Cultural Influences on Development

STEP 1: Find a person between the ages of 40 and 65 who is from a different cultural background as yourself—someone who themselves or their parents were born outside of your own birth nation. They should be unrelated to you. Keep their information confidential by using pseudonyms, unless they are okay with their information being shared with the class. Include a short introduction detailing their gender, approximate age, occupational status, and cultural background. If you have permission from the interviewee, you may record the interview and post the audio or video into the discussion.

1. What is your best childhood memory and why?
2. How does your culture view aging—including things like menopause?
3. How are the older adults viewed in your culture?
4. How are marriage and divorce viewed in your culture?
5. How would you describe the relationship between parents and children in your culture? What is parenting like?
6. In what ways do you think your cultural background most affected your development?
7. What is a goal that you would like to accomplish in the next five years and why?
8. Who is the first person that comes to mind when you think of a role model?
9. What is a piece of advice that you would offer to someone younger than you?
10. How is life similar from when you were a teenager as compared with life for teens today? Would you want to trade places with today’s teenagers and live in the world they have grown up in rather than the way that you grew up? Why or why not?
11. What physical changes have you experienced since your 30s?
12. In your opinion, how has society changed since your 30s?
13. Have you noticed a change in how you think since being 40? What about your memory?
14. Do you think more or less about what happens after death as you grow older?

STEP 2: Post the interview and responses to the discussion forum.

STEP 3: After looking at your own interview and the others posted, pick at least one other interview to compare with your own. Focus on these two as you write a post between 250 and 500 words discussing what you’ve learned from these interviews. Compare and contrast the two cultural perspectives. What did you learn? Were there any answers that surprised you? How do the responses in the interview tie in with or confirm the things you learned about in this module?

STEP 4: Return to the discussion to comment on at least ONE other post (in at least FIVE sentences). Expand on a classmate’s post in a value-adding, topic-related way. Promote a collaborative, supportive community, and advance the dialogue through follow-up questions. Reply posts cannot be one-liners, off-topic posts, vague statements, unsupported opinions, inadequate explanations or simply say, “I agree” or “good job.”