A few pieces of advice:
- Cross Cultural Development Course
- 1. I did a theme-based course around developmental issues: pregnancy and birth, attachment and loss, schooling and apprenticeship cultures, rites of passage, and marriage or pair bonding.
- This way I could re-introduce basic developmental ideas and stages first, then the cross cultural concepts. This improved the level of discourse in the classroom markedly. The same could be done in a general psych course -- covering perception, biological bases of behavior, persoanlity theories, etc. The key is not to cover too much content, but to make way for depth of learning.
- 2. I taught it as a field learning course. Students were assigned to a field setting in a culture differrent from their own for 20 hours in the semester. They wrote a short paper integrating course and field themes, found a few relevant journal articles adn reviewed them, and did a group class presentation at each site. I used a trilingual elementary school (English, Korean, Spanish), a Hebrew Day School (Orthodox), and for those with tough schedules, a volunteer experience interviewing adults in an ESL class about their childhoods. It was wonderful -- class groups taught us Korean songs, made food...the Hebrew School folks brought in some 4-5 year olds who shared Sabbath prayers with us...and all realized what a many-cultured world we live in.
- 3. After you have assembled readings and coursepaks, go have a meeting with your anthropology department. Bring some refreshments and a sense of wonder at all that they know. Lay out all the readings on a table and invite their comments. My colleagues quickly saved me a lot of work (e.g., "Schepler-Hughes has a much more moving account of that experience than the one you chose -- here's a copy" and "start with the most startling cases first; only then can students reflect outside their own cultures."
- 4. You cannot possibly cover all cultures. Stick if you can with cultures that you know, at least remotely. This was good advice from the anthropologists. I have traveled in Israel, Europe anad South America but not Africa or Asia, so I stayed away from all but the most widely known topics in those areas of the world.
- 5. Use a lot of video. I like Preschool In 3 Cultures (film and book).
- 6. Do not ask minority group students to comment on their own experiences in class!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Accept volunteers, of course. This is a simple rule but I am surprised at how many of us still put minority students on the spot in the classroom.
- Good Luck!
