Cultural immersion experience paper guide
Make contact with a distinct cultural or value-system group you are not part of and about which you hold preconceptions, then write three to five pages covering the setting, your reactions, your thoughts about the group, your thoughts about yourself, and what would make you an effective counsellor for this population.
Editorial process
Last reviewed · August 13, 2026
The group you pick is the first graded decision
Read the selection criteria closely, because they are stricter than they first appear. The group must represent a distinct culture or clear value system, must be or have been disenfranchised or oppressed, and must be one about which you hold potentially negative preconceived notions. That third condition rules out the comfortable choice. Attending an event you already enjoy, among people you already know, produces a paper with nothing to report, because immersion assignments are graded on the distance travelled rather than on the pleasantness of the afternoon. The honest move is to notice which group you have been avoiding in this list and go there. The prompt's own examples span formalised religious services different from your own, volunteer work at a soup kitchen or homeless shelter, a burial or another rite of passage, and ordinary social activity, so the range on offer is wide enough that nobody has a real excuse for choosing the easy option.
The paper then separates two things students routinely merge: your thoughts and feelings about the group observed, and your thoughts and feelings about yourself in relation to that group. The second is the harder section and the one the assignment exists for. Write about the moment you felt conspicuous, or the assumption you noticed yourself making before you could stop it, or the relief you felt at leaving, and do not tidy those reactions into conclusions about how welcoming everyone was. The final section asks what would make you an effective counsellor for this population, which is where the experience has to convert into practice. Be concrete: what you would ask differently in an intake, what you would not assume about family or disclosure, where you would need consultation, and what you still do not know. A paper that ends by declaring the writer now culturally competent has misread the exercise entirely.
Likely learning objectives
Inferred from the brief — check these against your own rubric.
- 01Select an immersion setting against explicit criteria rather than by convenience.
- 02Record observation and reaction separately from interpretation.
- 03Distinguish reflection about a group from reflection about oneself in relation to it.
- 04Convert an immersion experience into specific counselling practice changes.
- 05Acknowledge the limits of what one experience can teach about a population.
Read the full question
Review every instruction before using the planning guidance that follows.
Course-wide instructions that accompany this question
ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CLASS Discussion Questions (DQ) Initial responses to the DQ should address all components of the questions asked, including a minimum of one scholarly source, and be at least 250 words. Successful responses are substantive (i.e., add something new to the discussion, engage others in the discussion, well-developed idea) and include at least one scholarly source. One or two-sentence responses, simple statements of agreement, or “good post,” and responses that are off-topic will not count as substantive. Substantive responses should be at least 150 words. I encourage you to incorporate the readings from the week (as applicable) into your responses. Weekly Participation Your initial responses to the mandatory DQ do not count toward participation and are graded separately. In addition to the DQ responses, you must post at least one reply to peers (or me) on three separate days, for a total of three replies. Participation posts do not require a scholarly source/citation (unless you cite someone else’s work). Part of your weekly participation includes viewing the weekly announcement and attesting to watching it in the comments. These announcements are made to ensure you understand everything that is due during the week. APA Format and Writing Quality Familiarize yourself with APA format and practice using it correctly. It is used for most writing assignments for your degree. Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for APA paper templates, citation examples, tips, etc. Points will be deducted for poor use of APA format or absence of APA format (if required). Cite all sources of information! When in doubt, cite the source. Paraphrasing also requires a citation. I highly recommend using the APA Publication Manual, 6th edition. Use of Direct Quotes I discourage overutilization of direct quotes in DQs and assignments at the Masters’s level and deduct points accordingly. As Masters’s level students, it is important that you be able to critically analyze and interpret information from journal articles and other resources. Simply restating someone else’s words does not demonstrate an understanding of the content or critical analysis of the content. It is best to paraphrase content and cite your source. LopesWrite Policy For assignments that need to be submitted to LopesWrite, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me. Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes. Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own? Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score. Late Policy The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies. Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances. If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect. I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension. As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading. Communication Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me: Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class. Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours.
Turn the brief into deliverables
- 01Contact with a group meeting the three stated selection criteria.
- 02A brief overview of the experience: setting, type or purpose of the event, and number of attendees.
- 03Your reactions to the experience.
- 04Your thoughts and feelings about the group observed.
- 05Your thoughts and feelings about yourself in relation to the group observed.
- 06Points to consider in being an effective counsellor for this population.
- 07A three to five page APA-format document.
From setting to counselling implications
Choosing the group
Which group, and how it satisfies distinctness, disenfranchisement and your own preconceptions.
The setting
Where, what kind of event, its purpose, and how many people were present.
Reactions
What you noticed and felt while it was happening, before interpretation.
About the group
What you observed of practices, relationships and values, held as observation.
About yourself
How you experienced being the outsider, including the parts that were uncomfortable.
Counselling implications
Specific practice changes, points of needed consultation, and what you still do not know.
Reading before and after, not instead
Recommended databases
- PsycINFO
- PubMed
- ACA and APA multicultural resources
- Community organisation materials
- Google Scholar
Search sequence
- 1.Identify candidate groups and events in your area before choosing, then apply the three criteria.
- 2.Read a short account of the group's history in your region before attending.
- 3.Write field notes the same day, separating what happened from what you concluded.
- 4.Search for counselling literature addressing this population specifically.
- 5.Read on cultural humility so the closing section avoids a competence claim.
Reference shortlist
These are authoritative starting points, not a ready-made bibliography. A qualified reviewer must confirm that each source fits the assignment and supports the claim beside which it is cited.
Nothing here is cleared for citation until you have read it.
- 01
Psychiatry.org - Best Practice Highlights for Treating Diverse Patient Populations
American Psychiatric Association · 2024
Population-specific practice guidance for the counselling implications section.
- 02
Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services
Office of Minority Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services · 2024
The service standards that turn an immersion insight into an organisational expectation.
- 03
Cultural Competence in the Care of Muslim Patients and Their Families
StatPearls, NCBI Bookshelf · 2023
A model of how practice guidance for one specific group is written, if your group is a faith community.
- 04
Cultural Competence in Caring for American Indians and Alaska Natives
StatPearls, NCBI Bookshelf · 2023
Historical disenfranchisement handled explicitly, which the selection criteria require you to engage with.
Review before submission
Common mistakes
- Choosing a group you are already comfortable with, which leaves nothing to reflect on.
- Omitting the disenfranchisement or preconception criteria from the choice.
- Merging the reflection on the group with the reflection on yourself.
- Sanding off uncomfortable reactions into a conclusion that everyone was welcoming.
- Leaving out the concrete details of setting, purpose and attendance the prompt asks for.
- Ending with a claim to have become culturally competent from one visit.
Submission checklist
- The group meets all three selection criteria, and the paper says how.
- Setting, purpose and number of attendees are all recorded.
- Reactions, thoughts about the group and thoughts about yourself appear as separate sections.
- At least one uncomfortable reaction is reported honestly.
- The counselling section names specific practice changes.
- The limits of a single experience are acknowledged.
- The paper is three to five pages in APA format.
Use this guide to plan and review your own work. Follow your institution's rules and read our academic-integrity policy.
Written by
Aaron Bishop
MA, Education
assignment interpretation and research-methods coaching across disciplines
Aaron leads the EssayCrackers editorial desk. He works on how assignment briefs are read — what a rubric is actually asking for, and where students most often answer a different question than the one set.
Reviewed by
Dr. Nathan Cole
PhD, Rhetoric & Composition
Argumentation and thesis development
Nathan teaches first-year composition and directs a university writing center. He reviews EssayCrackers guides for argumentative soundness and citation accuracy.