A couple of years ago I wrote a post called: Cultural competence in the online environment. I have been thinking some more about this following my experiences facilitating the Virtual International Day of the Midwife, which is a global online conference for midwives. I have been given the opportunity to team up with Kate Timms-Dean to explore this further, and hopefully come up with a paper that we're going to submit for publication. Kate has just submitted her Phd in Maori Studies, looking at language revitalisation in Aotearoa New Zealand and Scotland. Kate gave a presentation once in which she talked about the Treaty of Waitangi and how it is a framework for learning and teaching.
I have since thought that the Treaty with its three principles of participation, protection and partnership is an appropriate framework to develop online cultural competency guidelines around. This is what we're going to do, using the issues that I wrote about in my blog post to weave in and out of the Treaty principles.
What do you think are issues that we face when working with different peoples in the global, online environment? What "problems or challenges have you faced? What would you add to any guidelines about cultural competence in the online environment?
5 comments:
Thanks for this,Sarah.. these resources are exactly what we need for a session in our undergraduate programme!
Glad to be able to help, Jean. Do you have any thoughts you could add?
Apart from ethnicity considerations, the online environment has a culture that is foreign to people who only visit occasionally and don't have online computer literacy and confidence. Not knowing which button to click is off putting for people who are confident and competent in other areas.
So, you're suggesting that cultural competence is another word for netiquette, Starpath?
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