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The New York Transgender Advocacy Group applies the ABCD Model when developing all their curriculum:
Cognitive - Emphasizes remembering or reproducing something which has been learned
Affective - Emphasizes two different types of behaviors: reflexive (attitudes) and voluntary reactions and actions (values); includes the following stages: perception, decision, action, and evaluation
Interpersonal - Emphasizes learner skills associated with interpersonal exchanges; this measures how a participant interacts with others in a variety of situations
The New York Transgender Advocacy Group’s pedagogy is founded on experiential learning, whereby learning occurs through reflection and action, and participants examine how concepts directly apply to their lives. Moreover, NYTAG trainings facilitate a learning environment that invites deep, challenging questions and a space where participants can unpack these topics. Through workshops, discussions, lectures, role-play, stories, case-studies, and anecdotes, participants are able to connect to the content and directly apply the approaches, skills, and knowledge they are acquiring in real-time to improve their practice.
Cultural sensitivity means having an awareness of one’s own cultural identity, and the ability to learn and build on the varying cultural and social norms of those around us. It is the ability to understand what makes each individual unique, while celebrating the between-group variations.
NYTAG’s curriculum builds participants’ cultural sensitivity by engaging them in activities that allow self-reflection as a way to enhance self-awareness. In this work, participants have an opportunity to examine where they are in the stages of cultural awareness and their points of reference for interactions with members of the transgender and gender nonconforming (GNC) community. They also examine their biases and engage in a series of activities that enable them to identify the roles that both conscious and unconscious bias (at the individual, group, and institutional levels) play in the relationships they have traditionally cultivated with members of the community. It is important to note that biases, conscious or unconscious, are not limited to ethnicity and race. Though racial bias and discrimination is well documented, biases may exist toward any social group. One’s gender, gender identity, physical abilities, religion, sexual orientation, age, weight, physical appearance, socioeconomic status, and many other factors are subject to bias. In this instance, NYTAG takes an intersectionality approach to unpacking bias, thereby addressing the multiple ways in which transgender or GNC individuals encounter discrimination, and ultimately, barriers to access and a poor quality of life.
In adult learning, inquiry - a process that uses questions, problems, and scenarios to help learners engage with content through their own agency and investigation instead of just presenting the facts - facilitates critical thinking and the abilities to form, express, and exchange ideas through dialogue, questioning, and sharing ideas and knowledge.These learning environments function effectively when the instructor listens carefully, makes guesses about intended meaning, and adjusts responses to assist learners’ efforts. The instructor is essentially there as a facilitator, rather than as a “sage on a stage” who guides the discussion and lectures for the entirety of the learning experience. Here, the instructor must relate formal knowledge to the learner’s individual, family, and community knowledge.
Engendering sensitivity begs the question, “How do we create an experience that ensures that participants have effectively learned something they value and perceive as authentic to their real world?” In order to demonstrate sensitivity, participants will have to perform certain behaviors, tasks, and skills to a certain level of proficiency. To ensure participants are on a trajectory to achieve competence in the areas addressed in NYTAG’s curriculum, facilitators will:
Foster a growth mindset and remind participants that mistakes and failure are a valuable part of learning.
Encourage participants by recognizing real effort.
Trust in their capacity to learn.
Provide feedback at each stage.
Ask open-ended questions that facilitate engagement and foster critical reflection and build metacognition (participants reflect on their thinking and learning - how and what were the critical processes that helped to move them through the work?)
Sensitivity allows a person to become more confident. In turn, that confidence affirms the individual’s learning experiences and transformation, thereby providing the support needed to engage with and use new knowledge and skills.
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