Multicultural

Valuing cultural diversity and honoring the cultural stories of the people we come into contact with begins with self-awareness and thoughtfulness. The purpose of this assignment is to encourage you to think about, define, and articulate your own cultural story and worldview, with the goal of identifying strengths and areas for growth. Understanding your own cultural beliefs and values can help to make you aware of potential bias and limitations. Culture is race and ethnicity, and also nationality, language, gender, religion and spirituality, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, disability or ability, and size, to name just a few identities. Belonging to a cultural group influences every aspect of one’s life, including beliefs, values, attitudes, and worldviews. When we understand our own cultural backgrounds, we can better understand how these identities affect others.

INSTRUCTIONS

Write a 4-5-page paper (not counting the title page and reference page) describing your culture and worldview. You do not need to write an abstract. Follow current APA professional style standards. Cite and reference our textbook, Cultural Engagement, by Chatraw and Prior

(2019), as a source used for support in each main section of your paper. This is the only source required for this paper, but you are welcome to use other course materials (course required videos, journal articles, and the two textbooks only; do not use other outside sources.

You may use Scripture as well. Because you are writing about your personal culture and worldview, it is appropriate to use first person pronouns (I, me, my, for example) for this assignment. Do not use any direct quotes.

Introduction: Begin with a brief paper introduction before going to your first section/heading (do not use a heading for the introduction). Provide a summary of the overall intent, purpose, or topic of your paper. This section should be no more than 12 page.

Use the following bold, centered headings to organize your paper.

Defining Culture

Define what is meant by culture in the first main section, defining culture. Explain how culture is defined in our text and then define and explain your own cultural identities in this context. Based on your cultural identities, provide a detailed description of the potential value differences and challenges that could arise in human services counseling settings. There should be multiple citations for our course text in this section. Faith and Culture

The next section of your paper should address faith and culture. This section is for you to articulate your current faith beliefs and practices that you identify with. How important is your faith to you? It is important to know what you believe and be able to clearly state this. How do you see your faith culture impacting counseling relationships, and how would you ethically address issues if a value or belief difference came up in the counseling relationship?

Contemporary Issues

The third main section, Contemporary Issues, contains your exploration of your personal culture and worldview beliefs regarding contemporary issues. Do not use subheadings for this section;

use paragraphs to separate main ideas. As you define your culture and worldview, focus on topics that are of the greatest significance to you personally (in our course reading, this concept is referred to as cultural salience). This is an important concept from our reading, that individuals place different priorities on aspects of their culture, and it is up to each person where this significance is placed. Explore at least three contemporary issues from our reading in this section. How would you ethically address these issues if a value or belief difference came up in a counseling relationship? You must cite our course text in this section multiple times to show how you are interacting with the text. Conclusion

End with a conclusion where you summarize what the paper covered and include closing thoughts. Discuss how this paper helped you and what you learned from the experience.

Approximately 12 page.