"But I Wouldn't Do That": Teaching Cultural Empathy

Abstract

Over the past thirty years, as awareness has increased regarding the value of understanding cultural and other differences in delivering social and faith based services, organizations and academic institutions have worked to provide training in cultural diversity or cultural competence. In spite of this emphasis on training and preparation, research suggests that most practitioners have higher perceptions of their cultural competence than actual demonstrated skills. This dissertation reviews the common types of cultural competence training that are offered, considers methods for instruction, and suggests that teaching cultural empathy will improve service outcomes in intercultural settings. Cultural empathy is defined throughout this dissertation as the ability to understand and communicate the thoughts and feelings of another person given the other person's cultural context. The accompanying artifact is a curriculum titled, "But I Wouldn't Do That": Teaching Cultural Empathy, and is intended for use at the university level is Social Work, Sociology, Psychology, Education, and other majors in which students should be prepared to work with persons of backgrounds different than their own. There are several evaluation tools that attempt to measure cultural empathy as a personality trait, but there is currently a lack of tools to evaluate the development of cultural empathy as defined in this dissertation.

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