How to Use our Exercises

Of course, you’re free to use the material on this site in whatever way works best for you. However, our experience suggests the following is a good way to bring a cultural encounter exercise into your class/group.

1. Explain that that Cultural Encounter Exercises are primarily exercises built around discussion and challenging our own stereotypes, and don’t necessarily have right and wrong answers. The goal is the thinking process, not finding the correct interpretation.
2. Explain the SITUATION to your group. Feel free to add detail and to personalise the context. If, for example, the exercise you’ve chosen takes place in Edinburgh, it’s perfectly acceptable (and a good idea) to change it to a city that your group will be familiar with.
3. Give your group some time to discuss the QUESTIONS provided.
4. Elicit possible answers from the group and write them on a board/projector, or get them to upload them to a shared document or an app like Padlet.
5. Check the suggested possibilities and add any that you feel would be interesting/helpful.
6. Consider ranking the possibilities from least likely to most likely, or at least having a conversation about which ones are likely or not.
7. Ask the follow-up questions to the group, allowing for the conversation to go where the students take it. Try to emphasise the misunderstandings and how we could limit the negative effects of those misunderstandings by keeping an open mind and approaching the situation in a more open-minded way.