Training child welfare workers for cultural awareness: the culture simulator technique

The Mexican-American Culture Simulator introduces a new, cost-effective method of training child welfare workers for cultural awareness. It was published in 1981 by the Worden School as a two-volume module containing 20 vignettes each [7]. The accompanying trainer's manual provides instruction for conducting modular training and a discussion guide that analyzes the values and practice implications in each vignette [8]. The simulator has a number of key advantages over some of the more traditional seminar approaches to this type of training. 1. It is directly related to child welfare practice, providing information in a familiar problem-oriented casework format that facilitates the transfer of knowledge to job-related activities. 2. It enables the trainees to learn at the their own pace, in private, and at a location of their own choice. 3. It exposes the trainees to standardized material that enables them to assess their progress, and controls for variations in the trainer's expertise. 4. It is brief and easily administered, thus allowing for its efficient distribution and use in training large numbers of workers. 5. It provides a baseline level of knowledge that can be supplemented with more extensive and specific training to meet differing staff needs. Its principal disadvantage results from its apparent effectiveness and utility: there is the possibility that it might be used as the sole source of training for child welfare workers about the Mexican-American community whose cultural pattern is too rich, varied, and a complex to be captured by a single instrument that focuses on cognitive awareness of selected traditional values. Within its limitations, however, cultural simulator training introduces an interim method of improving services to the Hispanic community.