beliefs about the world and values

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that are intimately tied to cultural socialization and lifestyle (D’Andrea & Daniels, 2003). These perspectives therefore seem to match the career needs and con- cerns expressed by nontraditional college students from diverse backgrounds.

Career Development Needs of College/University Students From Diverse Backgrounds

There are a number of psychosocial tasks that face late adolescent/young adult college students. A few of the major issues they encounter include the refinement of their social identity; the formulation of a set of attitudes, values, and beliefs; renegotiation of parental bonds; initiation of mature interpersonal relationships; and adjustment to college (Schultheiss, 2000). Although students from diverse backgrounds share many similar developmental issues, the process of ethnic identity development is often unique and can strongly influence their psychoso- cia1 development (DeVaney & Hughey, 2000). Families of ethnic minority stu- dents may exert strong influences to follow particular predetermined career paths, traditions, and rules (DeVaney & Hughey, 2000). The students may feel unsup- ported when preparing for careers outside the range of family desires, or they may feel conflict about leaving the geographic location where they grew up. Women may believe that they have few options or that their choices may produce conflict within their family of origin if having a career is not the traditional choice for women. To the degree they are attuned to the client’s culture, career counse- lors can facilitate the client’s self-awareness and insight, motivation to learn and change, and strategies for coping with setbacks and distress.

Group Career Counseling From a Narrative Perspective

Group counseling from a postmodern, narrative perspective may offer career coun- selors a useful intervention framework for understanding and working with cul- tural issues. In general, group counseling provides an opportunity for participants to practice social skills, give and receive feedback, and gain insights through per- sonal reflection and through listening to others’ experiences. In addition to these widely recognized benefits of group counseling, a career counseling group based on a postmodern, narrative framework can help clients to process and personalize career information in a meaningful way by bringing personal themes and stories to the discussion (Peterson & Gonzalez, 2000). Thus, not only do participants re- ceive help and feedback with their authoring process, but they also assist others to author stories in a collectivistic approach that is particularly appropriate in multicultural contexts (e.g., Sue & Sue, 1991). The traditional use of imagery, symbols, and storytelling by some cultures may also be congruent with the philosophy of the narrative approach to counseling and may therefore be especially effective in these groups. Group facilitators who are sensitive to clients’ cultural expectations of structure and leadership within groups, which may differ from the facilitator’s expectations (Betz, 1993; Leong, 1993), can best facilitate the sharing of client narratives, through which feelings and thoughts can be indirectly communicated in ways that are more comfortable for some cultures than open dialogue (Sue & Sue,

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as cited in Pope, 1999). In sum, there seem to be several potential benefits of a group counseling intervention that uses narratives to facilitate the discussion of cultural issues as they relate to career development. The following section de- scribes how this kind ofintervention w’as iniplemented on one college campus.

Applying the Narrative Approach to Career GrouD Counseling;

The Career Resource Center (CRC) a t our institution, a large state university, provides services to many diverse ethnicities and cultures. Students ofvaried back- grounds typically come to the CRC for help with such general concerns as choos- ing an academic major and career path, but cultural issues, such as family and community expectations and loyalty, account for a large amount of the variance in their career and life planning. With this in mind, the counseling staff at the CRC, representing a variety of multicultural backgrounds and theoretical approaches, implemented narrative career counseling groups with the hopes that they would facilitate clients’ writing their own “life chapters.”

Thirty-two students participated in the narrative career counseling groups. Of those participants, 28% were male and 72% were female. Approximately 41% ofthe participants were students of color (6.3% African American/Black, 15.6% Asian, 18.8% Hispanic/Latino).

The groups were organized inro four sessions, each lasting 90 minutes. Students who had voluntarily come to the CRC for career counseling were screened for appropriate placement in these groups through an individual intake session with a career counselor. Each group had 4 to 6 members with a career counselor as Facilitator. The groups were heterogeneous regarding race, gender, and ethnicity. After agreeing to participate in a group, students were required to take the Myers- Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI; Briggs & Myers, 1998) before the first session.

The first session introduced the idea of a narrative framework for career develop- ment. Students were presented with the concept that life is a continuing story line for which people can choose to take authorship. Members were then asked to share the story of career decisions they have made, reasons for choosing their various professions/university, changes along their journey thus far, significant people and events that have influenced their choices, and a description of where they currently saw themselves in the crossroad of career and life planning. AVdlues Card Sort (University of Florida Career Resource Center, 2000) activity, based on a compilation of various vafues checklists, was then conducted, which enabled group members to tune in to significant themes and influences in their own and other members’ stories. After sharing stories and themes, the facilitator presented to the group a career, education, and life planning cycle model representing stages ofdecision making (Carney &Wells, 1995). Questions and issues that individuals may encounter at each stage were shared, and members were encouraged to identify the stage that they believed matched their current situation. For home- work, group members were given an assignment to explore the System of Interac- tive Guidance Inforimtion Plus (Educational Testing Service, 2003), a computer-

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assisted guidance program, with instructions to focus on the section related to work values and occupations.

The second session centered on a discussion and interpretation of the MBTI results. After an introduction to the MBTI, participants were given a sheet on which they could guess their type and where they would fall on the con- tinuum of each ofthe four personality aspects. As in the first session, major themes, similarities, and differences among group members were highlighted by the facilita- tor, and individual feedback was shared among group members. The emphasis in delivering the MBTI results was placed on personality strengths as well as on poten- tial blind spots, rather than 011 trying to match personality type to a specific career. For homework, the participants were asked to explore a list of academic majors and select their top 10 choices, keeping in mind the majors that might help them to incorporate their emerging themes explored through values, personality, and skills.

In the third session, group members facilitated each other’s process of choos- ing an academic major or career path by integrating what they had discovered in the previous two sessions and in homework assignments about personality, values, skills, and interests, woven into their individual choices of top 10 nia- jors. Group collaboration in generating ideas and discussing assumptions made by individual members aided them in finding life themes, which were then related to goals, choice of majors, and career possibilities. Members were asked to identify internal as well as external resources on which they could draw. Personal strengths were named as well as potential community sources ofsup- port. Financial aid, support from student or cultural groups, or houses of worship were offered by members and the facilitator as examples of possible external resources. The homework assignment was for members to collect specific occupational information using the Occupational Outlook Handbook (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2002) and to write reflections on how this infor- mation seemed to fit with identified life themes as well as how internal and external resources could be used in their career development.

In the final session, members mapped out a career and life time line with projections of major events. The time lines reflected short- and long-term goals as well as significant past events, people, and influences in their lives. Group members were encouraged to give feedback to each other concerning their perceptions of the time lines and common themes discovered. As a con- cluding activity, the participants shared their individual stories that had un- folded through the group sessions and activities. Each participant was then given the opportunity t o share a possible “next step” that might be taken in his or her life journey. The facilitator emphasized to the group that career development is an ongoing, long-term process that encompasses many as- pects of their lives beyond choice of college major.

Program Evaluation

Written evaluations by participants were conducted a t the end of each group. Group members were asked to rate the usefulness of the group activities in

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which they participated. Mean ratings on a 5-point scale, with 5 being oery useful and 1 being not useful ut all, were calculated. The average ratings for the corresponding activities were as follows: discussing life themes, 4.55; values exercise, 4.39; feedback received from other group members, 4.36; MBTI assessment, materials, and discussion, 4.36; discussion of the educational, ca- reer, and life planning process, 4.33; majors list, 4.16.

Written comments from participants’ evaluations yielded two main themes. First, the group members felt understood by their peers, and they appreciated knowing that other students were struggling with similar choices as much or more than they themselves have struggled. For example, one student wrote that the group participants “were mostly concerned with the same life issues and working on them together helped.” Another student wrote, “It’s actual proof that you aren’t the only one feeling this lost and confused.” Second, student participants also enjoyed feeling useful to each other. “We all knew what the others were going through and were able to offer suggestions,” wrote one member. “Our situations weren’t exact,” added another, “but enough alike to where we understood and could help each other.”

The three CRC counselors, including the third author, who served as facilitators for the seven groups perceived the narrative process to be powerfill for their group members. As stories unfolded, members were able to explore how the various facets of personality, environment, family, and life experiences fit together for a more holistic understanding of career decision making. As one counselor stated,

Tlic narrative process enabled students to quickly connect with one another despite differences in gender, race, cthnicicp and social class. For example, a Chinese intcrna- tioiinl stiident and a Hispanic American student, both womcn, discovered that they wcrc cxpcricncing the same type of parental prcssurc i n choosing 3 major.

Discussion

Although this project generated usehl information concerning the use of a narrative approach in career counseling with students of diverse cultural backgrounds, it is important to acknowledge limitations and to make recommendations for future re- search and practice. The primary limitations of this article are that an experimental design was not used and that only a small number ofparticipants were evaluated. Furthermore, although each group was ethnically diverse, it would be desirable to study larger numbers of representatives from each cultural group. For example, targeting specific cultural groups ofstudents to participate in iiarrative career group counseling would allow for additional information regarding the cultural appropri- ateness of the intervention. Longitudinal follow-up studies would help to assess whether the group interaction provided long-term success in career decision mak- ing. Additional research should compare the effectiveness ofthis intervention with other types of career development programming.

Although modifications to the intervention described in this article may be needed to suit other college and university environments, we believe that nar- rative group career counseling represents a beneficial adaptation of traditional

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career counseling methods to meet the needs of nontraditional students. Com- bining the strengths of various theories, using data from assessmenrs, and taking a narrative approach regarding group discussion and reflection all seem to be congruent with and responsive to the changing world ofwork and to the needs of a diverse student population. Specifically, integrating a narrative approach with more traditioiial forms of career couiiseling allowed the opportunity for partici- pants t o openly explore cultural influences on their career development.

The innovation of this intervention is in the combination of trdditioilal techniques with current information and theory across the areas of career development, niulticulturalisin, group counseling, and narrative theory. In that sense, the inter- vention described in this article represents the possibility for career counselors at other institutions to develop comparable programs attuned to nontraditional stu- dents’ needs. We believe that this is the trend of the future. As career counselors become increasingly aware of the necessity to address cultural issues when working with nonuaditional students, they too will adapt traditional practices in ways that better facilitate students’ career and life planning decisions.

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