What will it take to create equitable educational opportunities for all students? According to veteran educator Vernita Mayfield, teachers and school leaders need to learn how to recognize culturally embedded narratives about racial hierarchy and dismantle the systems of privilege and the institutions that perpetuate them with knowledge, action, and advocacy. Cultural Competence Now provides a structure to begin meaningful conversations about race, culture, bias, privilege, and power within the time constraints of an ordinary school. The 56 exercises include activities, discussions, and readings in which to engage during each of the four quarters of the school year. School leaders will discover how to facilitate learning through the four steps—awaken and assess; apply and act; analyze and align; advocate and lead—as you and your colleagues * Increase your awareness of privilege and bias. * Adapt your professional practices to meet the needs of all students. * Examine policies and practices that inhibit opportunities for marginalized populations. * Align resources to eradicate inequity in your school. Mayfield offers advice on establishing a safe environment for professional conversations, setting goals for cultural competency, overcoming resistance, reviewing school data and the school's vision and mission through the lens of race and culture, and strategically managing what can be a transformative yet uncomfortable change process. Cultural Competence Now responds to the urgent need to build the cultural competency of educators—for the sake of children and in the interest of supporting and retaining all educators.

This powerful third edition offers fresh approaches that enable school leaders to engage in effective interactions with students, educators, and the communities they serve.

A bold, brain-based teaching approach to culturally responsive instruction To close the achievement gap, diverse classrooms need a proven framework for optimizing student engagement. Culturally responsive instruction has shown promise, but many teachers have struggled with its implementation—until now. In this book, Zaretta Hammond draws on cutting-edge neuroscience research to offer an innovative approach for designing and implementing brain-compatible culturally responsive instruction. The book includes: Information on how one’s culture programs the brain to process data and affects learning relationships Ten “key moves” to build students’ learner operating systems and prepare them to become independent learners Prompts for action and valuable self-reflection

"This book shows you how to provide professional development for teachers that deepens their cultural understanding and includes activities for translating new knowledge into action. Companion website available"-- Provided by publisher.

Cultural Competence in America’s Schools: Leadership, Engagement and Understanding focuses on explicating the impact of culture and issues of race and ethnicity on student learning, teacher and leadership efficacy, and educational policy making in our nation’s public school system. The authors agree with Levin (2012), who pointed out that the challenge of dealing effectively with racial and ethnic diversity in education in traditionally homogeneous societies is a global problem. One indicator of this point is revealed in a U.S. study that was commissioned by the National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality, which reported on the serious consequences for student achievement and teacher effectiveness in the face of “the gap between teacher training and the realities of the classroom when it comes to teaching diverse populations and students with special needs.” (Public Agenda, 2008, p. 2).

For HR directors, corporate trainers, college administrators, diversity trainers and study abroad educators, this book provides a cutting-edge framework and an innovative collection of ready-to-use tools and activities to help build cultural competence—from the basics of understanding core concepts of culture to the complex work of negotiating identity and resolving cultural differences.Building Cultural Competence presents the latest work in the intercultural field and provides step-by-step instructions for how to effectively work with the new models, frameworks, and exercises for building learners’ cultural competence. Featuring fresh activities and tools from experienced coaches, trainers, and facilitators from around the globe, this collection of over 50 easy-to-use activities and models has been used successfully worldwide in settings that range from Fortune 500 corporations to the World Bank, non-profits, and universities. Learn updates on classic models like the DIE (Description, Interpretation, Evaluation) framework and the U-Curve model of adjustment. Engage in new exercises to help build intercultural competence, using the practical step-by-step guidance on how to effectively facilitate these activities. Stay relevant and have positive impact with clients, organizations, and students with these well-organized, easy-to-implement, and high impact collection of frameworks, models, and activities.The new, research-based models work for developing cultural competence in any environment, and for designing effective cultural competence courses. Education abroad administrators will be able to use these activities in their pre- departure orientations for students going abroad. Corporate human resource professionals will find these activities invaluable in cultural competence building programs.

divdivCross-cultural competence is a skill that has become increasingly essential for the managers in multinational companies. For other business people, this kind of competence may spell the difference between surviving and perishing in the new global economy. This book focuses on the dilemmas of these managers and offers constructive advice on dealing with culture shock and turning it to business advantage. Opposing values can be understood as complementary and reconcilable, say Charles Hampden-Turner and Fons Trompenaars. A manager who concentrates on integrating rather than polarizing values will make much better business decisions. Furthermore, the authors show, wealth is actually created by reconciling values-in-conflict. Based on fourteen years of research involving nearly 50,000 managerial respondents and on the authors’ extensive experience in international business, the book compares American cultural values to those of more than forty other nations. It explores six culture-defining dimensions and their reverse images (universalism-particularism, individualism-communitarianism, specificity-diffusion, achieved status–ascribed status, inner direction–outer direction, and sequential time–synchronous time) and discusses them as alternative ways of coping with life’s—and business’s—exigencies. With humor, cartoons, and an array of business examples, the authors demonstrate how the reconciliation of cultural differences can cause whole organizations to grow healthier, wealthier, and wiser. /DIV/DIV