Multicultural coaching programme design
Our activities are slowly taking shape in the form of a coaching programme that will enable you to become multiculturally competent!
In January of 2014, our WP2 partners and San Jose University designed and carried out a questionnaire. The collected information was analysed and summarized and distributed to partners in February for review. Following an analysis by each partner and taking into account the suggestions, our WP3 partners started working on building a multicultural coaching programme for the modern professional. They presented their initial thoughts at the 2nd kick-off meeting held in Tartu Health Care College in Estonia in April of 2014.
Based on the Case study repository designed in WP2, our WP3 partners went further with research in an effort to come up with the most relevant and up to date findings. They found that Green et al. (2005) emphasized importance of cultural literacy, cross-cultural knowledge and skill in direct practice as well as knowledge about personal limitation. Campinha-Bacote (1999) defined four major elements of cultural competence: cultural awareness, cultural knowledge, cultural skill and cultural encounters. Drabble et al. (2012) included five interrelated but distinct dimensions of diversity, two already familiar (cultural knowledge and competency) and brining something new: dynamics of power, privilege and oppression; positionality and self-reflexivity and respectful partnership. Finally, their research was rounded up by Kosteljik et al. (2006) and their description of international competencies:
- cultural empathy the ability to emphasize with the feelings, thoughts and behaviors of members of groups with a different cultural background
- open mindedness having an open and unbiased attitude towards members of a group with other cultural norms and values
- social initiative: The ability to make contact with people from other cultures
- flexibility: to switch from one mode to another, depending on what is desired in a particular or appropriate context
- self-efficacy: represents the level of confidence, which is operationalized by looking at the extent to which you ‘dare’ to lecture one hour in the English language
- emotional stability: the ability to deal with psychological stress. In an intercultural context one is indeed confronted with different cultural and interpersonal situations that must be coped with
Cultural awareness rounds it all up; it is being aware of how your own cultural background, experiences and attitudes, values and biases influence interaction with others in your environment.
These aspects have been further developed into competence/indicator charts with categories: description, occupational roles, context, tasks and activities and results. These help in defining the indicators and competences. This is necessary as they show the context in which these are performed as well as the necessary abilities, knowledge and skill sets. Criteria are also defined and serve for developing tests. Personal features are also included to steer and guide performance of an individual. All these put together serve to assist in developing the content for the programme.
You can see we are approaching this topic from all angles. Try something different, try multicultural competencies!
References:
Campinha-Bacote J. A model and instrument doe, addressing cultural competence in healthcare? Journal of Nursing Education 1999; 38: 181–84.
Drabble L, Sen S, Oppenheimer S Y. Integrating a Transcultural Perspective into the Social Work Curriculum: A descriptive and Exploratory Study. Journal of Teaching in Social work 2012; 32 (2).
Green, R.G., Kiernan-Stern, M., Balley, K., Chambers, K., Claridge, R., Jones, G., Kitson, G., Leek, S., Leisey, M., Vadas, K., & Walker, K. The Multicultural Counseling Inventory: A measure for evaluating social work student and practitioner self-perceptions of their multicultural competence. Journal of Social Work Education, 41(2), 191-208.
Kostelijk E, Julsing M, Versteeg A. Onderzoek Internationalisering docenten HanzeHogeschool Groningen. Groningen: Hanze Connect, 2006.
van der Woning René JA. International Competencies. A quantitative study to explore if lecturers of the Faculty of Social Work and the Faculty of Health are familiar with “International competencies” and use those competencies while lecturing. Birmingham City University / Birmingham, Saxion University / Enschede – Deventer. Master Thesis, 2013.