Dini Farhana Baharudin / Asia Pacific RIM International Counseling Conference (2012) 1 Perception and Understanding of Counselor Trainees on Multicultural Counseling in Malaysia Dini Farhana Baharudin a 1* a Faculty of Leadership and Management,,Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia, N.Sembilan, 71800, Malaysia Abstract Counselor trainees deal with clients of various cultures while providing counseling services. This study aims to identify the perceptions and understanding of counselor trainees to Multicultural Counseling in Malaysia. Qualitative methods through semi-structured interviews were conducted on twelve counselor trainees from two higher institution of learning in Malaysia for their views on the issues of Multicultural Counseling. Interview results revealed that in general, the twelve counselor trainees have good perception and understanding of Multicultural Counseling. All of them have sufficient attitudes, beliefs and knowledge of Multicultural Counseling. But all counselor trainees agreed that there are deficiencies in the skills that made them not fully prepared to deal with clients of various cultures. This deficiency may be caused by the difference in experience between them. The implications of this study are expected to broaden the understanding and awareness of issues of Multicultural Counseling and counselor trainee/counselor educators in general. Keywords: multicultural counseling, counselor, competency, perception and understanding. 1. Introduction In order to treat clients effectively, counselors must have a level of multicultural competency (Arredondo, Toporek, Brown, Jones, Locke, Sanchez & Stadler (1996). Cultural competence is the ability to use skills, behaviors or interventions to respectfully provide services to individuals through the appropriate systems, agencies and organizations. Cultural competence demands clinicians to develop flexibility in thinking and behavior, because they must learn to adapt professional tasks and work styles to values, expectations and preferences of specific clients. Various useful strategies have to be chosen for the differences that exist among clients (Shwarzbaum & Thomas, 2008). Basic multicultural competence requires awareness of the importance of culture, self-awareness, knowledge of cultural groups and skills for working with diverse clients (Sue & Sue, 2003). Pedersen (1991) indicated that therapists must have an awareness of cultural differences and similarities of behaviors, attitudes and values. In addition, they must have knowledge of cultural groups, including facts and information on values, beliefs, behaviors, communication styles and social preferences. Counselors also need to develop culturally sensitive skills and strategies that suit the diverse clients. In Malaysia, a counselor should have a clear understanding of multicultural counseling where they must understand, respect and appreciate differences in values and socio-cultural background of a client (PERKAMA Printed for the APCA/ACA/APRCC, Hong Kong with permission by Dini Farhana Baharudin. * Corresponding author. Tel.: +606-798-8000; fax: +606-798-8244 E-mail address: dini@usim.edu.my.