As I often do, I was searching Google for the terms "cultural competency." Number one in the rankings was this wonderful site about cultural competency and education from the Center for Effectiive Collaboration and Practice.
If you'd like to go further into the definition of cultural competency than I've provided here, the following is their more academic definition:
The word culture is used because it implies the integrated patterns of human behavior that includes thoughts, communications, actions, customs, beliefs, values, and institutions of racial, ethnic, religious, or social groups.
The word competence is used because it implies having the capacity to function in a particular way: the capacity to function within the context of culturally integrated patterns of human behavior defined by a group.
Being competent in cross–cultural functioning means learning new patterns of behavior and effectively applying them in the appropriate settings. For example, a teacher with a class of African–American children may find that a certain look sufficiently quiets most of the class. Often African–American adults use eye contact and facial expression to discipline their children.
However, this is not effective with all African–Americans. Intra–group differences, such as geographic location or socioeconomic background, require practitioners to avoid overgeneralizing. With other students, one might have to use loud demanding tones, quiet non–threatening language, or whatever is appropriate for those students. The unknowing teacher might offend some students and upset others by using the wrong words, tone, or body language. Being culturally competent means having the capacity to function effectively in other cultural contexts.
This thoughtful definition is just the tip of the iceberg of what lies beneath at this great resource. So check it out at: http://cecp.air.org/cultural/default.htm.
