Multi Cultural Awareness

MULTI CULTURAL AWARENESS AIM
To develop your skills in culture, diversity and multicultural society.
CONTENTS
There are eight lessons in this module as follows:
1. Cultural diversity
2. Cultural self-awareness
3. Prejudice and racism
4. Working with culturally different clients
5. Barriers to effective multi-cultural relationships
6. Developing cultural competence
7. Multicultural mental health issues
8. Shortcomings of Contemporary Counselling Theories and Future Developments
AIMS

• Develop an awareness and appreciation of cultural diversity;
• Explain the cultural awareness of the self through verbal and non-verbal means;
• Explain the origins and influences of prejudice and racism;
• Explain the impact of culture when working with culturally different clients;
• Explain bias toward and barriers against effective multi-cultural relationships;
• Explain the fundamentals of developing and implementing cultural competence;
• Describe multi-cultural attitudes toward mental health issues.

DURATION   100 hours
WHAT YOU WILL DO IN THIS COURSE

• Learn what is meant by the term 'culture', and different cultural groups;
• Discuss 'cultural diversity' and identify problems associated with it;
• Discuss 'intra-cultural' and 'inter-cultural' contact to managing cultural diversity;
• Identify reasons that people and groups make intercultural contact;
• Explore how we communicate non-verbally;
• Identify ways (verbal and non-verbal) that we communicate our identification to a cultural group;
• In what ways a minority culture influence a dominant culture;
• Ways that people and groups adapt to other cultures;
• Explain the term 'individualism-collectivism';
• Define
  • 'ethnocentrism'
  • 'prejudice'
  • 'racism'
  • 'stereotype'
  • 'discrimination'
• Explore the role of stereotyping by a dominant culture in perceived discrimination by an immigrant community;
• Discuss how prejudice and/or racism help a group or person feel more comfortable about other cultures;
• Define 'culture shock';
• Identify barriers to communication that exist in intercultural communication situations;
• Identify strategies to ensure effective communication with a person from another culture;
• Explore the influence of culture differences when providing helping or counselling services to clients;
• Explore ways that people from different cultures deal with psychological or communication problems such as conflict, depression, mental health etc.
  
Some Example Course Notes -
DEFINING CULTURE
Broadly speaking, culture is the system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviours, technologies and products (artefacts) that a society holds, follows, uses or produces to live in their environment, and passes on from generation to generation.
Elements of Culture
Culture can be characterised by the following four elements:
Cultural traits - how the group communicates symbolically through its products, rituals, laws, social structures, economic systems etc.
Cultural patterns - wider, interrelated patterns of behaviour and interaction in which cultural traits may take on different meanings. An example is the pattern of grieving, which may involve such traits as certain behaviours, dress, foods eaten and not eaten, ways of communicating and use of space, in ways specific to grief situations.
Transmission of knowledge - how the group teaches its young culturally approved and valued ways of behaving, thinking and perceiving. This is a key factor in the continuation of culture, for it gives cultural shape and form to human activity. The simplest example is the learning of language. All human beings have an innate capacity and tendency to learn language, but the form in which that capacity develops, the language, tone and rhythm of a person's communication are learned.
Societal structures and processes - how a group regulates, orders and limits group actions to maintain group cohesion and function. Societies represent culture in action, the everyday application of cultural traits, patterns and knowledge of a group through the group's institutions, systems and norms. These can include family structures, appropriate dress and behaviour (manners), educational processes and institutions, processes of communication (media, censorship), how a society manages the health, activities or discourses of its members, how status is defined, gained or lost, legal and economic systems, enforcement, who can marry whom, age groups and a host of other factors.
Group cohesion relies on the transmission and assimilation of knowledge of social structures and processes, and of the norms and expectations that underlie them. The process by which the individual is acculturated (learns the patterns of his/her culture) is also called socialisation. Socialisation is largely carried out by the family, upon whom the child models much of its adult behaviour, but it also occurs as an effect of the individual's wider social interactions in which the individual which behaviours are is rewarded (with approval, acceptance, inclusion, status, access to opportunities etc.) and which meet with social disapproval (punishment, ridicule, exclusion, low status, marginalisation, limited access etc.). Socialisation ensures the individual's acceptance in the group and conformity to certain social expectations, which in turn ensures that social systems and norms are maintained.

When people of diverse cultural backgrounds interact the result may be either positive or negative.  
Awareness of cultural differences is essential to the success of any multi cultural relationship. Whether business, political or personal; the first step toward success is to understand the way the other person thinks.
This course will be valuable for anyone needing to understand the psychology of different cultures and the interaction between persons from different cultural backgrounds.