Developmental Model Of Intercultural Sensitivity

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What is DMIS? In the textbook Human Diversity in Education, DMIS is short for “Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity” (pg.148). This theory was created by Dr. Milton Bennett in 1993, after he started to recognize how people become more culturally observant when they are surrounded by intercultural people in different environments. On the Inventory of Cross-Cultural Sensitivity, I scored the highest on the A scale (attitude towards others), B scale (behavioral scale), and E scale (empathy scale). I find this to be accurate since I am conscious of my surroundings and the various cultures present. Furthermore, after reviewing the six stages of the developmental model of intercultural sensitivity and taking this assessment, I firmly …show more content…

During the beginning of this continuum is the fourth stage which is acceptance. A great definition of acceptance is “this stage promotes the belief that one's own culture is just one of the many cultures that exists in the world (Bennett, 2011)”(cite this). The fifth stage is called adaption and this is when a person is able to experience another culture and look at it through an different perspective. Over Christmas break, we had a guest who was Muslim and never celebrated Christmas at home. She participated in parties, decorating the tree, listening to Christmas music, and waking up to her first Christmas morning with presents under the tree. Although she did not believe in our traditions, she was able to adapt the culture differences, and enjoyed experiencing something new. The sixth and final stage of developmental model of intercultural sensitivity is integration. This is a stage where very few people reach. The reason why is because at this stage a person is able to “identify and move freely within more than one culture” (cite book pg.157). A person who has studied anthropology is a great example of this stage. Anthropology can be broken down into four different fields: archeologist, biological anthropologist, linguistic anthropologist, and a cultural (sociocultural) anthropologist. An archeologist and biological anthropologist like to study about the different cultures through remains such as fossils and comparing the make up of the human biology. The two anthropologists that are easily able to integrate are linguistic and sociocultural. The reason why is because both anthropologists understand the different languages of the cultures. Along with this, they are able to understand and easily adapt to the