Cultural Awareness In Australia

1 Introduction

Cultural awareness can be defined as one’s understanding of their own differences in attitudes and values compared to someone from an alternate country or background (Dictionary, CE). Understanding cultural awareness is a key component in professional engineering practice, especially within Australia due to the diverse number of cultures present in Australia. Being a very multi-cultural society, professional, modern day engineers are expected to understand the differences between cultures, and are expected to know how to respectfully and ethically approach the project at hand. In addition to this, engineers should apply themselves in a way that adheres to the Institute of Engineers Australia Code of Ethics. Cultural awareness,

Cultural awareness is the recognition and awareness of the variables in one’s personality and way of life that may be influenced by their culture. Another way of putting this is the identification of their cultural identity (Fong, Catagnus, Brodhead, Quigley & Field, 2016). Culture can influence decisions, verbal behavior, behavioral patterns, education and many other aspects depending on the culture. In professional engineering, the identification of the various cultural identities is crucial to the success of many projects. For example, whilst working with Indigenous Australians, it is important for an engineer to understand that they are very spiritual people that live off the land. This means that they have great respect for the land that they live on. Being aware of this aspect of their culture could completely change the approach when developing and proposing an engineering solution. Hence why engineers must acknowledge and constantly develop their cultural awareness skills throughout their professional careers. Doing so will result in the development of culturally appropriate

They are generally agricultural communities that grow and harvest crops like rice. The Cambodian people generally continue to use traditional methods, not only in farming but in the way that the live their day to day lives (Ebihara, Mortland, Ledgerwood, 1994). This proves difficult when proposing engineering solutions where the introduction of new technology is required. With this knowledge that the prefer to practice what they know, a successful engineering solution should utilise the equipment that they are familiar with as much as possible, and adapt existing methods instead of introducing new