| This dissertation presents a course curriculum that targets multicultural competency for doctoral students in clinical psychology and hypothesizes that training in spirituality will promote meeting the needs of future psychologists in this area through a critical hermeneutic framework. The course curriculum is based on the premise that student trainees can increase awareness of and sensitivity to the cultural nuances of the dialogical process that embodies clinical practice if those cultural nuances are defined as inherent spiritual factors that play a fundamental role in the diversity amongst individuals and thus in therapy as well. Current deficits exist in the field of professional psychology with respect to educational training in the area of spirituality despite the profession's ethical mandate to incorporate these issues in multicultural and diversity training, and the development of this course is a response to those deficits, aiming to contribute to the field by offering the possibility of a more comprehensive and clinically attuned diversity-related curriculum for psychologists in training. The course is designed as a 15-week doctoral level course presented in the form of a curriculum for instructors, complete with a specified course syllabus, instructional guide, classroom exercises, and handouts. |
