Defining Culture, Diversity, and Cultural Competence

Lesson 1 – Defining Culture, Diversity, and Cultural Competence

Familiarize yourself with the fundamental concepts of this course by going step-by-step through the materials below. You are responsible for your own learning process in the Lessons, and must take careful notes and be sure you clearly understand the concepts so you will be able to apply them in the graded Tasks.

STEP 1: CULTURE

Review the following materials on culture. Take careful notes. After watching the videos, type up a clear definition of culture, based on the videos, that you can use and refer to during th

STEP 2: DIVERSITY

Watch the following video on diversity. Take careful notes. Pay attention to the different types of diversity. After watching the video, type up a clear definition of diversity, based on the video, that you can use and refer to during this course.

STEP 3: CULTURAL COMPETENCE

Note that the terms “cultural competence,” “cultural intelligence,” and “cross-cultural competency” are often used interchangeably. Watch the following videos on cultural competence. Take careful notes, especially on the skills and techniques of cultural competence–you will need to learn these! After watching the video, type up a clear definition of cultural competence and a list of associated skills, based on the videos, you can use and refer to during this course.

TEP 4: ARCHIVE WHAT YOU LEARNED

Save your notes and definitions in a Word document, creating the first entry of a “journal” you will keep over the course of the term, to apply to your assignments in this course and to your personal and professional life beyond this course.

SAMPLE SOLUTION

Culture refers to the languages, beliefs, knowledge, customs, collective identities, arts, and memories that society develops to make their social settings meaningful (Zimmermann, 2017). Culture manifests itself in the way individuals and groups communicate through social practices, narratives, values, ideologies, values, tastes, norms, social categorizations, and collective representations. A primary characteristic of culture is that it changes with time and is continuously in motion making it challenging to describe any single culture using only one definition. Culture is an essential component of individuals’ lives because it influences their perspectives, values, loyalties, hopes, fears, and insecurities. On the other hand, diversity refers to the attributes that make individuals different from one another (Hudson Jr, 2014). These characteristics include gender, color, gender, race, nationality, ethnicity, society, and family that a person grew up with. However, individuals can modify their diversity through other factors including work experience, religion, marital status, income, language, geographical location, sexual identity, personality, political ideals among others. Diversity is essential since it integrates the experiences…