1. Parks & Recreation Cultural Diversity: Developing Cross-Cultural Understanding and Avoiding Culture Clash Tuesday, Nov. 21st, :40-11:40am by
Vanessa Avery, PhD
Transcendence Education, Inc.

2. Agenda Key Learning Outcomes Warm-Up Exercise and Starting Ideas
Introduction to Culture
Focus on Cultural Diversity: Layers of Culture
Visible Differences
Invisible Differences
Quick Cases
Getting to Cultural Proficiency
Final Words

3. Key Learning Outcomes
Ability to understand and think about how we think about culture
Begin to discern how culture affects our decisions and our interactions
Define the levels of cultural competence and identify some ways to move towards cultural proficiency

4. Warm-up exercise

5. Assumptions or Conclusions
Ladder of Inference
Actions/Being ↑
Beliefs
Assumptions or Conclusions
Meaning
Selective Perception
Real Data & Experience
*The “Ladder of Inference” is adapted from Peter Senge’s “The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization.” This is a modification of his original design.

6. Affected Reality
Meanings
Experience
Actions/Being

7. How Others See Americans

8. What is Culture?

9. Culture: Some Ideas to Start
Culture is about the shared ways groups of people understand and interpret the world.
Example: Dining at McDonalds is a show of status in Moscow whereas it is a fast meal for a fast buck in New York (or Harford!)
Culture is the way in which a group of people solves problems.
Culture is our “map” of the world– it is what allows us to navigate life.

10. Culture: Some Ideas to Start
Culture is like water to a fish. The fish doesn’t know it’s wet until it jumps out of the water.
Culture is the context inside which we live, but we are rarely aware of it until we “jump out of the water”.
How might cultural characteristics affect what people want out of parks, recreation, and leisure activities?
Our workplaces and communities are steadily more culturally diverse-- How do we relate effectively?
To most effectively answer these questions, one must first understand one’s own cultural assumptions and values.

11. Artifacts and Products
Layers of Culture
Artifacts and Products
Norms and Values
Basic Assumptions
Implicit

12. How Cultures Differ Examples of Culturally Impacted Characteristics:
Personal space
Frequency of eye contact
Methods and styles of building rapport and relationships
Perceptions of authority
Use of hand gestures
Degree of directness in communication
Display of emotions
Style of greeting

13. The Basis of Cultural Differences

14. Individual vs. Collective

15. Universalism vs. Particularism

16. Achievement vs. Ascription

17. Uncertainty Avoidance

18. Neutral vs. Emotional

19. Attitudes toward time

20. Specific vs. Diffuses

21. Attitude Toward the Environment

22. Attitudes toward disclosing information or “truth-telling”

23. Situation One: The Car Accident
You are riding in a car driven by a close friend. He hits a pedestrian. You know he was going at least 35 miles per hour in an area of the city where the maximum allowed speed is 20 miles per hour. There are no witnesses. His lawyer says that if you testify under oath that he was only driving 20 miles an hour, it may save him from serious consequences.

24. Situation Two: The Magazine Review
You are a journalist for a leisure magazine who writes a monthly review of new recreational programs and facilities. A close friend of yours has sunk all her savings into a new recreational facility. You have visited there and observed some of the programming and offerings and you really think the facility is no good.

25. Situation Three: The Group and the Individual
A new integrated Information System was installed in your organization. There was a defect in the installation. It was caused by negligence of one of the members of the IT team. Responsibility for this mistake can be carried in various ways.

26. High Context and Low Context
Spanish
Italian
Greek
Arab
English
Vietnamese
North American
Japanese
Scandinavian
Korean
Swiss
Chinese
German
Low Context
Get down to business first
Value expertise and performance
Agreement by specific, legalistic contract
Negotiations as efficient as possible
High Context
Establish social trust first
Value personal relations and goodwill
Agreement by general trust
Negotiations slow and ritualistic

27. Cultural Synergy

28. Attaining Cultural Proficiency

29. The Cultural Competence Continuum
Positive
Cultural Proficiency
Cultural Competence
Cultural Precompetence
Cultural Blindness
Negative
Cultural Incapacity
Cultural Destructiveness

30. The Cultural Competence Continuum
Cultural Destructiveness: forced assimilation, subjugation, rights and privileges for dominant groups only
Cultural Incapacity: racism, maintain stereotypes, unfair hiring practices
Cultural Blindness: differences ignored, “treat everyone the same”, only meet needs of dominant groups
Cultural Pre-competence: explore cultural issues, are committed, assess needs of organization and individuals
Cultural Competence: recognize individual and cultural differences, seek advice from diverse groups, hire culturally unbiased staff
Cultural Proficiency: implement changes to improve services based upon cultural needs, do research and teach
Hayes, Cultural Competence Continuum, 1993 and Terry Cross Cultural Competency Continuum.

31. Four Tiers of Knowledge for Proficiency
Develop self-awareness of cultural values and assumptions;
How do cultural values and assumptions influence relationships and interactions;
Learn skills to engage in meaningful dialogue about these influences; and
Apply through experiences with diverse populations.

32. Final Words Peace cannot exist without justice, justice
cannot exist without fairness, fairness
cannot exist without development,
development cannot exist without
democracy, democracy cannot exist without
respect for the identity and worth of cultures
and peoples.
--Rigoberta Menchú Tum
(Guatemalan Indigenous Rights Activist, 1990 UNESCO Prize for Peace Education, 1992 Nobel Peace Prize Winner; b. 1952)