Personal/Professional Development Paper

Building cultural competence and humility is a lifelong process. Throughout this course, you have increased your awareness of your own cultural identities as well as the identities of others. As a result, you likely have changed how you think about yourself and others, as well as how you think about the relevance of cross-cultural psychology in your own career.

This assignment is devoted to reflecting on and documenting your growth. In this personal/professional development paper, you will use cross-cultural competency benchmarks to reflect on what you have learned in this course and how you may apply them in your future career.

You will be presented with a set of questions (below) based on cross-cultural competency benchmarks. The questions are meant to serve as a guide in your reflective process, so you have some flexibility in how you address them. However, you are required to address each of the following benchmarks in your paper:

1. self as shaped by individual and cultural diversity
2. others as shaped by individual and cultural diversity
3. cross-cultural communications as shaped by individual and cultural diversity
4. applications based on individual and cultural context.

Remember to bring in relevant information, terms, and insights from your learning resources to support the story of your journey. This will mean supplying relevant APA-formatted in-text citations throughout your work as well as a corresponding APA formatted reference page.

Paper Outline

1. Self as shaped by individual and cultural diversity
2. What have you learned about yourself as a cultural being?
3. How has your experience of yourself as a cultural being changed or evolved over this course?
4. What have you learned about your values and influences? How have they evolved?
5. What biases have you been made aware of in yourself and others throughout this course?
6. What have you learned about how to manage or react to biases you may have in order to function respectfully in a cross-cultural society?
7. Others as shaped by individual and cultural diversity
8. How has your knowledge about others as cultural beings deepened throughout this course?
9. How has your view of specific cultures changed based on this course? Identify 1-3 new things you learned about other cultures.
10. Did this course change any misconceptions you had about other cultures? Why or why not?
11. Which cultures do you still need to learn more about to improve your understanding of others?
12. How will you use your understanding of different cultures in the future in your work with diverse people?
13. Cross-cultural communications as shaped by individual and cultural diversity
14. What have you observed about the role of culture in your interactions with others, including, family, colleagues, peers, classmates, and society at large?
15. What cultures may be particularly challenging for you to interact and work with? Why? What can you do to overcome these challenges?
16. Where did the beliefs you hold about certain groups come from? What sources influenced your beliefs (e.g., family, friends, media, experience, etc.)?
17. Applications based on individual and cultural context
18. Describe your developmental process in increasing your cultural competence and humility. What was it like for you? Where did you see the most growth? How will you continue to grow?
19. How do/will you actively work to manage your biases in interactions and work with others?
20. How can you apply what you have learned about individual and cultural context into your chosen career path?

Paper Writing Guidelines:

• Paper should meet the 1,200-word mark (title page and references do not count toward the length requirement).
• Paper should be written in ; this includes title page and document formatting (1-inch margins, double-spaced, 12-point font, etc.) as well as properly formatted in-text citations and reference page. An abstract is not required.
• This paper will have in-text citations throughout, which will include your learning resources and any other source you utilize. Three sources are the minimum, yet you will likely use more.
• Apply sound writing mechanics: write with clarity and pay attention to spelling/grammar. Consider reading your paper out loud or having a friend, family member, or dictation software read it back to you for a different perspective.
• Use subject headings to visually organize your paper for you and your reader. These can correspond with the outline above.