Culture Competence
Culture is the beliefs, values, behavior, and material objects that constitute a people's way of life. Cultural competence is a developmental process that evolves over an extended period (National Center for Cultural Competence, 2015). This involves understanding the difference in cultures and the variables within the culture, such as: Age, beliefs, and race, gender etc. Developing cultural competence is complicated and requires continual self-assessment or non-stop growth of your cultural knowledge. It evolves over time, opening your eyes about your own culture as well as others. (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, 2004).
In order to effectively be aware of cultural differences, I believe you have to be aware
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Cultural relativism was, in part, a response in conformity with Western ethnocentrism. (Boundless, 2016).
There are 5 elements of culture:
• Symbols - Anything that carries particular meaning recognized by people who share the same culture
• Language - System of symbols that allows people to communicate with one
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If you speak in a high or low tone it can be perceived differently between certain cultures. Speaking can be formal and informal, this can gauge if everyone is equal in the conversation or not.
The ability to communicate effectively and multi-culturally needs to be thoroughly understood, it helps build business and personal relationships. Different cultures and backgrounds cause people to behave differently.
An Introduction starts with your name and a firm handshake in the United States. However, in Australia if you are a woman you offer your hand first to the man and women do not shake another woman’s hand. Smiling seems like something everyone would do, well that is not so. In the United States we smile and see it as a sign of acknowledgement and respect. Japanese is the complete opposite, they believe in suppressing the emotions. They connect with the eyes not the mouth when expressing emotions (Translate Media,
Cultural Competence is a substantiated body of knowledge based of cultural “values held by a particular cultural group and the ability to cohesively adapt to individualized skills that fit the cultural context, thus, increasing relationships between employees, managements, and stakeholders, including patience and research subjects. Cultural competency is critical to reducing disparities and improving access to high-quality services, respectful of and responsive to the needs of diverse working conditions and individualized characteristics. The main focus emphasizes the understanding of cultural competence provide internal resources with skills and perceptions to thoroughly comprehend ones cultural attitude, increase the ability to multicultural diversity, and the ability to effectively interact with other cultures (Shelley Taylor, 2006, pp. 382-383), which is absent within the case study of Joe and Jill. Essentially speaking, principles of cultural competence are acknowledgement to the importance of culture in people's lives, respect for cultural differences, an...
“Cultural competence is the ability to engage in actions or create conditions that maximize the optimal development of client and client systems” (Sue & Sue, 2013, p. 49). Multicultural competence includes a counselor to be aware of his or her biases, knowledge of the culture they are evaluating, and skills to evaluate a client with various backgrounds (Sue & Sue, 2013). Client assessment involves gathering information pertaining to the client’s condition. Making a culturally responsive diagnosis involves using the DSM-IV-TR axis (Hays, 2008). Following the axis backwards is ideal to discovering the client’s diagnosis, understanding the client’s ADDRESSING outline will help to come to a closer resolution for a diagnosis.
Let’s begin with what is the Culture? It is defined as “the shared knowledge and schemes created by a set of people for perceiving, interpreting, expressing, and responding to the social realities around them" Lederach, J.P. (1995). Now let’s understand what cultural competence is. It can be defined as “the ability to honor and respect the beliefs, language, interpersonal styles, and behaviors of individuals and families receiving services, as well as staff who are
After analyzing cultural relativism over the semester, I have come to the conclusion that cultural relativism under anthropological analysis defines every single culture with some aspect of worth as viewed by an individual within that society. Franz Boas, termed the “Father of American Anthropology”, first introduced the concept of cultural relativism. He wanted people to understand the way certain cultures conditioned people to interact with the world around them, which created a necessity to understand the culture being studied. In my words, cultural relativism is the concept that cultures should be viewed from the people among that culture. When studied by anthropologists, cultural relativism is employed to give all cultures an equal
Cultural competence has to do with one’s culture. Culture affects among other factors, how children are raised, how families communicate, what is considered normal or abnormal, ways of coping with issues, the way we dress, when and where we seek medical treatment, and so forth. I should know because I come from a very cultural home where it is considered bad to talk to a male doctor about anything gynecological.
The Challenge of Culture Relativism written by James Rachels argues the downsides and upsides to the idea of Cultural Relativism. This is the idea of Cultural Relativism: the principle that an individual human 's beliefs and activities should be understood by others in terms of that individual 's own culture. It was established as axiomatic in anthropological research by Franz Boas in the first few decades of the 20th century and later popularized by his students.
Culturally competent care is care that respects diversity in the patient population, and cultural factors that affect health and health care, such as language, communication styles, attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs. The national CLAS Standards provide the blueprint to implement such appropriate services to improve health care in the United States. The standards cover many areas, such as leadership, workforce, governance; communication and language assistance; organizational engagement, continuous improvement, and accountability. (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 2014).
Americans try to avoid miscommunication by being very clear and direct about what they are trying to say (Western Washington University, 2011). In typical day-to-day social interactions, people in the U.S. tend to be less formal and polite and are more physical than the Japanese (AngloINFO, 2014).
With the current change in demographics throughout the workforce, organizations are feeling the effects of a larger percentage of baby boomers retiring and a large percentage of millennial new entrants. The words used to describe millennial employees, “spoiled, trophy kids, ambitious”, seem to be as everlasting as the constructive and negative perspectives attached to them. Many can debate on the entitlement of these employees within an organization, how these employees can be groomed and managed to better fit the organization, the positive and negative attributes they bring into the workplace, and how the preceding can benefit or derail the effectiveness of an organization. Nonetheless, a harder debate, comes about in denying that organizations must adjust to and integrate these employees into the workforce.
Cultural proficiency is seeing the difference and responding effectively in a variety of environments. Learning about organizational and individual culture, in which one can effectively interact in a variety of cultural environments (p. 3). In simple terms in which educators are not only able to effectively work with diverse populations, but also believe that diversity adds positive value to the educational enterprise (Landa, 2011, p. 12).
Today’s management in the workforce is composed of all types of people verses thirty years ago when white males held a majority of upper-management positions in companies. These positions are now held by a mixture of ethnic back grounds and women who hold just as many if not more management positions then men. Just by looking at the changes in management demographics shows how important it is for people to understand cultural competency in the workplace. Dr. Roosevelt Thomas Jr. (1999) stated, “Diversity is the collective mixture of whomever we have in our workforce characterized by their differences and similarities” (p.11). Managers and supervisors must understand the characteristics of a diversity mature individual; they also need to be able to articulate the differences between affirmative action, managing diversity, understanding and valuing diversity to build skills that transforms awareness into productive and supportive workplace behaviors.
When individuals or groups from different cultures communicate, this process is called intercultural communication. The transaction process of listening and responding to people from different cultural backgrounds can be challenging. The greater the difference in culture between two people, the greater the potential of misunderstanding and mistrust. Misunderstanding and miscommunication occur between people from different cultures because of different coding rules and cultural norms, which play a major role in shaping the patterns of interaction (Jandt, 2012).
Anthropologists define the term culture in a variety of ways, but there are certain shared features of the definition that virtually all anthropologists agree on. Culture is a shared, socially transmitted knowledge and behavior. The key features of this definition of culture are as follows. 1) Culture is shared among the members of that particular society or group. Thus, people share a common cultural identity, meaning that they recognize themselves and their culture's traditions as distinct from other people and other traditions. 2) Culture is socially transmitted from others while growing up in a certain environment, group, or society. The transmission of cultural knowledge to the next generation by means of social learning is referred to as enculturation or socialization. 3) Culture profoundly affects the knowledge, actions, and feelings of the people in that particular society or group. This concept is often referred to as cultural knowledge that leads to behavior that is meaningful to others and adaptive to the natural and social environment of that particular culture.
Lack of proper communication skills in diverse workplace can cause many discrepancies among co-workers. People live in an increasingly complex world. Effective communication between fellow co-workers from different cultural backgrounds ensures a very successful organization. As we already know in today’s workplace it is very important to be able to communicate with our fellow’s co-workers.
When evaluating myself on the Cultural Proficiency continuum, I’d place myself at “Cultural Competence” part on the continuum. This evaluation takes into account my experiences and practices while working in various schools and interacting with students of varied cultures, needs and ability levels as both a teacher and a learner. An effective educator is continually maintaining this dual role of teacher and life-long student in order to not grow stagnant within the classroom; this dynamic allows for growth along the continuum toward maintaining cultural proficiency.