Multicultural Competence in Student Affairs

Advancing Social Justice and Inclusion

Raechele L. Pope, Amy L. Reynolds, John A. Mueller

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781119376484
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Vita studentesca

Effectively address the challenges of equity and inclusion on campus

The long-awaited second edition, Multicultural Competence in Student Affairs: Advancing Social Justice and Inclusion, introduces an updated model of student affairs competence that reflects the professional competencies identified by ACPA and NASPA (2015) and offers a valuable approach to dealing effectively with increasingly complex multicultural issues on campus. To reflect the significance of social justice, the updated model of multicultural awareness, knowledge, and skills now includes multicultural action and advocacy and speaks directly to the need for enhanced perspectives, tools, and strategies to create inclusive and equitable campuses.

This book offers a fresh approach and new strategies for student affairs professionals to enhance their practice; useful guidelines and revised core competencies provide a framework for everyday challenges, best practices that advance the ability of student affairs professionals to create multicultural change on their campuses, and case studies that allow readers to consider and apply essential awareness, knowledge, skills, and action applied to common student affairs situations.

Multicultural Competence in Student Affairs: Advancing Social Justice and Inclusion will allow professionals to:

• Examine the updated and revised dynamic model of student affairs competence
• Learn how multicultural competence translates into effective and efficacious practice
• Understand the inextricable connections between multicultural competence and social justice
• Examine the latest research and practical implications
• Explore the impacts of practices on assessment, advising, ethics, teaching, administration, technology, and more
• Learn tools and strategies for creating multicultural change, equity, and inclusion on campus

Understanding the changes taking place on campus today and developing the competencies to make individual and systems change is essential to the role of student affairs professional. What is needed are new ways of thinking and innovative strategies and approaches to how student affairs professionals interact with students, train campus faculty and staff, and structure their campuses. Multicultural Competence in Student Affairs: Advancing Social Justice and Inclusion provides guidance for the evolving realities of higher education.

CHAPTER ONE
MULTICULTURAL COMPETENCE AND SOCIAL JUSTICE IN STUDENT AFFAIRS: PARALLELS AND INTERSECTIONS

It has been many years since we first wrote Multicultural Competence in Student Affairs and during the subsequent 15 years, there have been many times that we have discussed when or whether we would write a second edition. During this time, we have continued to write, teach, present, and consult on multicultural competence. And during that time, our beliefs, knowledge, and understanding of multicultural competence as a construct and practice have certainly evolved. Witnessing the growth in the field, in the form of publications, research, conference presentations, and others, is exciting and inspiring to behold. However, during this time we have also noticed some tensions in conversations and the literature about multicultural competence and social justice, with some viewing these two essential constructs as somewhat contradictory or unrelated. Those assumptions or beliefs have never corresponded with our view of multicultural competence and social justice as overlapping and complementary approaches to transforming ourselves, our institutions, and society. So, we began a process of thoroughly examining the literature, reading everything we could on social justice and multicultural competence across various professions and diverse outlets. We found that the more knowledge and understanding we absorbed, the more we wanted to learn. This led us to the decision that the time had come to write a second edition and that bringing together these two ideas with their distinct literature, research, and practices would be the focus of our work. That decision led us to decide that this second edition, Multicultural Competence in Student Affairs: Advancing Social Justice and Inclusion, would need to begin with a chapter that explored the parallels, intersections, and overlapping connections between the values, goals, strategies, practices, and desired outcomes of multicultural competence and social justice.

EVOLUTION OF MULTICULTURAL COMPETENCE AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

Multicultural competence, as both an aspiration and expectation, has been present in the student affairs literature since the late 1990s, when Pope and Reynolds (1997) first adapted the framework from the counseling field and presented it to the student affairs field. However, in the 22 years since then, our understanding of multicultural competence and what is expected in terms of the essential awareness, knowledge, and skills needed to work with marginalized students and create multicultural change on campus has also evolved (Pope & Mueller, 2017). The exploration of multicultural competence in student affairs began with a focus “less on the students and the campus programs but rather, more on the student affairs professionals who interact with those students and who design, fund, and implement those initiatives” (Pope, Mueller, & Reynolds, 2009, p. 647). From its genesis in the student affairs and higher education literature, multicultural competence has been described as “a necessary prerequisite to ethical, efficacious, and multiculturally relevant practices at colleges and universities” (Pope, Reynolds, & Mueller, 2014, p. 14). Relying on the multicultural competence literature in counseling psychology, Pope and Reynolds (1997) first delineated and described multicultural competence in student affairs in terms of the awareness, knowledge, and skills that were essential to working effectively with others who are both culturally different and similar.

This tripartite model has been thoroughly explored in both the counseling and higher education literature, but it is useful to briefly define these key components. Multicultural awareness “involves the essential attitudes, values, biases, and assumptions that each of us carries with us, whether we realize it or not, that influence our worldview” and are “shaped by our upbringing, education, and life experiences” (Pope, Reynolds, & Mueller, 2004, p. 12) while multicultural knowledge is conceptualized as “our intellectual understanding or content knowledge about various cultural groups and specific multicultural constructs” (p. 13). Such knowledge can be gleaned through books, media, relationships, and life experiences. Last but not least, multicultural skills are about applying “our multicultural awareness and knowledge to our interactions, interventions, and our daily lives” (p. 13). Pope and Mueller (2017) argue that “although the tripartite model of multicultural competence has remained constant, the conceptualization of multicultural competence within student affairs has evolved during the past twenty years” (p. 394).

Although social justice work has been around for hundreds of years, often through religious and community organizations, the construct and nomenclature of social justice within student affairs and higher education was newly emerging when Multicultural Competence in Student Affairs was first published in 2004. There was certainly language and emphasis within the original book that highlighted the need for action, advocacy, and institutional change within higher education (Reason & Watson, 2011). For example, in the first edition of this book, we (the authors) made the case for conscientização or critical consciousness, championed by Freire (1970), as essential for meaningful reflection of underlying assumptions. Or within the discussion of multicultural competence in helping and advising, we suggested that moving beyond helping individual students address their concerns and barriers is essential and “advocacy and activism on the individual and organizational levels are crucial skills that student affairs professionals need if they are to contribute to or initiate a multicultural change process on campus” (p. 93). Similarly, when exploring multicultural competence in administration and management, multicultural organization development (MCOD) was promoted as a unique framework to support the “transformation of organizations into socially just and socially diverse systems through questioning and assessing underlying beliefs, everyday practices, and core values” (p. 55). Through the incorporation of MCOD within the Dynamic Model of Student Affairs Competence, which is steeped in social justice strategies and approaches, we sought transformative efforts in higher education. And in our book Creating Multicultural Change on Campus (2014), we went on to expand this work to more thoroughly explore systemic and systematic methods of multicultural change on colleges and universities and argue that multicultural competence is a bridge to developing multicultural leaders who are essential in creating and implementing multicultural change efforts on campus.

As multicultural competence was beginning to take a foothold in the student affairs literature, the issue of social justice and its role in higher education was also building and gaining attention. Much of that early literature focused on defining social justice and discussing the role of social justice allies (Edwards, 2006; Reason, Broido, Davis, & Evans 2005; Reason & Davis 2005). As suggested by Lechuga, Clerc, and Howell (2009), “In recent years, student affairs professionals have introduced social justice into their programming to empower students to become engaged citizens committed to working toward social justice and systemic change” (p. 229). This focus on how to instill social justice attitudes and actions within students is somewhat different from how multicultural competence has been framed with a focus on the importance of developing multicultural awareness, knowledge, skills, and action among staff, administrators, and faculty. More current writing has turned toward considering social justice in the services we provide, the campuses we strive to create, or how we conceptualize the very work we do on our campuses (Davis & Harrison, 2013; Reason & Davis, 2005; Watt, 2015a).

Social justice is defined in fairly consistent ways, often building on the work of Bell (1997), who calls for “a society in which the distribution of resources is equitable and all members are physically and psychologically safe and secure” (p. 3). Reason and Davis (2005) highlighted the distinction between distributive and procedural justice. Distributive justice focuses on how the limited goods and resources in society are distributed based on need, fairness, or equality, whereas procedural justice is about which members of society or groups are able to have influence and input in any decision-making process. The growing need for social justice is based in the reality that there is significant and meaningful injustice in how resources are distributed and how various groups are treated. There is no place where this is truer than in higher education. Reason and Davis highlighted how financial aid and college admission are examples of both distributive justice (who has access) and procedural justice (how these decisions are made). However, that doesn't address the other aspect of Bell's definition, which is that all students should be able to feel psychologically and physically safe and secure. This is hard to ensure when campuses are rife with microaggressions and other expressions of discrimination, hostility, and oppressive actions and systemic and systematic structures that maintain inequality and oppression. Further, Chizhik and Chizhik (2002) argued that in addition to the unequal distribution of resources, there are discriminatory practices based in unequal power distribution, which is the “difference between those with power (i.e., the privileged) and those without (i.e., the oppressed)” (p. 792). Social justice work then becomes about coming together “to work for the common good by transforming the social organizations and processes that contribute to power inequalities, oppression, and marginalization” (Caldwell & Vera 2010, p. 164). At the core of social justice attitudes is the belief that every person should have the “opportunity to reach her or his academic, career, and personal/social potential free from unnecessary barriers” (Lewis, Ratts, Palodino, & Toporek, 2011, p. 7).This evolution in terminology and conceptualization of how to create change, via multicultural competence or social justice efforts, has led to some challenges and tensions both within higher education and beyond. There have been some who have criticized multicultural competence for falling short of its ideals by primarily focusing on assisting individuals of privilege in their efforts to help those from marginalized groups rather than creating true systemic change (Racial Equity Tools, n.d.). Reason and Watson (2011) suggest that emphasizing the intergroup communication aspect of multicultural competence and “ignoring the realities of target group members' lived oppression can lessen the emphasis on creating structural changes to further social justice” (p. 270), thus weakening multicultural competence as a tool for change. Many scholars have suggested the importance of moving beyond the interpersonal expressions of bias and how individuals interact and instead focusing on dismantling the structural biases issues inherent in higher education and counseling. Within the counseling field, Vera and Speight (2003) argued that multicultural competence must expand beyond the classic counseling dyad, address systemic barriers, and include a wider array of interventions, including the “ability to function as a change agent at organizational, institutional, and societal levels” (p. 255). This is also true within higher education where multicultural competence must be so much more than helping staff and faculty learn how to be more culturally sensitive. Kumagai and Lypson (2009) stated very clearly that cultural competence is “not a static requirement to be checked off some list but is something beyond the somewhat rigid categories of knowledge, skills, and attitudes: the continuous critical refinement and fostering of a type of thinking and knowing – a critical consciousness – of self, others, and world” (p. 783).

While these critiques are compelling, there can be, at times, some misunderstanding of what multicultural competence is really about and what it is capable of achieving. Multicultural competence, as defined by Pope, Reynolds, and Mueller (2004), is so much more than “a minimum expectation for student affairs educators to effectively support and engage students from a variety of backgrounds” (Linder & Cooper, 2016, p. 381); rather, it is an expectation that student affairs practitioners consistently challenge themselves to increase their awareness and knowledge of self, of others, and of the relationship between the two; understand systems of oppression and inequities to create a deeper understanding of structural barriers within higher education; and develop the advocacy and action skills essential to eradicate the structural barriers, eliminate the inequities, and create multicultural change on campus and in society. Such expectations were firmly embedded in early writings on multicultural competence in student affairs such as Pope, Reynolds, and Mueller (2004) and have continued to be emphasized by Pope, Reynolds, and Mueller (2014).

It is also essential to remember that “multicultural competence is not the panacea to all multicultural challenges facing campuses today, but it can serve as a transformational tool or vital construct used to reshape and change individuals, groups, and organizational units (e.g., programs, departments, divisions) within higher education” (Pope, Reynolds, & Mueller, 2014, p. 14). When discussing the multicultural competence perspectives offered by Pope, Reynolds, and Mueller (2004), Reason and Watson (2011) suggested that through its emphasis on action and advocacy, “the perspective forwarded by Pope and her colleagues avoids many of the weaknesses … inherent in other multicultural competence perspectives, and moves us closer to a blending of multicultural competence and social justice” (p. 270).

In addition to these critical appraisals of multicultural competence, some scholars, such as Ratts (2011), suggest that social justice in a vacuum without the influence of multicultural competence can be problematic: “Engaging in social justice advocacy without having developed a sense of multicultural competence may lead to advocacy strategies that ignore clients' cultural background” (p. 27). There have also been some critiques of the social justice movement by Freedman (2007) and others in terms of the challenging dynamics that social justice efforts may create on campus. Some scholars have reproached social justice advocates and activists of being instigators and indoctrinators and challenging the very notion of education as a neutral and impartial enterprise (Freedman, 2007). Many who advocate for social justice might actually agree with that last criticism and believe that education has never been an impartial process and actually having a goal of change (among individual attitudes or within institutional practices) is essential to combating oppression in all of its forms and may, in fact, be a small price to pay. As Reason and Watson (2011) offer, “interrupting the status quo on college campuses might require social justice advocates to use controversial methods in order to create campus environments that are equitable and safe for all community members” (p. 273). Given that not all members of our campus communities will support such advocacy and activist approaches, it is also important to acknowledge that there are challenges that need to be considered as suggested by Reason and Watson, “How can we affirm our commitment for social justice while continuing to support all students and work within the administration?” (p. 273). Finally, Manning (2009) offers a caution for many educators who advocate for social justice: “Just as diversity became a catch-all phrase for all practice related to difference, social justice is unfortunately be...