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What Makes an Effective Intercultural Learning Tool?

(Cultural Detective meets all these criteria)

 

Intercultural Criteria

  1. Integrates perceiving, understanding, doing and personalizing
  2. Uses specific situations (not generalized stereotypes)
  3. Allows for individual differences and multiple cultural influences (the intersection of personality and culture, and the recognition that we are each products of multiple cultural influences)
  4. Demonstrates that words and actions can have varied intentions
  5. Illustrates that values influence but do not predict behavior
  6. Shows that values overlap with one another forming an interactive system; they are not discreet and separate
  7. Contrasts “ideal” and “real” culture
  8. Enables informed choice of how to respond/behave, rather than habitual or acculturated behavior

 

Accelerated Learning Criteria

  1. Introduces key competencies early
  2. Creates an “ah-hah”
  3. Invites high level of interaction (with the content, with the facilitator, and with one another)
  4. Supports the recognition of hindering beliefs and a shift in limiting mental models
  5. Uses a multi-sensory approach
  6. Builds on learner’s “known” experience
  7. Relevant to learners and their world—high level of identification
  8. (Co-)developed and/or discovered by the learner

©2004 Dianne Hofner Saphiere and Gail Heidenhain

For links to accelerated learning sites, click here.