Undergraduate Student Change in Cultural Competence: Impact of a Multicultural Psychology Course

Document Type

Article

Journal/Book Title/Conference

Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology

Volume

4

Issue

2

Publisher

American Psychological Association

Publication Date

6-1-2018

First Page

81

Last Page

92

Abstract

Students enrolled in a semester-long undergraduate multicultural psychology course. The course had explicit objectives tied to changing awareness, knowledge, and skills. Students completed self-report measures in the first week of the course and the second to last week of the course to encourage self-reflection regarding change across the semester. We found significant within-subject effects for time (pre, post; Wilks’ A = .51; F(10, 58) = 5.56, p =< .001, np2 = .49), and ignificant between-subjects effects for ethnicity (Wilks’ A = .70; F(10, 58) = 2.27, p = .015, np2 = .30) and course year (Wilks’ A = .46; F(10, 58) = 6.77, p =< .001, np2 = .54) but not for gender. There were also significant interaction effects of course year and time (Prepost x Course Year; Wilks’ A = .61; F(10, 58) = 3.70, p =< .001, np 2 = .39). Findings suggest that key aspects of multicultural competence, namely ethnocultural empathy, colorblind racial attitudes, and multicultural experiences can and do change over the course of a semester-long class.

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