CTS Learning's List: Cross-Cultural Competence

• • 
    Tidbits
    
    
    'In general, the informants’ comments regarding this issue fell into four categories that repeatedly surfaced in the interviews are: (a) general cultural and social expectations, (b) teaching and learning expectations, (c) differences in the use of language and symbols, and (d) technological infrastructure and familiarity.'
    
    'Three barriers to being more culturally responsive emerged from the analysis of data: (a) an over emphasis on content development as the center of practice and under emphasis on context and learner experience, (b) a relative lack of evaluation in real-world practice, and (c) the creation of less than ideal roles that instructional designers assume in the larger organizational structures involved.'
    
    'Professionals often seem to embed the application of a principle in their own cultural setting with the principle itself, and so when their application of the principle seems difficult or impossible in a new context, instructional designers might mistakenly consider the principle itself as inapplicable.'
• • Questions
    
    '• How can each of the proposed categories of learner differences be expanded, and how can we better measure where learners stand in relation to each of the key cultural variables?
    • What changes in models and methods are needed to facilitate more sensitivity and responsiveness to cultural differences, overcoming the three traditional barriers identified in this research? What else can be done to move towards overcoming these barriers?
    • What is the influence of Western culture on limitations in the field of IDT as a whole? How should the education of instructional designers be changed? What is the best way to approach the restructuring of organizations and re-envisioning of the role of instructional designers in order to be more culturally responsive and helpful?
    • Are there indeed universal principles for instructional design (which can be separated from their particular application)? If so, what exactly are all these principles, and how can they best be tested and utilized?
    • What is the process by which learners change and adapt to instructional techniques and approaches that are foreign to them—and how can we help to bridge the gaps more effectively? • How can we find more ways to prove that being culturally responsive is worth it in the long run (for both financial and ethical reasons)?'

• Abstract 

   

  The amount of resources being poured by Western universities, companies, and governments into creating educational content  to be exported (via the Internet) to other cultures is astounding. Those assigned to accomplish this task are left with the  great challenge of meeting the needs of learners who come from cultures that are foreign to them, and who often have very  different abilities and expectations than originally assumed. This study explores the cultural competence in the lived experience  of 12 professionals who have been involved with such efforts. Often they have had to question their assumptions, recognizing  flaws in their own thinking and in the organizations that support them, and tried to alter their practice accordingly. Their  awareness of cultural differences and the importance and impact of these differences in their practice will be discussed. 

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