Cultural self-awareness assessment: Practice examples from psychology training.

Competence in working with diverse clients is essential for all therapists. Acknowledgement of subjectivity is a good indicator of a key competence: therapists' awareness of their own assumptions, values, and biases. Receiving and understanding clients' different perspectives is a good indicator of another competence: understanding the worldviews of culturally different clients. The goals and evaluation of a curriculum for cultural self-awareness assessment are briefly described. Applications for cultural self-awareness assessment are provided, including a checklist of self-descriptions, a group activity for self-awareness development, and trainee analyses of critical incidents. Excerpts from trainees' process notes illustrate one type of self-awareness assessment, showing trainee learning.