Cultural Competency

[Guest guest]

Hi Sherri,

Questions to assess what students learn from a visit to Mexico, I believe, will

hinge on what forms of cultural competency you are building. Will this be

working with immigrants following graduation, or more generally anyone who

speaks Spanish? If either one or both, please keep in mind [here I’m singing to

one of the preachers], central Mexico is but one cultural area from which

immigrants originate, and Spanish is spoken and written in many forms.

More than likely, you have reviewed CLAS (Cultural and Language Appropriate

Standards) that covers issues of reducing health disparities in medical

facilities and human service agencies, particularly if they receive federal

funding. These standards (usually fourteen) are broken down into what I view as

three categories of interaction.

What I would suggest is that you develop a plan with students, almost like a

contract, on what they expect to gain from the experience, such as appreciation

for different lifestyles or skills in negotiating communication, where neither

party is fully familiar with language-culture. While there, in consultation

with yourself and associates, students can keep a diary or other form of self-

reflection, such as how community interactions may assist better provision of

dental care in the village clinic. A diary documents how students are able to

increase awareness of internal/external responses to cultural differences and

basic commonalities that make us human. They might do this diary exercise for a

week upon return, to continue improving their awareness of basic communication

processes.

“Assessment” might be objective and/or subjective. Objective measures might be

formal questions for which I’ll let other list-serve members make suggestions.

The subjective approach might incorporate a before/after exercise in which

students critique one or more vignettes that illustrate sloppy communication in

a cross-cultural encounter. There are texts on cross-cultural communication;

even the Web might have such vignettes. Students prepare a “before” response

(written) before going to Mexico (collect them), and they would amplify and

improve responses upon return to the states. “After” responses could be written

or oral, or both. If oral, have students discuss each other’s response.

A companion exercise would be to have students create a vignette on slopping

communication or cross-cultural misunderstanding, upon their return, similar to

the one they used before/after working in Mexico. This would intensify skills

in conceptualizing what makes one culturally competent by working out details

for the opposite.

Sounds like you have a good exercise in cross-cultural communication experience

planned for the students. Unusual to hear, I recognize, someone say “sounds

like” when they’ve “read” your request, but that’s the nature of communication.

V Bletzer