Mental Representation & Schemas

Culture, mental representation, and schemas are intertwined as vital or fundamental components of the transformation spectrum. All individuals, cultivated or not, live and experience their impact at some point in their lives with or without awareness or consciousness. They represent the core essence of what and who we are. By association, culture is the premise in which mental representation and schemas are originated. In a sense, it is broken down in parts that are designed to accommodate different stages of life. For instance, our knowledge of the world depends on schemas that are innate and the news ones we learn to adapt to as we face more complex issues. This concept resembles that of intercultural competence except for the fact that schematic adaptation is inevitable and intercultural competence is optional. We solve our problems by using schemas. Intercultural competence helps in understanding and adapting schemas and mental models that transform our thoughts, structure or reinforce our perceptions. In this regard, we only know something is real when it is proven by a particular model. That model can simply be an abstraction. That abstraction is, in most cases, a mental image implemented by a certain set of beliefs and values inscribed by symbols, pictures, or text. Everything that I believe to be real and true may be challenged, questioned or changed by new information acquired in or about my culture or a different one thereby creating a mental image. Our culture makes, trains, prepares us and sometimes limits our potential to the outside world. Multicultural awareness and consciousness is the key to immeasurable discoveries, the door to reality, and the aperture of self-exploitation and self-realization.
Information is always transferable. As a teacher trainee, the knowledge I gain here will, someday, serve as transformative components useful and valuable to others as they are to me today. They reveal my ignorance, but yet shape, empower, and inspire me more and more to learn and become a teacher. They have increased the level of my multicultural awareness and consciousness enough to understand and be prepared for various properties of society.