Qualitative Research in Indigenous Business Enterprises: A Personal ReflectionJennifer Martiniello, Faculty of Education, University of Canberra, ACT. AbstractIn a tertiary learning environment of mixed Indigenous and non-Indigenous students it is mandatory to build cross-cultural understanding for both groups from the beginning. The Cultural Identity Wheel and Growing Your Cultural Tree are two groups exercises developed for the contemporary Aboriginal Societies unit, UC, that specifically aim at promoting cross-cultural understanding and tolerance in the classroom by encouraging students to reflect, identify and analyse their own cultural identities. By clarifying their own individual cultural profiles, students are able to focus on their shared characteristics to forge a common ground of understanding, respect and communication. By identifying their diversities, they are able to build a greater understanding of each other, and tolerance of difference. In follow-up group work students are invited to extend their understanding by conceiving of their shared learning environment and processes as, firstly, the microcosmic mirror of culturally diverse Indigenous Australia, and secondly, as the working basis for the renewal of the nation espoused by Reconciliation. |
|
|