ECE 405 CHILDREN & FAMILIES IN A DIVERSE SOCIETY

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Cultural Competence Toolkit

The Final Project for this course is to construct a Diversity Toolkit, which will demonstrate the knowledge, skills, resources, and strategies you have obtained as an early childhood professional as well as defining and illustrating your relevant beliefs and philosophies. Your toolkit will be a statement of who you are and a demonstration of your learning throughout the course and your professional life.

Your Diversity Toolkit will be delivered to Waypoint from this assignment and also uploaded to your e-portfolio from Week 3 as a project.

Imagine you have completed your studies and are serving as an early childhood educator or administrator. This week you are going to prepare a virtual toolkit that will be available online for your families, peers, and administrators. Prior to beginning this assignment, review the National Education Association’s (NEA’s) resource .

Your project will include a section for each of the five basic cultural competence skills areas identified in the NEA resource: valuing diversity, being culturally self-aware, the dynamics of difference, knowledge of students culture, and institutionalizing cultural knowledge and adapting to diversity.

In the Valuing Diversity section,

  • Explain how you create accepting and respectful environments for different cultural backgrounds and customs, different ways of communicating, and different traditions and values.
  • Explain how you foster a home-school partnership.
  • Describe one diversity activity that you would implement in an environment that families can be a part of. You can use your Week 4 Assignments and Discussions to help with this.

In the Being Culturally Self-Aware section,

  • State your cultural competence philosophy.
  • Describe two or three ways to incorporate your philosophy into an understanding and respectful early childhood environment.
  • Discuss two to three obstacles you might encounter when creating a culturally relevant learning environment.
  • Identify ways to address these challenges.

In the Dynamics of Difference section,

  • Develop an activity that you can share with children and families to encourage and support respect for difference and other cultures. Be sure your activity description gives sufficient detail so that families will gain a clear understanding of what they are doing and why they are doing it.

In the Knowledge of Students Culture section,

  • Describe the types of culturally relevant and anti-bias curriculum you will use in learning environments so families can understand how learning is organized in your early learning setting.
  • Provide a graphic showing the main components of culturally relevant and anti-bias curriculum.

In the Institutionalizing Cultural Knowledge and Adapting to Diversity section,

  • Explain how you will adapt to diversity and serve diverse populations in early childhood settings.
  • Explain how you apply in your work with young diverse learners.
  • Defend your embrace of the following themes:
    • Culturally relevant methods
    • Anti-bias curriculum
    • Diverse family structures
    • Multicultural education

Delivery requirements:

You may choose to submit your Diversity Toolkit project as a presentation (e.g., PowerPoint, Prezi, Google Slides, Canva, etc.), a website (e.g., Wix.com, Google Sites, Weebly, etc.), or a text-based toolkit.

Whatever format you choose, your delivery of the project must conform to the following requirements:

  • Submit a presentation or text-based copy of your work from this Week 5 Waypoint assignment to your instructor.
  • Add the presentation to your Folio e-portfolio, which you developed in Week 3.
  • If you develop your project as a website, submit a print or presentation-based copy to the instructor and include a link to the web-based version.
  • For any format, include a link to the project in your Folio e-portfolio.

The Cultural Competence Toolkit project

  • Must be 12 to 14 slides for a PowerPoint, or 5 to 6 text or website pages (not including title and references pages or slides) and formatted according to as outlined in the Writing Centers or resource.
  • Must include all five required sections.
  • Must include a separate title page or slide with the following:
    • Title of project in bold font
      • Space should appear between the title and the rest of the information on the title page.
    • Students name
    • Name of institution (University of Arizona Global Campus)
    • Course name and number
    • Instructors name
    • Due Date
  • Must utilize academic voice. See the resource for additional guidance.
  • Must include an introduction and conclusion paragraph. Your introduction paragraph needs to end with a clear thesis statement that indicates the purpose of your paper.
    • For assistance on writing as well as , refer to the Writing Center resources.
  • Must use at least two credible sources in addition to the course text.
    • The table offers additional guidance on appropriate source types. If you have questions about whether a specific source is appropriate for this assignment, please contact your instructor. Your instructor has the final say about the appropriateness of a specific source for a particular assignment.
  • Must document any information used from sources in APA Style as outlined in the Writing Centers guide.
  • Must include a separate references page that is formatted according to APA Style as outlined in the Writing Center. See the resource in the Writing Center for specifications.