East-Asian Counselling Psychologists' Experience of Psychology in Canada

Date
2013-04-25
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
This study explored East-Asian counselling psychologists’ experience of psychology in Canada. Participants included 6 counselling psychologists practicing in Alberta, each with between 3 and 21 years of experience. The cultures of origin for the participants included Hong Kong, China, and Korea. Data was gathered using a semi-structured interview, and dialogic-performative narrative analysis was completed. Four categories emerged: cultural values, personal cultural identity formation, culture in relation to practice, and personal information. Several themes and sub-themes also emerged. The findings were the first to highlight advantages offered to counselling psychologists of East-Asian descent resulting from experiential knowledge gained through their upbringing. Cultural identification, experiential knowledge, and bilingual language skills were beneficial in work with clients. These findings indicate a need for further exploration into counselling psychologist’s unique cultural identities in their work within a counselling context, and suggest that greater attention to experiential learning components be implemented at the training level.
Description
Keywords
Educational Psychology
Citation
Chan, K. (2013). East-Asian Counselling Psychologists' Experience of Psychology in Canada (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/25774