Motivation and leadership

Motivation and leadership

Cultural Awareness

Awareness and respect for cultral differences.

An essential skill in the provision of culturally appropriate services, cultural awareness entails an understanding of how a person's culture may inform their values, behaviour, beliefs and basic assumptions.

Cultural awareness recognises that we are all shaped by our cultural background, which influences how we interpret the world around us, perceive ourselves and relate to other people. You don't need to be an expert in every culture or have all the answers to be culturally aware; rather, cultural awareness helps you to explore cultural issues with your care recipients more sensitively.

Information about specific cultural practices will help to increase your cultural knowledge by providing an overview of cultural characteristics and issues. However, it is always important to identify individual needs and preferences and remember that no individual can be reduced to a set of cultural norms.

Within any culture, peoples' values, behaviour and beliefs can vary enormously. Differences may occur due to time of arrival in Australia, length of settlement, socio-economic background, level of education, rural or urban residence, identification with cultural and religious background, and different life experiences - including the experience of migration.

Cultural awareness entails an understanding of the migration process itself. Migration is a key influence on a person's life, with differing effects due to the different experiences of pre-migration, migration and resettlement.

While some migrants undergo a relatively easy transition, most migrants will undergo some - if not many - challenges in adjusting to life in a new country.

Some of the many post-migration stressors include: the stress of separation from homeland, family members, friends and support networks; racial discrimination; changes in lifestyle and socio-economic status; culture shock; language barriers; and the ongoing trauma of pre-migration experiences, which may have included war and political instability, physical and psychological abuse, and travelling as a refugee or living in a refugee camp.

Key Considerations

• Be aware of your own cultural influences.
• Be aware of judging other people's behaviour and beliefs according to the standards of your own culture.
• Be aware of making assumptions about cultural influences and applying generalisations to individuals.
• Understand that the behaviour and beliefs of people within each culture can vary considerably.
• Understand that the extent to which people adopt practices of their new country and retain those from their cultural background can vary within communities, even within families.
• Understand that not all people identify with their cultural or religious background.
• Understand that culture itself is a fluid entity, undergoing transformations as a result of globalisation, migration and the diaspora influence.
• Increase your knowledge about different cultural practices and issues through cultural background information sessions and/or resources and cultural awareness training.
• Understand the importance of appropriate communication.

Development

Edgar Dale - Cone of experience

Edgar Dale was an American educationist who developed the Cone of experience.


According to Dale’s research, the least effective method at the top, involves learning from information presented through verbal symbols, i.e., listening to spoken words. The most effective methods at the bottom, involves direct, purposeful learning experiences, such as hands-on or field experience. Direct purposeful experiences represents reality or the closet things to real, everyday life. 
The cone charts the average retention rate for various methods of teaching. The further you progress down the cone, the greater the learning and the more information is likely to be retained. It also suggests that when choosing an instructional method it is important to remember that involving students in the process strengthens knowledge retention. 
It reveals that “action-learning” techniques result in up to 90% retention. People learn best when they use perceptual learning styles. Perceptual learning styles are sensory based. The more sensory channels possible in interacting with a resource, the better chance that many students can learn from it. According to Dale, instructors should design instructional activities that build upon more real-life experiences. 
 Dales’ cone of experience is a tool to help instructors make decisions about resources and activities. 

The instructor can ask the following: 

- Where will the student’s experience with this instructional resource fit on the cone? How far is it removed from real-life? 
- What kind of learning experience do you want to provide in the classroom? 
- How does this instructional resource augment the information supplied by the textbook? 
- What and how many senses can students use to learn this instructional material? 
- Does the instructional material enhance learning? 

Helping passive learners to become active learners

Active learning is learning which encourages the pupil or student to engage actively with what is being learned through activities such as: 

• group discussion, 
• role play, or 
• experimentation.

Rather than passively receiving and memorizing knowledge or instruction from the teacher in order to be able to repeat it accurately.


Active learning became the norm in most schools, as the value of being able to reproduce information uncritically and ‘parrot fashion’ came increasingly under question in the 20th century. However, the facilitation of active learning becomes more difficult the larger the class size. The implementation of an active approach to learning, therefore, can depend as much on pupil-teacher ratio as on beliefs about effective approaches to learning.

What IS Active Learning?


Learning in which students, “by acting on objects and interacting with other people, ideas, and events, construct new understanding” . (Luckner & Nadler, 1997, p. 13)

“Learning is conceived of as something a learner does, not something that is done to a learner.” (Johnson, Johnson, & Smith, 1991, p. 7)

What is Active Learning is NOT?


Learning is not merely the acquisition of knowledge where students receive information from teachers and regurgitate it - this is memorization

http://staff.educ.ualberta.ca/craig.montgomerie/active/sld001.htm


Confucius 

• What I hear, I forget
• What I see, I remember
• What I do, I understand

Modified by Silberman (1996)

• What I hear, I forget.
• What I hear and see, I remember a little.
• What I hear, see, and ask questions about or discuss with someone else, I begin to understand.
• What I hear, see, discuss, and do, I acquire knowledge and skill.
• What I teach another, I master.

Intercultural Competence

Alexander Thomas, development of Intercultural Competence- Contributions of Psychology (1996)

'Intercultural Competence is the necessary precondition for an adequate, successful, and mutually satisfactory communication, encounter, and co-operation between people from different cultures.'


Wiseman (2003)

'Intercultural Competence involves the knowledge, motivation, and skills to interact effectively and appropriately with members of different cultures.'


Penn State

'Intercultural Competence means that a student understands a variety of significant cultural experiences and/or achievements of individuals who are identified by ethnicity, race, religion, gender, physical/mental disability, or sexual orientation; the cultural history of various social groups within a society; the interrelations between dominant and non-dominant cultures, either in the United States or elsewhere, and the dynamics of difference.'


Guo-Ming and William J. Starosta (1996)

'Intercultural Competence is the ability to negotiate cultural meanings and to execute appropriately effective communication behaviours that recognise the interactants' multiple identities in a specific environment. There are three perspectives:

1. Affective or Intercultural sensitivity - to acknowledge and respect cultural differences
2. Cognitive or intercultural awareness - self-awareness of one's own personal cultural identity and understanding how cultures vary
3. Behavioural or intercultural adroitness - message skills, knowledge of appropriate self-disclosure, behavioural flexibility, interaction management, and social skills'

Anna Schmid, UBS AG, Financial Services Group, Zürich

'Intercultural Competence is the fundamental acceptance of people who are different to oneself outside one's own culture/the ability to interact with them in a genuinely constructive manner which is free of negative attitude (e.g. prejudice, defensiveness, apathy, aggression, etc.)/the ability to create a synthesis, something which is neither 'mine' nor 'yours', but which is genuinely new and would not have been possible had we not combined our different backgrounds and approaches.'


Earley (2006)

'Intercultural Competence is the abandonment of the values-based typology of culture. Cultural differences though is a construct called 'cultural intelligence' which 'focuses on understanding an individual's capacity to adapt to varying cultural settings based on facets of cognitive and meta-cognitive processing, motivational mechanisms, and behavioural adaptation'.'

Salto Youth

If we search for the definition of Intercultural Competence, we find a whole variety of answers – the term is defined differently by experts on Intercultural Communication, consultants or by Intercultural Education theorists. The definition also varies across countries and regions of the World. Given this reality, we might be asking: Is there a need to redefine what seems to be well defined already? 


Changes that have occurred in society in the last decades and, in particular, trends that will shape Europe in the next ten years were the driving forces of a long-term project started by SALTO Cultural Diversity. The goal of the project was to redefine and review the concept and practice of Intercultural Competence Development in youth work at European level, in order to be able to provide more adequate support to youth workers and youth leaders in the future.

http://www.salto-youth.net/rc/cultural-diversity/

http://www.salto-youth.net/downloads/toolbox_tool_download-file-959/Tips%20for%20Effective%20Transmission.pdf

http://www.salto-youth.net/downloads/4-17-1160/Booklet.pdf

http://www.salto-youth.net/downloads/4-17-1462/quality%20projects.pdf