This training manual for early childhood special education service providers aims to develop an understanding of the roles culture plays in interpersonal dynamics, how adults blend to form unique family life ways, and how families arrive at appropriate early intervention techniques and activities for their special needs children. Participants explore what each family brings from the past and adapts from the present. The training creates an awareness of how to determine a goodness-of-fit between the intervention plan, the family's life ways, and the child's needs. The training is based on a continuum of growth toward an awareness of the role culture plays, explored in the following six stages: (1) self-awareness of the role culture plays in one's own life; (2) cultural exclusiveness (exploring the negative and positive aspects of one's culture from an insider's view); (3) consciousness raising (realization that there may be life ways other than one's own); (4) heightened awareness (viewing culture from an outsider's perspective for its structure and function); (5) overemphasis (outsiders' views of a culture as having life ways better than one's own); and (6) balance and integration (belief that there are many cultural ways that are correct). The training workshops involve discussion, mini-lecture, large and small group activities, self-awareness activities, ethnographic observation skills, ethnographic interviewing skills, and audiovisual aids. Numerous handouts, overhead transparency originals, and supplemental materials are provided. (Contains 40 references.) (JDD)