What Does It Mean to Be Culturally Competent

This calendar week on We Hear You, Rhonda Livingstone, ACECQA'due south National Instruction Leader, writes most cultural competence.

Cultural competence is well-nigh our will and deportment to build understanding between people, to be respectful and open up to dissimilar cultural perspectives, strengthen cultural security and work towards equality in opportunity. Human relationship edifice is fundamental to cultural competence and is based on the foundations of understanding each other's expectations and attitudes, and later on building on the force of each other'south knowledge, using a wide range of customs members and resources to build on their understandings.[1]

We accept known for a long time nearly the importance of respecting diversity and embedding a range of cultures in early on babyhood education and intendance programs.  However the term, cultural competence, is relatively new to many working in the didactics and intendance sector, having been introduced in the Early Years Learning Framework for Australia and the Framework for School Age Care.

Over the past two or three decades we accept endeavoured to challenge and address injustice, racism, exclusion and inequity through legislation, awareness raising, rights pedagogy and an anti-bias curriculum. Cultural competence reinforces and builds on this work.

So what does cultural competence hateful and why is it so important for children to accept their culture and cultural backgrounds acknowledged, respected and valued?

Underlying cultural competence are the principles of trust, respect for diversity, equity, fairness, and social justice… Culture is the key building block of identity and the evolution of a strong cultural identity is essential to children'southward good for you sense of who they are and where they belong.[2]

Information technology is more than being respectful of the cultures represented in the service or even the customs. It is much more than awareness of cultural differences, more than knowledge of the customs and values of those different to our ain.

Cultural competence is the ability to understand, communicate with and effectively interact with people across cultures. Cultural competence encompasses:

• being aware of 1'due south own world view
• developing positive attitudes towards cultural differences
• gaining noesis of different cultural practices and world views
• developing skills for communication and interaction across cultures.[3]

Supporting this view, the Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care (SNAICC) identifies that cultural proficiency "requires more than becoming culturally aware or practising tolerance". Rather, information technology is the ability to "identify and challenge one'due south ain cultural assumptions, values and beliefs, and to make a commitment to communicating at the cultural interface".[4]

Links with the Learning Frameworks

Cultural competence is a cardinal practice in the learning frameworks, and the notion of cultural competence is embedded throughout. For case, principles within the learning frameworks relevant to cultural competence include fostering secure, respectful and reciprocal relationships, partnerships, loftier expectations and equity and respect for diversity.

Issues of respecting and valuing diversity and culture are embedded in the Being, Belonging, Becoming themes of the Early on Years Learning Framework. This framework acknowledges in that location are many ways of living, being and of knowing. Children are built-in belonging to a civilization, which is not only influenced past traditional practices, heritage and bequeathed cognition, but also by the experiences, values and behavior of individual families and communities. Respecting variety ways, within the curriculum, valuing and reflecting the practices, values and beliefs of families.

At that place are links to cultural competence in Learning Outcome two – Children are connected with and contribute to their globe, including:

• children develop a sense of belonging to groups and communities and  an understanding of the reciprocal rights and responsibilities necessary for active community participation
• children respond to diversity with respect
• children get aware of fairness
• children become socially responsible and bear witness respect for the surroundings.

It is besides important to remember that a guiding principle of the Teaching and Care Services National Law is that Commonwealth of australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures are valued.

What does cultural competence look like in practice?

Educators who are culturally competent respect multiple cultural means of knowing, seeing and living, gloat the benefits of variety and have an ability to empathize and honour differences. Educators too seek to promote children's cultural competence.

In applied terms, it is a never ending journey involving critical reflection, of learning to understand how people perceive the world and participating in different systems of shared knowledge.

Cultural competence is not static, and our level of cultural competence changes in response to new situations, experiences and relationships. The three elements of cultural competence are:

• attitudes
• skills
• cognition

These are of import at 3 levels:

1. private level – the noesis, skills, values, attitudes and behaviours of individuals
2. service level – management and operational frameworks and practices, expectations, including policies, procedures, vision statements and the voices of children, families and customs
3. the broader system level – how services relate to and respect the residual of the community, agencies, Elders, local community protocols.

While there is no checklist to tick off to identify culturally competent educators, nosotros tin can start to build a film of the attitudes, skills and knowledge required. For example, educators who respect variety and are culturally competent:

• accept an agreement of, and honour, the histories, cultures, languages, traditions, child rearing practices
• value children'south dissimilar capacities and abilities
• respect differences in families' dwelling lives
• recognise that diversity contributes to the richness of our society and provides a valid prove base about ways of knowing
• demonstrate an ongoing commitment to developing their own cultural competence in a 2-manner process with families and communities
• promote greater agreement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ways of knowing and existence
• teach, role-model and encourage cultural competence in children, recognising that this is crucial to ensuring children have a sense of potent cultural identity and belonging
• appoint in ongoing reflection relating to their cultural competence and how they build children'due south cultural competence.

Ongoing reflection essential for the learning journey

A learning journeying of cultural competence occurs when ongoing reflection and environmental feedback involves and supports educators to motility along their culturally competent learning journey. The post-obit diagram from the Educators' Guide to the Early Years Learning Framework (p26) is a useful tool to share with teams, to hash out and to identify how individuals are progressing on their learning journey.

In that location are also many reflective questions in the Guide and Learning Frameworks to provoke discussion and reflection. For example:

• Who is advantaged when I piece of work in this fashion? Who is disadvantaged?
• What does cultural competence mean in your practice, for children, family, community and educators?
• What do you know well-nigh the language/s that the children bring with them?

And the case study[5] of a project undertaken past educators to develop processes that value and use the expertise of Aboriginal people in local communities may offer some suggestions for starting like projects.

[1]Educators' Guide to the Early Years Learning Framework p21 Educators' Guide to the Framework for School Age Care, p57

[2]Educators' Guide to the Early Years Learning Framework p23

[three]Framework for School Age Care in Commonwealth of australia p15 Early on Years Learning Framework p16

[4]SNAICC 2012 Consultation Overview on Cultural Competence in Early on Babyhood Instruction and Care Services

[5] Early Years Learning Framework in Activeness p 27

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Source: https://wehearyou.acecqa.gov.au/2014/07/10/what-does-it-mean-to-be-culturally-competent/

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