As our world becomes more interconnected on international, domestic, and personal levels, our need to be more culturally competent increases (Samovar, Porter, & McDaniel, 2007; Ting-Toomey, 1999). Recognizing this need, Washington State University Extension sought to increase skills of its personnel by developing a set of cultural competencies…

Discusses tacit learning, the bringing together of mind and body by practice, and how to incorporate it into training. Includes descriptions of exercises that reveal tacit knowledge. (JOW)

Describes how U.S. businesses in China are hiring and training workers and the challenges to trainers posed by cultural differences. (JOW)

Suggests that many corporate efforts to impart their own culture, leadership style, and business practices in other parts of the world are producing less than optimum results. Provides examples of how to adapt training for multicultural settings. (JOW)

Delivering training to international audiences at a distance poses challenges. Four factors to consider when adapting training for international delivery are power distance, uncertainty avoidance, individualism, and masculinity. (JOW)

Goals of diversity training may be compliance, harmony, inclusion, justice, and transformation. Effective programs are predicated on leadership support, authentic training strategies, and alignment with the organization's goals. (JOW)

Gives a working definition of culture and describes a training program for Canadian Indians designed to reinforce and clarify their cultural identity while developing marketable skills. The main features of the program are consultation with community leaders and participation of trainees in goal-setting and training design. (SK)

This document contains materials for a 3-hour diversity awareness workshop designed to help trainers accomplish the following: identify their strengths, weaknesses, and impact on others; develop an increased awareness of cultural stereotypes; master techniques for defusing hostility, handling difficult students and coworkers, and turning…

This document contains three papers from a symposium on individual learning issues in human resource development (HRD). "Bringing Cross-Cultural Sensitivity to Human Resource Development: An Example from the Classroom" (Robert L. Dilworth) reports on a classroom-based case study in curriculum design for global HRD that emphasizes the importance of…

This book is designed to familiarize trainers with the implications of culture on the learning and development process and provide them with practical techniques for taking different cultural values into account when planning and delivering training. The book consists of 18 chapters organized into 4 parts as follows: culture and training (risks of…

The research on the international and multicultural not-for-profit inter-organizational domain is examined to identify models for designing intercultural communication training to members of refugee camp populations, their host communities, and aid project participants. Three levels of training programs with the following objectives are described:…

Project staff and experienced child welfare personnel adapted the Culture Simulator to train child welfare caseworkers to have an empathic understanding of minority children and families in order to encourage and support ethnic identity, integrity, and community life. The training technique used 4 self-instructional modules containing 40 critical…

This book, which is intended for trainers responsible for teaching workplace diversity, brings together the voices of 17 individuals currently engaged in diversity education. The following topics are examined in the book's five parts: identity, preparation, and the experience of being classified as "different"; the nature of diversity…

The first of the four papers in this symposium, "Towards a Meaningful HRD [Human Resource Development] Function in the Post-Command Economies of Central and Eastern Europe" (Devi Jankowicz), examines the existing knowledge-base among managers who are to be trained as HRD practitioners and suggests that efforts may be constrained by…

This brief highlights some of the trends in the literature related to intercultural understanding and provides a list of resources that can be used by educators in promoting it. The consensus of the literature on promoting cultural understanding is that the term "culture" generally refers to a system of beliefs, customs, and behaviors…