As part of the Cultural Competence Cluster of the Cert 3, Kate needs to be able to develop cultural competence in herself and in the children.
Cultural competence is being able to understand, communicate with and effectively interact with people across cultures.
Cultural competence includes:
being aware of your own view of the world and cultural identity;
developing positive attitudes towards cultural differences;
gaining knowledge of different cultural practices and world views.
Cultural competence is important when working in early childhood education because being able to build relationships with and include children and families from all cultures will help those children and families to feel like they belong. This is probably the main aim of early childhood education because it forms the foundation of all learning and wellbeing.
The first step towards developing cultural competence is understanding your own cultural identity. This means identifying significant events in your own family background or history that have influenced your current values, beliefs and attitudes. Your environment can also influence your cultural identity.
Kate has done a couple of exercises to understand her own cultural identity more.
The first was a Virtual Backpack exercise we did back in 2019, where Kate reflected on what has made her the person she is today. This exercise helped Kate to understand what children might carry with them in their own virtual backpack.
Then in Term 2, 2020 we started off our Cultural Competency Project on India with some exploration of Kate's Greek Cultural Identity. We saw that there were some links between Kate's culture and Indian culture even thought they are completely different.
A few things the two cultures have in common are:
the importance of festivals/special occasions such as weddings
the importance of family
the importance of food and feasts (with family)
the place of music and dancing
the importance of maintaining traditions.
Kate reflected on the whiteboard on her Greek Culture:
Kate will need to reflect further on her cultural identity and what this has meant in terms of her interactions and relationships with people from other cultures.
TASK 1: With your mum/coach think about and answer these questions:
Do you know any people from different cultures? Pick one person.
Who do you know?
Where are they from?
What did you think when you first met them?
Was there anything about them you did not understand or you thought was a bit weird?
What was different about them compared to you?
What do you think now about this person?
Has your view changed? Tell us about that.
What would you like to learn more about this person?
Have you ever met an Aboriginal person?
What do you think about Aboriginal people?
What do you know about Aboriginal people?
What would you like to learn about Aboriginal people?
Write down all your answers.
Task 2: Were there things you would like to learn about the first person you picked and the Aboriginal people? It is time to research! Research can be done in more ways than just googling. You can talk to people, watch videos of people, watch movies. Contact the person you picked first and ask them the questions you wanted to ask. You can talk to them on the phone or write them a letter. Keep a note of their answers.
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