Guide Questions: 1. What were the common themes or ideas you observed in the definitions above? Why do you think these themes were important?
2. On the other hand, what was unique in each definition? What do you think are the reasons for these uniqueness?
3. If you were to handle a class where some or the students come from indigenous groups, how would you prepare? Why?
IV. APPLY Culture is composed of many elements. Some of these are values, language (Salvatore, 2012), symbols, objects (Watts, 1981), groups, and norms (Hebdige, 2012). These elements may be classified into three: (1) Sense-making, (2) Artifacts, and (3) Groups. The goal of this activity is for you to create a short socio-cultural profile of a pre-determined community or group. Proceed to your groups (groups of five) and strategize how you would go about creating the socio-cultural profile. Like mentioned above, you need to find out about a community's values, language, symbols, objects, groups, and norms. You may do this by observing a community or by interviewing its members. Use the following key questions: Key Questions
Elements of Culture Sense-making — is the multiple representation of meaning of a given object, person, or event. Different people provide different meanings to a certain object. This may depend on their values and their language (Salvatore, 2012).
What values are prominent in the community? What specific words or phrases do they always use? What do they mean by it?
Unit I-MotherTongue-Based Multilingual Education 23
