Understanding Cultural Intelligence

You may have heard a popular river cruise company ad claiming that the best way to know another culture is through their food. That’s not true. Surface culture is visible, like food and dress and celebrations. But deep culture is layered, invisible and extraordinarily interesting.

What do other cultural groups believe? How do they marry? Raise their children? Settle their differences? Join us to explore this fascinating dimension of the human family and cultivate your own cultural intelligence.

These sessions (in person) will consist of PowerPoints, discussion, and small groups, with four guests from different countries zoomed in. Speakers, who are all educators will represent Turkey, Brazil, Lebanon and Libya. Our guests were graduate students or visiting scholars at Kent State University and have insights about cultural variation. Each will make a short presentation about their culture and invite audience questions.

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Instructor: Wendy Kasten

Wendy Kasten, the daughter and granddaughter of immigrants, grew up in a multicultural context. Her dissertation research was a longitudinal study on the Tohono O'odham Indian reservation in Arizona. As a professor, she taught in Australia, visited 51 countries, visited schools in 12 countries, and closely mentored graduate students from 16 developing countries. She worked directly with teachers in Turkey, Kenya, the Bahamas, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and India.