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FOUR CULTURAL LITERACY SKILLS - Coggle Diagram
FOUR CULTURAL LITERACY SKILLS
Cross-cultural Awareness
-Can learn from internet, academic literature, media (can give superficial understanding because
it is inauthentic and artificial).
-Deeper and more respectful learning for sustainability can be gained by 'paralleling' different
cultural traditions, beliefs and social systems
-Includes the ability to examine about other cultures critically and gain ideas about sustainability
from them.
-Paralleling culture can avoid damage to the culture and draw aspect of the culture that are
already sustainable
Local Cultural Awareness
-Outdoor learning is particularly suitable for drawing on the grassroots expertise in sustainability found in local communities such as listening to land owners explaining the installation of micro-
hydro schemes.
-In collaborative projects such as these, the primary formal educator takes a step back to enable
local people to become the educators.
-There may be knowledge and skills for living sustainably that are already embedded in the
traditions of local cultures and passed on intergenerationally through non-formal education
-Direct experience of sustainability within local communities can act as a basis for an increased understanding of international development issues, particularly the need to conserve, rather than destroy, aspects of cultures around the world that are already sustainable.
-Important to develop cultural literacies.
-Having learners choose their own community-based project to complete the assessments makes the learning real and has immediate consequences for the learners life and sustainability of their locality or region.
Critical Reflection and Thinking
-Considers the experiences of the group as a whole and provides a way of accounting for
ourselves.
-Demonstrates an awareness that actions and events are located in, and explicable by, reference to multiple perspectives as well as influenced by multiple historical and socio-political contexts.
-Critical reflective thinking is a dialogue between learners and educators on aspects of cultural or
social discourse.
Personal skills for coping with being a change agent.
-Learners need skills in confident, persuasive public speaking to express their vision of a better
world and back it up with evidence.
-Being part of a group with shared values can provide learners with valuable social support for their work as cultural change agents and a healthy release for the stresses that they will experience.
-Knowledge itself is a form of power, and learners will need skills in seeking out reliable, up-to- date and accessible information, from the latest climate science to an understanding of neoliberal
critiques of sustainability and global citizenship.
-Learners' self-confidence and self-esteem can be built through involvement in supportive
networks of people working towards common goals, both within local communities and globally.
-Learners need to ‘survive’ being change agents for the cultural shift as they will encounter a variety of mental, physical, psychological and emotional battles with those seeking to sustain the
status quo.