Culture Connections
University of Valencia
Food in the Spanish Class: Cuisine and Culinary Cultures of Spain - How to Teach through Food View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jorge Gonzalez Del Pozo
Teaching Spanish culture through food and culinary arts is a great vehicle to promote languages and cultures, as well as to engage college students with an interactive theme that is growing tremendously. Peninsular-Mediterranean cuisine is a strong component of Spanish society and one that allows students to explore and understand the country's diversity. Spain has a vast and solid culinary tradition, a diverse and well-positioned present balancing old customs and avant-garde food trends, and a promising future cuisine. The hybrid composition and multicultural condition of Spanish food has been influenced and it is influential to other cultures. Also, Mediterranean culinary culture, particularly Spanish, represents an important culinary pillar for many current gastronomical conceptions. This paper presents how students may learn the many aspects and features of Spanish food and cuisine while improving their linguistic competence and becoming culturally more aware of Spanish realities.
Strategies for Better Incorporation of International and Multicultural Perspectives in Post-Secondary and Adult Education View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Alexa Landrus
Our culture is the lens through which we view the world. In better understanding our cultural lens, we may better realize the importance of honoring the various cultures of students in our classrooms. This paper looks at strategies for better inclusion of many different cultures and nationalities in higher education classes. We review strategies for better communication styles, avoiding stereotypes, and how to use more differentiated instructional skills. Multi-cultural strategies will be reviewed that better meet the needs of learners from diverse cultures including use of resources that show thinking with a more multicultural lens. Website, media clip and text use that incorporate more diversity in sources of information relating to global or multicultural trends and issues are overviewed as well as how to diversify existing courses through revision of assignment topics and assessments that have a more multicultural lens, creating activities that show appreciation of differences and avoid stereotypes by examining ideas to incorporate relevant global and multicultural trends and issues into curriculum. Better class discussion strategies that provide for a warm and comfortable environment for all, analyzing, comparing and contrasting perspectives on different global and multicultural trends/issues in class discussions are included in the themed presentation as well as pairing students from different backgrounds, cultures, and learning styles. Additionally, ideas for developing more multicultural-friendly syllabi to match our changing classroom demographics are addressed.
