Cross-Cultural Task Validity Checker Agent Skill

Check an educational practice or task for cultural bias, WEIRD assumptions, and cross-cultural validity.

Context cost
7k tokensestimated from the bundle, loaded when it triggers
Bundle
1 file · 27.9 kBtext throughout, nothing executable
Licence
not declarednone named by its author
Last change
—v1.0
Servers it uses
Noneruns standalone

What it does

Check an educational practice or task for cultural bias, WEIRD assumptions, and cross-cultural validity. Use when adapting resources for diverse contexts or questioning universal claims.

What this skill changes about the agent has not been set out here as a list. Its SKILL.md, shown below, says it in the author’s own words.

cross-culturalcultural-assumptionsdecolonisingdocumentationglobal-pedagogyhenrichvalidityweird-bias

The skill itself

A skill is instructions the model reads, so you can see what you are getting: below is the start of its SKILL.md. The front matter loads with every session, the body loads when the skill triggers, and the whole file comes with the install.

SKILL.md27.9 kB · preview
--- # AGENT SKILLS STANDARD FIELDS (v2) name: cross-cultural-task-validity-checker disable-model-invocation: false user-invocable: true effort: medium # EXISTING FIELDS skill_id: "global-cross-cultural-pedagogies/cross-cultural-task-validity-checker" skill_name: "Cross-Cultural Task Validity Checker" domain: "global-cross-cultural-pedagogies" version: "1.0" evidence_strength: "strong" evidence_sources: - "Henrich, Heine & Norenzayan (2010) — The weirdest people in the world? (WEIRD bias in behavioural science)" - "Tobin, Wu & Davidson (1989) — Preschool in Three Cultures: Japan, China, and the United States" - "Alexander (2001) — Culture and Pedagogy: international comparisons in primary education" - "Stigler & Hiebert (1999) — The Teaching Gap: best ideas from the world's teachers for improving education in the classroom" - "Nsamenang (2006) — Human ontogenesis: an indigenous African view on development and intelligence" input_schema: required: - field: "task_or_practice" type: "string" - field: "intended_context" type: "string" optional: - field: "source_context" type: "string" - field: "student_level" type: "string" - field: "subject_area" type: "string" - field: "specific_concerns" type: "string" output_schema: type: "object" fields: - field: "validity_analysis" type: "object" - field: "cultural_assumptions" type: "array" - field: "adaptation_suggestions" type: "array" - field: "alternative_approaches" type: "array" chains_well_with: - "culturally-responsive-teaching-designer" - "ubuntu-collective-knowledge-task-designer" - "belonging-classroom-culture-designer" - "phenomenon-based-unit-anchor" teacher_time: "3 minutes" tags: ["WEIRD-bias", "Henrich", "cross-cultural", "cultural-assumptions", "validity", "decolonising", "global-pedagogy"] ---
67# Cross-Cultural Task Validity Checker
68
69## What This Skill Does
70
71Analyses an educational task, strategy, or research-based practice for hidden cultural assumptions that may limit its validity or effectiveness when used with students from different cultural backgrounds. The critical insight from Henrich, Heine & Norenzayan (2010) is that most educational research has been conducted with WEIRD populations (Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democratic) and the findings are often presented as universal when they are in fact culturally specific. A teaching strategy that "works" in research may work because it aligns with the cultural assumptions of the population studied — not because it is universally effective. The skill identifies specific cultural assumptions embedded in a task (about individualism, communication styles, authority, knowledge, competition, or values), assesses whether these assumptions hold in the intended context, and suggests adaptations or alternative approaches from other cultural traditions. The output includes a validity analysis, identification of cultural assumptions, adaptation suggestions, and alternative approaches. AI is specifically valuable here because identifying hidden cultural assumptions requires simultaneously understanding the cultural context of origin AND the cultural context of use — a cross-referencing task that requires broad knowledge across multiple cultural systems.
72
73## Evidence Foundation
74
75Henrich, Heine & Norenzayan (2010) demonstrated that the vast majority of research in psychology, cognitive science, and behavioural economics has been conducted with WEIRD populations — yet findings are routinely generalised to "humans" as if WEIRD populations are representative. They showed that WEIRD populations are statistical outliers on many dimensions: more individualistic, more analytically oriented, more disposed to abstract reasoning, and more likely to prioritise personal choice and autonomy than most of the world's population. This has direct implications for education: teaching strategies derived from WEIRD research may carry hidden cultural assumptions that do not hold for students from other cultural traditions. Tobin, Wu & Davidson (1989) compared preschool education in Japan, China, and the United States, revealing fundamentally different assumptions about the purpose of education, the role of the teacher, the value of individual vs. group achievement, and what constitutes "good" learning behaviour. Alexander (2001) conducted the most comprehensive international comparison of primary education, studying classrooms in England, France, India, Russia, and the United States. He found that pedagogical practices reflect deep cultural values — what counts as "good teaching" varies dramatically across cultures, and practices that are effective in one culture may be ineffective or counterproductive in another. Stigler & Hiebert (1999) compared mathematics teaching in Japan, Germany, and the United States, showing that Japanese and American teachers have fundamentally different theories about how students learn — Japanese teachers use productive struggle and whole-class discussion, while American teachers prioritise individual practice and immediate success. Neither is "wrong," but importing one into the other's cultural context without adaptation is unlikely to succeed. Nsamenang (2006) articulated an African view of human development that centres social responsibility, participatory learning, and community embeddedness — challenging Western developmental models that prioritise individual autonomy and abstract cognitive achievement.
76
77## Input Schema
78
79The teacher must provide:
80- **Task or practice:** What to check. *e.g. "Growth mindset praise — telling students 'You worked really hard on that' instead of 'You're so smart'" / "Think-pair-share as a discussion strategy" / "Individual goal-setting where each student writes their own personal learning target" / "Using Bloom's Taxonomy to design higher-order thinking questions" / "Exit tickets where students individually write what they learned at the end of the lesson"*
81- **Intended context:** Where it will be used. *e.g. "A multicultural school in London with students from diverse backgrounds including recent arrivals" / "A school in rural Kenya" / "A school in Japan" / "A classroom with a significant proportion of First Nations students in Australia" / "An international school in Singapore with students from 40+ nationalities"*
82
83Optional (injected by context engine if available):
84- **Source context:** Where the practice was developed
85- **Student level:** Year group
This is a preview of SKILL.md. Download or install the skill to get the whole thing.
In the file
SKILL.md3,837 words
Files1
Licencenot declared
Why you can read it

Nothing in a skill executes. The client loads the text and the model follows it, so a skill can be audited the way a runbook is — by reading it.

What it costs in context

Skills are not billed by the call. They are paid for in context: every token the instructions occupy is a token your code, your diff and your conversation cannot use. Here is what this one takes and when it takes it.

≈780
always loaded
The name and description, so the model knows the skill exists and when to reach for it.
6,195
on trigger
The instruction body, read only when the skill fires.
3.5%
of a 200k window
Ten skills this size would take about 35% of the window before you open a file.
050k100k150k200k context window

7k tokens, estimated from the bundle at four bytes to the token, held for the rest of the session once it triggers. Heavy. Teams tend to install this one per project rather than globally, and load it only when the job comes up.

Servers bill, skills cost

A server charges by the month. A skill charges once per session, in context, and then keeps charging it for as long as the session lives.

Before and after

The same question, put to the same model twice: once as it comes, and once with these instructions loaded.

No worked example has been published for this skill yet.

The procedure it runs

The procedure has not been set out here step by step. It is in the body of its SKILL.md: the start of it is shown above, and the whole file comes with the install.

Prose, not code

These steps are written for a model to follow, not executed by a runtime. It can still be told to skip one, and it will say so when it does.

Servers it uses

None. This skill calls no MCP servers at all.

Everything it needs is in the instructions, so it works in a project with nothing connected — the model reads the file and changes how it works with what it can already reach.

Its SKILL.md does not declare which tools it asks the agent for, so what it touches is whatever the instructions themselves ask for — read them before you install it.

What it asks for
Writes filesnot declared
Network accessnot declared

This SKILL.md carries no allowed-tools line, so neither is declared. A skill grants no permissions of its own — it can only ask for tools your client already has.

What it will not do

Every skill is narrow, and the useful ones say where they stop. These are the jobs this one is the wrong tool for.

What this skill is not for has not been published here. Nothing is implied by that: it is a section the author has not filled in.

What is in the bundle

1 file, 27.9 kB on disk. A bundle is text throughout: the instructions the model reads, plus the templates it fills in.

  • SKILL.md27.9 kB
What is not in it

No dependencies and nothing executable: a skill is text the agent reads, so the bundle is 1 file you can review in full before installing.

Install

Installing copies the bundle into your project. Nothing runs at install time — the files sit on disk until the model reads them.

# Cross-Cultural Task Validity Checker · 7k tokens when loaded · macOS, Linux mkdir -p .claude/skills && t=$(mktemp -d) && curl -fsSL -o "$t/bundle.tar.gz" https://mcprush.com/api/skills/cross-cultural-task-validity-checker/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/cross-cultural-task-validity-checker" ] && { [ ! -e .claude/skills/cross-cultural-task-validity-checker ] || { mv .claude/skills/cross-cultural-task-validity-checker "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/cross-cultural-task-validity-checker" .claude/skills/ && echo "Installed .claude/skills/cross-cultural-task-validity-checker"
On Windows, or any OS with Node 20+
npx mcprush@latest skill add garethmanning/cross-cultural-task-validity-checker

Windows PowerShell says 'running scripts is disabled on this system'? Run Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope CurrentUser RemoteSigned once, or type npx.cmd instead of npx (codex.cmd, gemini.cmd, grok.cmd likewise). PowerShell 7 needs neither. Writes to .claude/skills/cross-cultural-task-validity-checker/ in the current project. For every project instead, run mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && t=$(mktemp -d) && curl -fsSL -o "$t/bundle.tar.gz" https://mcprush.com/api/skills/cross-cultural-task-validity-checker/bundle.tar.gz && tar -xzf "$t/bundle.tar.gz" -C "$t" && [ -d "$t/cross-cultural-task-validity-checker" ] && { [ ! -e ~/.claude/skills/cross-cultural-task-validity-checker ] || { mv ~/.claude/skills/cross-cultural-task-validity-checker "$t/.previous" && echo "Previous copy moved to $t/.previous"; }; } && mv "$t/cross-cultural-task-validity-checker" ~/.claude/skills/ && echo "Installed ~/.claude/skills/cross-cultural-task-validity-checker" (macOS, Linux) — or add --global to the npx line. The curl line replaces .claude/skills/cross-cultural-task-validity-checker/ only after the download succeeds, so files left there by another skill of the same name, or by an older release, do not mix in. A copy already there is moved aside, not deleted, and the line prints where.

Which clients pick it up on their own

A skill is a folder of text. Most of these read a skills folder and pick it up without being told; the rest take the same folder another way — an upload in the app, a parameter on an API call — and then choose it by its description just the same.

Claude Code.claude/skills/
Claude DesktopCustomize › Skills
ChatGPTSkills › Create › Upload
Cursor.cursor/skills/
VS Code.github/skills/
Codex CLI.agents/skills/
Gemini CLI.gemini/skills/
Grok Build.grok/skills/
Microsoft CopilotSkills › Upload a skill
PerplexityComputer › Skills › Upload a skill
DeepSeek Harness.dsh/skills/
Zed.agents/skills/
Devin Desktop.devin/skills/
Windsurf (legacy).windsurf/skills/
OpenAI Agents SDKInstructions or sandbox Skills
HTTP / APIa request parameter
This release
Version1.0
Publishedno release date on file
PriceFree
Referencegarethmanning/cross-cultural-task-validity-checker

Versions

v1.0 is what is on the shelf; no release here carries a date. Instructions change more often than APIs do — a skill can be rewritten entirely without anything it depends on moving.

v1.0
  • No earlier releases have been published to the marketplace.
Pinning

The install command always fetches the release that is current the day you run it — v1.0 today — and cannot ask for an earlier one. The copy on your disk does not change until you run it again.

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