Author: Yujue Tang

Level of cultural competence

The question at moment: How can I measure people’s level of cultural competence?

I am thinking about if I can create an intervention to test it.

Secondary research:

The Four Levels of Cultural Awareness

https://www2.pacific.edu/sis/culture/pub/1.6.2-_the_four_level_of_cul.htm

I. Unconscious incompetence 

This has also been called the state of blissful ignorance. At this stage, you are unaware of cultural differences. It does not occur to you that you may be making cultural mistakes or that you may be misinterpreting much of the behavior going on around you. You have no reason not to trust your instincts. 

II. Conscious incompetence

You now realize that differences exist between the way you and the local people behave, though you understand very little about what these differences are, how numerous they might be, or how deep they might go. You know there’s a problem here, but you’re not sure about the size of it. You’re not so sure of your instincts anymore, and you realize that there are some things you don’t understand. You may start to worry about how hard it’s going to be to figure these people out. 

III. Conscious competence

You know cultural differences exist, you know what some of these differences are, and you try to adjust your own behavior accordingly. It doesn’t come naturally yet—you have to make a conscious effort to behave in culturally appropriate ways—but you are much more aware of how your behavior is coming across to the local people. You are in the process of replacing old instincts with new ones. You know now that you will be able to figure these people out if you can remain objective. 

IV. Unconscious competence

You no longer have to think about what you’re doing in order to do the right thing. Culturally appropriate behavior is now second nature to you; you can trust your instincts because they have been reconditioned by the new culture. It takes little effort now for you to be culturally sensitive.

Reflection

During the research on this project, I had conversations with some people about cultural competence. However, I found not everyone had a concept of cultural competence in their mind and I had to explain what cultural competence is. They may have cultural competence, but they didn’t realise it is cultural competence. I also asked the staff of an education agency in China. Their main business is providing help for students who are preparing to study abroad. They have online tutoring to help students after arriving abroad, but they didn’t provide any service specialized in cultural competence. Based on this experience, I realised people may lack awareness of cultural competence.

Then I did some research about experts’ methods of developing cultural competence and the healthcare profession has been promoting cultural competence.

E-Learning for Healthcare organisation has the cultural competence e-learning tool which is made up of three 20–30-minute learning session to support clinicians in the NHS to gain knowledge and understanding of the issues around culture and health.  

I played a short part of learning session to 5 of my target audience. I got some feedback that the video is quite boring for them even it is animation. For this reason, I am planning to find a more interesting way that can increase people’s awareness and develop their cultural competence. 

Experts’ method of developing cultural competence

Cultural competence has been promoting in many professions such as the healthcare profession and education. I did some research to find what are their method to develop cultural competence.

1.An Education Agency in China

From the interview, I found this agency doesn’t provide any service specialised in cultural competence. However, they will provide help by online tutoring with students after arriving abroad.

2.e-Learning for Healthcare (organisation)

They provide cultural competence programme which is a e-learning package to support health professional in developing cultural competence.

Cultural Competence
Screenshoot of e-learning session

“The first session aims to describe what is meant by ‘culture’ and why it is important for health professionals to be aware of how this can impact health.

The second session describes cultural competence and its importance for health professionals working across cross-cultural situations.

This session looks at the importance of cultural competence in the context of maternity care and aims to help health care professionals support and meet the needs of a changing population” (e-LfH 2021).

Refection of Intervention 4

My intervention 4 was designed to help people build their self-awareness by understanding their own cultural. In this intervention, I asked 6 people if they have a meaningful object in their family which was passed down from elders and then explain the story behind it. However, two of these participants said they do not have something like that in their family and other four participants provided their meaningful objects.

Though the participants are from China, they are from different part of China and have different local culture. The meaningful objects from those four participants are different and all of them can represent Chinese culture. From their feedback, they gained more awareness of their family culture when they tried to get the information and story behind the objects.

From this intervention, I got the idea of developing people’s self-awareness but there are some limitations of this intervention. First, not everyone has or likes to talk about the meaningful objects in their family. This should be considered in my future research. In addition, I need to find more people from different country and with different background so that I can get more result with less bias.

Plan of August

Based on the feedback from my tutor today, I make this plan to develop my project in August.

  1. Ask more people from different countries to participate in Intervention 4.
  2. Write a reflection of Intervention 4.
  3. Find more people who are living abroad and ask their experiences in a foreign country, what level of their culture competence, if they can share their way to develop culture competence.
  4. Get contact with professionals who have done similar work about culture .