On reflection: is reflexivity necessarily beneficial in intercultural education? 1

This article explores how the concept of reflexivity is used in intercultural education. Reflexivity is often presented as a key learning goal in acquiring intercultural competence (ICC). Yet, reflexivity can be defined in different ways, and take different forms across time and space, depending on the concepts of selfhood that prevail and how notions of difference are constructed. First, I discuss how the dominant usages of reflexivity in intercultural education reflect and reproduce a Cartesian view of the self that shapes how ICC is conceptualized and taught. I discuss three assumptions that this view produces: that the self is accessible and transcendable, that reflexivity is universal across space and time, and that the self can act as its own remedial change agent or ‘inner consultant.’ I argue that because reflexivity is understood in many different ways, attention to definition is crucial, both in designing learning objectives in intercultural education and in devising ways to attain them. Greater attention is also needed in intercultural education to the ways in which selfhood, and hence also reflexivity and constructions of difference, differ across space and time.     

Intercultural praxis: Australian diploma of early childhood education preservice teacher visual literacy comparisons between Australia and Vietnam

ABSTRACT

This research investigates an intercultural praxis approach to using visual research methods, in Australia and Vietnam, with preservice teachers in a Diploma of Early Childhood (DEC) course. The paper results from limited research with DEC preservice teachers exploring the development of intercultural praxis and limited research in teaching whilst using visual images (photos). The methodology is supported by using Bennett’s developmental continuum for intercultural sensitivity and draws on sociocultural theories to consider how these DEC preservice teachers’ histories and situational contexts are relevant in understanding the development of intercultural communication. Mixed methods include a comparative analysis of student-produced visual multiliteracy images (photographs) generated in Australia and Vietnam, during 2015 and 2016, annotations on those photos and interviews with two cohorts of students (n = 27) six months after their experiences in Vietnam. Analysis is reinforced with Sorrells’ intercultural praxis framework to understand students’ capacity to use inquiry, framing, positioning, and dialogue processes as a result of their study tour to Vietnam. The paper outlines and reinforces the importance of being explicit in developing intercultural sensitivity in dynamic teaching contexts and illustrates the increasing awareness of intercultural communication with these DEC students.     

The Journey Toward Intercultural Sensitivity

Abstract

This paper reports on the use of Milton Bennett's Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS) to analyze logs that were submitted by mental health service providers who participated in an intensive training program on intercultural competency. Program participants wrote eight monthly reflective logs about cultural experiences that occurred between training sessions. The categories of intercultural sensitivity described in the DMIS were used as the basis for coding log entries. The findings over the 10-month training period show that the development of intercultural sensitivity is, for the most part, a non-linear process in which one makes intermittent reversions to earlier levels and moves forward in spurts. After offering examples of non-linear and linear patterns in the logs, the paper discusses possible explanations for the findings and the challenges of coding according to the Bennett Model. Implications for intercultural competency education and training programs and their evaluation are proposed.     

Supporting Critical Multicultural Teacher Educators: Transformative teaching,social justice education,and perceptions of institutional support

ABSTRACT

In most teacher education programmes in Canada and the United States, educators’ opportunities to develop equity-related skills are concentrated into single ‘multicultural’ courses. These courses tend to have a conservative or liberal orientation, focused on appreciating diversity or cultural competence, rather than a critical orientation, focused on preparing teachers to address inequity. In this study, based on a survey of instructors of multicultural and intercultural teacher education courses in Canada and the US (N = 186), we examined the relationship between the criticality of their multicultural teacher education courses and their perceptions of institutional support for the values they teach. We found a negative relationship between the two – the more critical the instructors’ approaches, the less institutional support they perceived.     

In/visible dimensions: framing the intercultural communication course through a critical intercultural communication framework

This article highlights how course material on ‘culture’ and ‘intercultural communication’ faces a distinctive challenge in crafting an engaged power‐focused positionality for students. I discuss the importance of incorporating a ‘critical intercultural communication perspective and practice’ into an upper‐division diversity/intercultural communication course in the US academic context.     

Performing India in America through Pragma-Cultural Markers

Intercultural Communication is marked in literary discourse in numerous ways. Diasporic literary discourse representing intercultural communication uses pragma-cultural markers such as food and music as tools of intercultural communication. This paper attempts to examine intercultural communication foregrounding these pragma-cultural markers as represented in Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s Queen of Dreams within the framework provided by Relevance Theory (:249). This paper foregrounds the manner in which writers like Divakaruni deploy pragma-cultural markers to express multiple linguistic and cultural perspectives in their literary narratives, thereby portraying an amalgamation of America and India and facilitating intercultural communication which is a dialectical process, as on the one hand the “America” that is in the hearts, minds, and words of these writers shapes their expressions and on the other, their growing presence in terms of their literary output is changing the definition of American art and culture.     

Interactions among future study abroad students: exploring potential intercultural learning sequences

The study presented in this article aims to explore if and how intercultural learning may take place in students’ class interaction. It is grounded in the assumption that interculturality is not a clear-cut feature inherent to interactions occurring when individuals with presumed different linguistic and cultural/national backgrounds talk to each other, but that interculturality is co-constructed during interaction. In other words, every ‘interdiscourse interaction’ is potentially intercultural. We have assumed this perspective while investigating student–student class interactions that took place in an intercultural education course aimed at enhancing students’ intercultural learning in view of their sojourn abroad. Interactional data were analysed from the perspective of conversation analysis. Then, drawing on the notion of séquence potentiellement acquisitionelle as well as on a constructivist approach to intercultural learning, we conclude that, in interaction with their peers, learners can co-construct ‘potential intercultural learning sequences’ (PILS), which present recognisable interactional and discursive features.     

Social workers and intercultural mediators: challenges for collaboration and intercultural awareness

ABSTRACT

Social work in Europe is facing numerous challenges in terms of promoting the participation of migrants and their descendants in super-diverse societies. This study investigates collaboration between social workers and intercultural mediators based on international debate and fieldwork in Italy. Does social work require collaboration with other professions specialised in intercultural relations? What are the characteristics of intercultural professionals? What are the pros and cons of collaboration between social workers and intercultural mediators? This study shows that local social services need to work with intercultural mediators, allowing local social services to implement various strategies for tackling cultural and linguistic barriers with their clients and rely on professionals inside or outside their own. Furthermore, intercultural mediators tend to have weak and heterogeneous training backgrounds and working conditions. This article aims to contribute to the debate on the welfare reform process to support migrants and their descendants’ equal rights and participation in society, highlighting the need for collaboration between interculturally aware social workers and intercultural mediators to tackle institutional structural weaknesses in such professions as part of an organisational innovation process in social-welfare institutions.     

‘Inching’ towards interculturalism: ambiguities and tensions in teachers’ ideologies and practices in the context of Cyprus

ABSTRACT

This research examines teachers’ conceptualisations of diversity and intercultural education. It also investigates the teaching approaches adopted by teachers within their culturally diverse classrooms. More specifically, the current project investigates the following research questions: how do teachers define and understand the concept of intercultural education; what practices do they adopt (or not) to promote intercultural education in their classrooms; what barriers do they perceive in their efforts to teach in more intercultural ways; what are their suggestions for implementing intercultural education in more successful ways? Observations and interviews took place with twenty teachers from ten schools in Cyprus. Our data shows that two ideological positions co-existed in teachers’ discourses, namely: the monocultural approach (cultural-deficiency perspective), and the multicultural approach (cultural-celebratory perspective). We also examined how the ambiguities and contradictions in teachers’ ideologies influenced their teaching and practices. In their daily routines, teachers seemed to adopt a teaching-as-usual approach, while occasionally engaging in ‘intercultural moments’, which included their rare attempts to differentiate or add cultural content to their teaching.     

Intercultural education in everyday practice

While there is substantive work in intercultural education, especially that which proposes intellectual or conceptual road maps for pedagogic interculturalism and, more specifically for the classroom, there is a need to surface the complexity of everyday intercultural classroom practices. This article reflects on some Singapore students’ responses to materials designed to help them engage critically with intercultural issues. These responses can be categorized into three types of tajectories: reifying, critical and conflicted. Reifying practices basically mean that students essentialize individuals, communities and countries despite (and perhaps because of) the intercultural approach to the teaching of communication. Critical trajectories, on the other hand, showcase students’ ability to identify stereotypes and provide much more nuanced characterizations of individuals and countries. Conflicted trajectories, however, seem to be the most dominant classroom practice: these are attempts of students to be critical but, in practice, their criticality is enmeshed in reifying tendencies. In other words, ‘criticality’ as it is envisioned is always incomplete on the ground. Thus, we need micro-lenses in interculturalism and intercultural education to help us critically reflect on and surface essentialisms, tensions and struggles in everyday classroom practice.     

Understanding immigrant internal publics of organizations: Immigrant professionals’ adaptation and identity development

ABSTRACT

Immigrant professionals (IPs) compose important internal publics in U.S. organizations. This study examined the processes of intercultural identity development through IPs’ stress, adaptation, and intercultural communication competence, as well as the outcomes of such identity development. Twenty-three interviews with Indian IPs in a major southern cosmopolitan area in the United States revealed three types of stressors: insufficiency in culture-specific knowledge and skills, ineffective expression, and imbalance in home and host social communication. Adaptation responses included active language and culture learning, perspective taking, compromising, ignoring, passive acceptance, and active initiating and participating in social interactions. Further, IPs demonstrated three major types of intercultural identities: integrated with both cultures, non-integrated (leaning more toward either home or host culture), and ambivalent (feeling rootless and uncertain about what culture to teach their children). In the context of intercultural identity development, the concepts of avowed and ascribed identities become even more nuanced. This study contributes to research in public relations by deepening the understanding of organizations’ immigrant internal publics and facilitating more effective relationship management with these publics.     

Effects of critical incident tasks on the intercultural competence of English non-majors

ABSTRACT

In this internationalised world, graduate employability in terms of intercultural communication skills needs to be taken into account in higher education. The present study aims to explore the effects of critical incident task instruction on English non-majored undergraduates’ intercultural competence. One group of students received ten weeks of instruction with one critical incident task per week and another group received standard English classes. Data were collected from the students’ pre- and post-test. The results showed a significant and strong effect of the intervention with critical incident tasks. Implications for educational practice are presented for further teaching with critical incident tasks.     

Developing the critical intercultural class-space: theoretical implications and pragmatic applications of critical intercultural communication pedagogy

Teaching intercultural communication presents pedagogical challenges due to the breadth and depth of the discipline and its recent critical turn. Teaching it with a social justice mission, and guiding students to understand critical and postcolonial approaches to its practice, requires complex and multifaceted approaches so as not to oppress or misrepresent marginalised populations. This essay addresses critical intercultural communication pedagogy as a shared system of knowledge among teachers and students, all participants in the cyclical process of learning. Critical intercultural communication pedagogy is presented from a Freirean perspective, as shared ownership of knowledge, including didactic, experiential and reflexive approaches to learning, with educational outcomes that include empathy, connection and ethical responsibilities towards social justice globally and locally. First, several definitions and theoretical perspectives are traced. Next, three short case studies of critical intercultural communication pedagogy (CICP) present varying approaches to teaching critical intercultural issues across diverse populations. Each of the studies is analysed for how the application of different CICP and cosmopolitan pedagogical activities impacts educational outcomes and processes for intercultural students. Finally, several recommendations are given for future scholarship, along with a concluding remark that describes the work’s contribution to critical intercultural communication pedagogy and to the discipline as a whole.     

The relationship between religious education and intercultural education

ABSTRACT

Religious education and intercultural education are seen by some to be in tension with each other, and by others as two sides of the same coin. The explanations for this unsettled relationship may be found in the different histories of the two fields. Intercultural education has become a cross curricular priority, resulting from rather recent developments marked by cultural complexity, following globalisation and migration processes of the last 50 years or so. Religious education has a long history of being a distinct school subject, much influenced by differing national and religious cultural heritages and which, during the last half century, has begun to address the issues of religious and world view diversity. In several countries today, religious education in the publicly funded school is conceived as non-confessional and deals with a diversity of religions and world views. Religious education may be the subject where socio-cultural differences are most visible and where the challenges of diversity are put to the test. This raises a series of challenges to curriculum designers and teachers in classrooms; the article will address some of them and suggest ways forward for teacher education and school practice.     

Developing elementary school students’ intercultural competence through teacher-led tutoring action plans on intercultural education

The increasing cultural diversity in the current Spanish educational system has had dramatic consequences for school population demography and relationships between students in culturally diverse classrooms. In this context, the development of students’ intercultural competence can contribute to strengthening communication, as well as preventing misunderstandings and coexistence problems. In this study, the effects of a teacher-led intercultural tutoring action programme (TAP) on elementary students’ intercultural competence (IC) were assessed as a function of treatment condition and grade level. Participants were 187 third- to sixth-grade pupils (84% Spaniards and 16% immigrants) who were assigned randomly to treatment conditions (TAP versus comparison). After 20 weeks of programme implementation, the findings revealed that the TAP was successful. Conceptual intercultural competence was better achieved by fifth- to sixth-grade students, while IC skills and attitudes were significantly better developed by third- to fourth-grade students. Implications for teachers and counsellors/schools psychologists are discussed.