There are two major challenges that we face when teaching and training about cross-cultural communication. The first is to develop the ability to observe and notice cross-cultural patterns that differ from our own. The second is that these observations become more significant when linked to some kind of context, model, theory or application. With this, the observations, if made at all, simply remain random thoughts and opinions.
The object of this paper is to describe our experience in providing cross-cultural training that addresses these two challenges. Specifically, we share a methodology where learners build online electronic portfolios (using e.g., pathbrite.com) to display original photographs that demonstrate cultural differences. Participants learn David Victor’s LESCANT Approach for Inter-Cultural Communication to provide a context for these photographic examples. That is to say, participants take original photographs to show different aspects of cross-cultural perspectives that they have observed, and then they describe those instances within the context of the LESCANT Approach categories: Language, Environment, Social Organization, Context, Authority, Non-Verbal, Time