Cultural Awareness

What does it mean to be culturally aware? Cultural awareness is the recognition of cultural differences and their impact on behavior. Cultural awareness promotes respectful considerations of shared and different ideas, actions, and emotions on a particular topic or situation. Cultural awareness includes recognizing how your own cultural identity may influence your values, beliefs, and judgments and being mindful of our own reactions and judgements of others and their behaviors. This includes how your professional identity (e.g., as a teacher, nurse, mental health worker, police, etc.) influences your perceptions and decisions on the job as well as in your personal life (Winkelman, 2005). 

While we can’t expect everyone to know the “ins and outs” of every culture, having some awareness can go a long way toward making factual and fair decisions. So, what does it mean to have cultural awareness? It means you: 

• Understand the term culture, its components and opportunities for learning and/or understanding its impact.
• Acknowledge that there are variations within cultures and your own limits of understanding. In other words, sharing the same background does not mean you will necessarily share all the same beliefs, values, and perceptions.
• Are conscious of how your cultural identity has shaped your beliefs, values, perceptions and biases.
• Are mindful of our own reactions and judgments to cultures and by reflecting on them.
• Participate in meaningful, respectful interactions with people of diverse cultural backgrounds.