A supervisory relationship between a paraprofessional and a professional must address culture change and the feelings that accompany it.

Family advocates, resource mothers, home visitors, child care aides, family development specialists, and other paraprofessionals who work with infants, toddlers, and their families are often in a very uncomfortable situation. Although a paraprofessional may have been chosen for her position because she seems able to bridge cultures, once on the job she is likely to discover that the values and rules of the professional culture may be in conflict with the values and rules of other cultures to which she feels allegiance. One group values independence, another interdependence. One culture encourages open expression of feelings, another self-control. Moreover, some of these values and rules of behavior have been learned at such an early age and are so deeply ingrained that the paraprofessional is not conscious of them. Consequently, conflict between, for example, the culture of the service program and the culture of the community will not be experienced intellectually. Instead, conflict hits the paraprofessional as emotional upheaval, often coming without warning. She feels anxiety, or anger - a powerful sense that she is being asked to do things or to teach families to behave with their children in ways that are "just not right."

I have felt this anxiety, and I have felt this anger. But when I was a paraprofessional "family life outreach worker" and tried to talk about these feelings with my supervisors, they told me to keep my "personal problems" at home. They suggested that I was emotionally unstable and criticized my "inability to keep my professional life separate from my work life."

I stopped confiding in my supervisor. I stopped telling her about the emotional upheaval my work was causing. But as I went on, became a social worker, and began to supervise paraprofessionals myself, I realized that the difficult feelings I had experienced were a normal, natural part of the process of professionalization. And I realized, too, that professionalization is inevitably a process of cultural change.

I have come to believe that a supervisory relationship between a paraprofessional and a professional must address culture change and the feelings that accompany it. The supervisor must recognize and convey to the lay worker that they are both going through a process of acculturation and adaptation, each learning from the other as they negotiate some predictable stages. The goal for each partner in the relationship is cultural competence. Each partner must be able to be "sensitive" to someone from another culture. Each partner must also be able to teach another what he or she needs to know in order to understand the expectations of a new culture and make choices about how to survive and flourish in that new culture.

In real life, learning about a culture is more like watching a three-ring circus than viewing a parade. The acts are appearing at the same time rather than marching down the street in an orderly sequence. However, in a printed essay, I am forced to discuss the following interrelated themes one after the other: 1) the importance of investing in reflective, mutually respectful and trusting supervisory relationships for paraprofessionals; 2) the aspects of culture and stages of acculturation that paraprofessionals and their supervisors need to explore; and 3) techniques supervisors can use for bridging cultural gaps. In real life, all these themes are intertwined and need to be considered together - as any reader who tries to apply the ideas raised in this essay to her practice will soon discover.

Investing in reflective supervision

The concept of reflective supervision must be "sold" to both paraprofessionals and administrators of infant/family service programs. In my experience, paraprofessionals are not initially eager to participate in something called "supervision." Many lay workers don't have a great deal of formal education and have not had very good experiences with teaching and learning through the written or spoken word. When I was a paraprofessional, for example, I saw record-keeping as a process used to check up on my performance rather than as a chance to help me reflect on what I was doing. And when I tried to talk about the feelings my work aroused, my supervisors discouraged me. We need to make supervision something much different. The supervisory relationship must become a comfortable way to teach paraprofessionals the information they need to provide their particular service, and equally important - the boundaries of their role, especially when families face a multiplicity of problems. The supervisory relationship must also become an opportunity for supervisor and paraprofessional to teach and learn from each other what each one believes about the development of young children.

In order to gain a commitment to reflective supervision from program directors and supervisors, these professionals need first of all to be clear about why they are hiring paraprofessionals to work with infants, toddlers, and their families. Often, professionals see the lay worker as someone who is able to change the behavior of the client population. But clients don't see the paraprofessional that way at all - they see her as someone who has access to the services they need. Expectations must be clarified. Paraprofessionals are often asked to work in dangerous neighborhoods (which may or may not be the neighborhoods in which they live). Professionals need to ask themselves: Are we hiring paraprofessionals because they understand the client population better than we do? Are we hiring them to do things that professionals are unable to do themselves or to do things that professionals are unwilling to do themselves? Are we hiring lay workers because they can do a better job, or because they can do a cheap job? A home visitor who is caught between conflicting expectations cannot do her job adequately. A home visitor who is aware of being used is angry; she cannot do her job adequately either.

I believe that professionals should hire paraprofessionals because of what they know and the skills they bring. Training and supervision should build on paraprofessionals' potential but should never discredit their unique knowledge.

Moreover, a good supervisory structure must recognize that paraprofessionals who are really good need to move on after awhile. They need incentives to grow and a career ladder to climb. I helped administrators in one agency begin to think about the training and supervision of paraprofessionals as an aspect of service provision to the community. Knowing that we would lose them, we invested time and energy in the training and supervision of lay workers as a part of leadership development. We trained paraprofessionals with the expectation that they would move on and that we would recruit and train new community workers. (Of course, once a career ladder is in place, talented paraprofessionals often end up staying longer in an agency than they would otherwise.)

Once administrators, supervisors, and paraprofessionals make a commitment to training and supervision (which in most infant/family settings should probably occur both in group and individual sessions), it is crucial to build trust, reflection, and an ability to risk into the supervisory relationship. These elements make it possible to use the relationship to address the multiplicity of communication, teaching, and cultural adaptation issues which are involved in achieving cultural competence.

Using the supervisory relationship to teach and learn cultural competence

Providing culturally competent health, educational, and/or social services requires paraprofessionals and their supervisors to reach a common understanding of several key concepts and processes. Both the supervisor and the paraprofessional need to reach self-awareness and shared awareness of emotionally loaded material and ideas. The supervisory relationship must be sturdy enough to permit reflective exploration of difficult issues, especially since candid discussion is likely to reveal strong differences in perspective. Major issues that must be addressed on the journey toward cultural competence are: the phenomenon of multiple cultural allegiances; cultural determination of perception; and stages in cultural transition and ethnic identification.

Multiple cultural allegiances and differences in cultural values

Culture is the way that any group of people develops to manage its environment. Culture goes far beyond ethnicity and race. The primary goal of any culture is transmission of that culture; the process of "enculturation" is what the family and society use to teach us rules of behavior that incorporate the values, or ideals, of the culture.

We all belong to a multiplicity of cultures, based on, among other things, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, religion, language, general level of education, and profession. We can become aware of the impact of multiple cultural allegiances by making a list of them and then asking ourselves, "Do we behave the same way when we are with members of all these groups? If not, why not?" It is certainly true, for example, that I dress, speak, and act differently when I am addressing a professional audience than when I am accompanying my elderly mother to church.

It is not always easy to recognize the values or ideals that lie behind culturally prescribed behaviors that we have learned through enculturation early in life. Consider, for example, what mainstream, middle-class American parents do to prepare for a new baby. They want the baby to have a room of his own, with a little crib for himself, and a little dresser, and his own toys, and a night light. When they bring the baby home from the hospital, they put him in his room, in his crib, and they turn on the night light and walk out of the room - maybe leaving the door open. In many cultures, this behavior would be considered child abuse. Many cultures believe that a very young child has absolutely no business being alone. A baby should sleep next to - if not in - the mother's bed, so that she can touch him every time he makes a sound. What are the values behind these behaviors? Mainstream, middle-class America values independence, and children are trained from birth for independent living. Other cultures - including the Mexican culture - value interdependence, and our child rearing practices are designed to fulfill this cultural goal.

In the supervision of paraprofessionals, it is important to convey the idea that differences in cultural values are simply differences - not reflections of cultural superiority or inferiority at the same time, it is important to be clear that, usually, the paraprofessional's role is to offer insights about the expectations of mainstream American culture so that families can make choices about how to help their children survive and thrive in it.

Paraprofessionals raised in another culture often find their values in conflict. The process of acculturation has brought the lay worker to embrace some new "professional" ideas about child development, yet many of her feelings about "what is right" to do with children were acquired in the process of enculturation and are therefore deeply ingrained and not necessarily conscious. For example, the worker may understand intellectually the developmental significance of temper tantrums, but if she was raised in a culture that doesn't allow children's temper tantrums because they are seen as an invasion of other people's privacy, our advice about ignoring temper tantrums just doesn't feel right. Paraprofessionals who are mothers may find it painful to reflect on their own child rearing practices in the light of what they are learning about child development. I remember the anguish of a mother visitor who said to me, "I used to wash out my mouth with soap because he lied. Now you're telling me that kids that age cannot lie..."

Dealing with parenting issues always involves engaging in culture change. It's not possible to be "culturally neutral." For example, cultures differ tremendously in how they treat time. One pattern is not superior to another, but often in order to be successful in mainstream American culture, people do have to learn how to be "on time" and adhere to schedules. This, however, is an observation -- not a moral judgment.

Perception

Culture shapes our view of the world. Each of us perceives the world differently, depending on what our culture has taught us to see, to pay attention to, to ignore willfully, or simply not to see at all. What happens, then, when supervisors send paraprofessionals out "to observe behavior"? What the worker observes and notices, and the interpretation she gives to it, will be based on her cultural learning. If the paraprofessional observes parent-child interaction and relates her readings of behavior to the supervisor, who is then supposed to help her interpret her observations, everyone must recognize the difficulty of making judgments through a third person - especially across cultures. We are all likely to interpret other people's behavior on the basis of what that behavior would mean if we were the actors. But before making a judgment about a mother, a baby, or their relationship, the observer needs to know what a particular behavior means in the family's culture, and what that behavior means in terms of cultural goals for the child and family.

I have talked earlier about the importance of building trust, reflection, and an ability to risk into the supervisory relationship. It is essential for the paraprofessional to be able to trust the supervisor with her perceptions. The supervisor, for her part, must be able to help the paraprofessional reflect on her observations and interpretations and look at other possibilities. What did she see, and what did it mean? What else could it mean? How might the worker go about finding out what particular behavior means for this family? In discussing these questions, both the supervisor and the paraprofessional learn to look at behavior from a new perspective.

The notion of "secondary cultural characteristics" is important here. Primary cultural characteristics are those embedded in a culture. Secondary characteristics are those acquired by a group as a result of its contact with another culture. In order to survive discrimination by another culture, members of so-called minority groups sometimes develop secondary characteristics that may not continue to be useful strategies in different circumstances. People trying to communicate across cultures need to be alert to secondary characteristics. If a paraprofessional has distrust of the majority as a secondary cultural characteristic, a supervisor from the majority culture may need to raise the issue of experiences of discrimination early in the relationship - and in more than a single question - so that the issue of trust can be discussed directly. If a family is described as "manipulative" or "untruthful," the supervisor needs to help the worker wonder about the meaning of the behavior involved and its possible usefulness as a survival strategy.

Stages in cultural transition

Supervisors and paraprofessionals need to recognize that they are involved together in a process of cultural learning and change, and that powerful feelings are a natural and expectable accompaniment to each stage of the process. Many models of cultural transition have been developed. I find that euphoria, culture shock, and adaptation are useful terms to describe culture change that involves class and professional status, as well as the bridging of cultures.

Euphoria comes with the paraprofessional's selection for her job. To be chosen in the first place, she has usually distinguished herself in some way - she is a program's best volunteer, or she has demonstrated remarkable strength as a parent. She sees her new job as a step up the social ladder, bringing her higher status, more money, and more recognition from her community. The supervisor is euphoric, too - here is a chance to help someone effect changes!

Culture shock, however, is the next predictable stage. The paraprofessional realizes that she is not talking the same language as the supervisor. The agency or program may not be about what she thought it was about. She wants to help, but the agency is telling her all the time that she doesn't know enough to help and that she is overstepping her bounds. She finds herself in situations that are frightening. There are difficult expectations (like written reports) and puzzling concepts (like "confidentiality"). The worst part is always getting put in the middle, between professionals who see her as able to make clients change their behavior and clients who see her as powerful to deliver goods and services.

Meanwhile, the supervisor is likely realizing that she doesn't know enough to help the paraprofessional. She doesn't know enough about the culture of the target population (this, of course, is why the paraprofessional was hired), but she also doesn't know enough about how the paraprofessional's cultural allegiances -her social class, her gender, her ethnicity - might be shaping her perceptions or coming into conflict with her new occupational role.

Adaptation follows, as the paraprofessional learns to communicate and behave appropriately both in the professional community and in her community of origin. Adaptation is not always a peaceful process, however. There is often anger. At times, the paraprofessional really believes that she "has it all together" and the supervisor knows absolutely nothing- if she knew it, she would be out there doing it; she can't deal with "my people."

In order for the paraprofessional to achieve adaptation, the supervisory relationship must allow the degree of introspection, reflection, and collaboration needed for the lay worker and supervisor to build trust with each other and to look at difficult issues in a non-threatening manner. The supervisor must put herself in the position of learner. She must recognize that in order to understand the paraprofessional's culture, she has to learn it from the paraprofessional. Reading will help, but there is no substitute for the insider's view.

Adaptation involves making peace with the losses involved in becoming a professional.

Adaptation involves making peace with the losses involved in becoming a professional. The lay worker is no longer "one of the girls." She has grown away from some of the people she has grown up with - not because she wants to, but because they perceive her differently and she perceives the community differently. There comes a time when the paraprofessional needs to make peace with the fact that she is no longer one thing or the other. I will always be too fully Mexican to be fully American, but I will also be too American to be fully Mexican. I have made the change from paraprofessional to professional, but to this day, when I am supervising a paraprofessional I need to be careful that my own experiences of acculturation and my own ethnicity do not interfere with the current relationship.

Some factors facilitate cultural transition. Economics makes a difference. If a job offers decent wages, benefits, and a career ladder, adaptation to the culture of the job is much easier. Education is a factor. If the paraprofessional has sufficient formal education to understand the language professionals use on the job, adaptation is easier. If not, the supervisor needs to teach concepts in a way the paraprofessional can understand. Ethnic, language, and minority status issues that affect cultural transition include not only similarities or differences between the paraprofessional and supervisor but also experiences with people in power. The paraprofessional's view of society as one to which she can adapt, assimilate, or reject will influence her reaction to the work and the supervisory relationship.

Supervisors should be aware of stages in ethnic identity development. The conceptual framework for looking at this process was developed during the civil rights movement by Edward T. Banks. Atkinson, Morten, and Sue (1980) identified stages through which an individual moves in a racist society involving the individual's regard for himself, his own cultural groups, other minority groups, and society at large. The process is a developmental one and not the same for everyone; where someone starts has to do with family and community. The stages identified by Banks are:

• conformity (not with one's own group, but with the larger society), including a depreciating attitude toward the self and members of one's own group, a discriminatory stance toward members of other minorities, and appreciation for what members of the dominant group have.

• dissonance, involving conflict between self-depreciating and self-appreciating attitudes (many paraprofessionals are at this stage), conflict with members of the same minority, conflict between dominant-held views of minority hierarchy and feelings of shared experience, and conflicted attitudes toward members of the dominant group.

• resistance and immersion, a stage in which individuals start building appreciation of their own culture and empathize with members of other minorities, although ethnocentrism is common.

• introspection, a stage characterized by concern with the basis of attitudes and judgments of the self and others.

• synergistic articulation and awareness, a stage in which individuals appreciate themselves, members of the same minority, members of other minorities, and (selectively) members of the dominant group.

Just as supervisors need to assess where the supervised is in the process of acculturation, the supervisor also needs to assess a worker's stage of ethnic identification. In some stages of cultural identification, a person may be very punitive toward members of her own group.

Techniques for bridging gaps between cultures

A supervisor may convey to a paraprofessional that the supervisor is trustworthy, and willing to learn as well as teach. But what specific strategies can help the supervisor make her relationship with a paraprofessional the most effective teaching situation possible? Concepts borrowed from the field of multicultural education are useful in thinking about communication and learning styles.

Cross-cultural communication

Attention to the style and content of verbal and non-verbal communication is critical. In working across languages, the emotional meanings attached to words are very important. For example, the English word "ambition ' ostensibly means the same thing as the Spanish word "ambicion." But to call someone "ambitious" in the United States means to see him as a "go-getter," motivated, and thinking for himself. To call someone "ambicioso" in some Spanish-speaking cultures suggests that he is selfish, grasping, and out to get ahead at the expense of others. Because so much of our work is related to values, it is important to think about the concepts themselves, rather than single-word descriptions. And in this connection, it is important to remember that people learn social, interactive language much earlier than cognitive, decontextualized, abstract language. Someone who is very verbal in a second language at the social level may not yet be able to conceptualize in the second language. Simple descriptors, illustration, and rephrasing are helpful techniques.

Discussion modes - patterns of participation and listening - vary from culture to culture. In some cultures, it is permissible to interrupt, and people show interest in a topic by getting excited. In other cultures, this behavior can be interpreted as being over-emotional or rude.

Non-verbal forms of communication-body language, gestures, personal space, and touch - don't have the same meaning across cultures. Eye contact is a classical example. If one talks to a child and the child looks down, one cannot assume that the child is not paying attention. In some cultures it is out of place to look a person in authority in the eye.

It is crucial for a supervisor to understand how respect is shown in the culture of the paraprofessional. She may need to ask quite explicitly, "What does respect mean to you?" Trust is built on respect. If the supervisor engages in disrespectful behavior, no matter how unintentional, she may lose the chance to build a mutually trusting relationship with the lay worker. And a trusting relationship is the foundation for a shared awareness between supervisor and paraprofessional of another complexity of communication across cultures - differing perceptions of what is appropriate to be shared and with whom.

Ngoc-Diep T. Nguyen (1992) has observed that culture determines what kinds of information are considered B (confidential, restricted to a chosen few, and socially hidden), shared (held in common with members of a particular group, with rules for appropriate sharing often non-conscious), and public (shared by all, socially acknowledged). In infant/family work, perceptions of what is private, shared or public will have a lot to do with what families share with her and what she feels comfortable sharing with her supervisor. Again, the paraprofessional is often caught in the middle. What does "confidentiality" mean when a family asks a worker to "promise that she will not discuss (a problem) with anyone else" and the supervisor expects the worker to share and analyze her perceptions?

Through the trusting relationship, supervisor and paraprofessional can develop shared awareness that there are different ways of looking at information and communicative events. The supervisor says explicitly, "There are times when you might consider something private, and I may not - we need to know and be clear about it." Part of teaching and supervising is conveying the idea that a process of acculturation is underway that paraprofessionals are going through and that supervisors are going through.

A supervisor also needs to be sure that she understands a paraprofessional's style of communication and structuring information. Some cultures prescribe that one spend a great deal of time on social niceties before one can "get to the point." Similarly, cultural rules may require a paraprofessional to lay out a great deal of information before she feels comfortable talking about what she thinks. These patterns may mean that the home visit is over before the "meaty" part of the interview begins, or the supervisor's attention wanders (and the paraprofessional notices, and is turned off) unless care is taken to allow extra time for cross-cultural information or to give clear signals 15 minutes before the end of the supervisory session that "we're almost at the end of our time."

Learning styles

I have found Edward T. Hall's work on the issue of cultural communication extremely helpful in understanding differences in people's preferred way of learning. Hall conceives culture and communication in terms of high context and low context. A high-context culture places as much or greater emphasis on understanding the environment as on the written or spoken word. People in high context cultures speak with their hands, need lots of eye contact, like to work in groups, are colorful in their dress, and are noisy. High-context learners prefer visual and experiential learning. A low-context culture is more subdued and quiet, paying a great deal of attention to what people say, compared to what they do. The primary means of communication is verbal; meaning comes from the written and spoken word. In mainstream American culture, most formal education involves a low-context style of teaching and communicating.

Supervisors need to find out through observation whether their supervisees are high-context or low-context learners so that they can find appropriate ways to teach key ideas. Similarly paraprofessionals need to devise ways of imparting information that suit the learning styles of the families they visit.

Conclusion

American society may be moving away from the myth of the melting pot and the expectation that "minorities" give up what they are in order to belong and be accepted. We are recognizing the contributions that we all have made and are making to the richness and variety of this country. We need to recognize also that this richness builds on a variety of beliefs about children and good ways to bring them up. We need to build trust -among cultural groups, within communities, and within relationships for learning - so that we can become aware of our own ideals and values, reveal them to each other, and disagree about them safely.

Resources for further study

Cultural adaptation and learning

Berry, W. (1980). Acculturation as varieties of adaptation. In: Padilla, A.M. (Ed.) Acculturation: Theory, models and some new findings. AAAS Symposium Series #39. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Culture and communication behavior

Gumperz, J.J. (1982). Discourse Strategies. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Hall, E.T. (1976). Beyond Culture. New York: Doubleday.

Nguyen, N.T. (1992). Elements brought into a communicative event: An observational exercise (unpublished). Des Plaines, IL: Illinois Resource Center.

Socio-cultural issues related to education and language learning

Atkinson, D., Morton G., and Sue (1980). Counseling American Minorities: A Cross-Cultural Perspective. Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.

Cummins, J. (1989). Empowering Minority Students. Sacramento, CA: California Association for Bilingual Education.

Longstreet, W. (1978). Aspects of Ethnicity: Understanding Differences in Pluralistic Classrooms. New York: Teachers College Press.

Nieto, S. (1992). Affirming Diversity: The Sociopolitical Context of Multicultural Education. University of Massachusetts: Longman Publishing Group.

Cross-cultural learning and teaching

Banks, J.A. (1988). Multiethnic Education: Theory and practice. Second edition. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Banks, J.A. (1987). Teaching Strategies for Ethnic Studies. Fourth edition. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Damen, L. (1987). Culture Learning: The fifth dimension in the language classroom. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Resources for culture learning

Brislin, R., Cushner K., Cherrie, C. and Yong, M. (1986). Intercultural Interactions: A practical guide. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

Pederson, P (1988). A Handbook for Developing Multicultural Awareness. American Association for Counseling and Development.

Supervision

Fenichel, E. (Ed.) (1992). Learning through Supervision and Mentorship To Support the Development of Infants, Toddlers, and Their Families: A Sourcebook. Arlington, VA: ZERO TO THREE.

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