Components of intercultural identity: towards an effective integration policy

This research focuses on a group of religious students who integrated into a nonreligious school in order to understand the characteristics of their intercultural identity. I suggest a new perspective in which intercultural identity is analyzed by itself rather than analyzing acculturation strategies taken by the individual. Using an in-depth analysis of the presented case study, I argue that intercultural identity is characterized by three types of components: core, reinterpreted, and transient. Thus, while the existing bidimensional model defines integration as the simultaneous acceptance of different cultures as they are, the present study stresses the importance of reinterpreting components from both cultures as a basis for integration. Accordingly, this paper suggests that an effective integration policy encourages in the individual the ability to develop the reinterpreted components. This type of approach might promote a positive correlation, defined by prior research as ambivalent, between integration and the individual’s emotional well-being and educational achievements.     

Some Epistemic and Methodological Challenges within an Intercultural Experience

My experience with the Intercultural Indigenous System of Learning and Studies (SIIDAE) in Chiapas gave rise to a dialogue on two different levels: intercultural and interdisciplinary. I understand dialogue here as a very complex model of translation that, at the same time, challenges the unilateral conception of translation. This article reports the decolonial challenges raised by SIIDAE during our dialogue and responds to these challenges by proposing an intercultural reflection on anthropological practice and on its geohistorical context, and by showing the need of an intercultural transformation of society and of anthropology itself.     

Turbulence in intercultural communication education (ICE): does it affect higher education?

This article examines a rather neglected context of intercultural education: intercultural communication education (ICE). ICE can be found in different fields such as business, applied linguistics, intercultural communication and health education, amongst others. The authors start by reviewing the latest and ongoing changes (‘turbulences’) in the way that ‘intercultural’ is conceptualized in this field and form a template for analysing a focus group with lecturers focusing on intercultural communication in the Nordic country of Finland. Our analysis shows that these practitioners, who are also researchers specialized in intercultural communication, share discourses about the importance of the ‘intercultural’ in education, but that they are unable to clearly position themselves within the existing polysemic definitions and approaches. The current turbulences seem to have very little coherent impact on the way they talk about the ‘intercultural’.     

On the Conflicts in the Perspective of Intercultural Communication in Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club

The study of intercultural communication is a subject which focuses on conflicts between people of different backgrounds coming to communicate and on the solutions for these conflicts.In China,it is developing rapidly and more and more important and emphasis have been placed on it.From an intercultural communication approach,I will contrastively analyze the conflicts experienced by Chinese mothers and Americanized daughters in The Joy Luck Club.By comparatively analyzing the differences between two cultures,we may enhance the understanding of our own culture and also make it easier for us to grasp the characteristics of each culture.     

Intercultural education: theory and practice

The paper examines the theoretical position of intercultural educational studies. It begins by stressing the vital importance of intercultural education and the progress that has been made in recent times. It then turns to the terminological shift that occurred two decades ago, from multicultural to intercultural education, which was accepted unquestioningly at the time. Retrospectively, we might ask what was the discursive strategy of this lexical change. Did it not serve to disguise the realities of much cultural interaction: conquest, slave trade, genocide? What are the theoretical (as distinct from the moral) premises of intercultural education? Is the aspiration realistically for an education able to negotiate between cultures rather than to show that there is more than one culture? As the subject appears not to be tightly focused, so the context is also under‐theorized and effectively de‐politicized. The international political, economic and cultural contextualization (globalization) of intercultural education is essential to its understanding. Is there an international view of intercultural education, or is it rather a few paradigmatic examples? The paper shows how the development of a social sciences and comparative perspective might assist the theoretical deficit suggested above.     

Beratung virtueller Teams im interkulturellen Kontext – ein Bericht aus der Praxis

Tasks are nowadays increasingly assigned to teams composed of members from different cultures who have to work together regardless of country borders or time zones. This causes special challenges for all parties involved in such work settings. Consultancy has accordingly to face the resulting increase of complexity: within the scope of an intercultural consulting process it becomes vital to take into consideration the often postulated focus on both differences and commonalities as well as to consider the dynamics within team processes. This article tries to reflect our work with “virtual teams” which consist of members having different cultures. We try to combine popular intercultural models with a systemic-constructivistic approach as well as with knowledge about group dynamics in order to make sure that a productive outcome is possible in a consulting process. In doing so we work on three levels: individual reflection with the participants’ own culture which is then combined with those of the other team members and then finally the group’s specific team culture is addressed and discussed. At the end of the article we summarize implications for consulting and management when working with virtual teams in an intercultural setting.     

Intercultural literacy dialogue: international assessment moderation in early childhood teacher education

ABSTRACT

This research reports intercultural dialogue of meaning making in literacy by lecturers, engaged with an assessment moderation process of early childhood education (ECE) preservice teacher education across Australia, New Zealand and Sweden. The purpose of the dialogue was to inform pedagogical and conceptual knowledge in their courses. The research question is: How does intercultural dialogue inform teacher education literacy practices? Methods include (1) a blind assessment review process using 30 examples from ‘high’ to ‘low’ exemplars of ECE students’ literacy assessment annotations, some from each country, and (2) textual analysis of intercultural student feedback and reflection from student forum comments and, semi-structured reflexive interviews with students about the assessment moderation process. Rich academic reflections on the data have led to our recommendations that the conceptual framework of intercultural praxis could be applied in early childhood preservice teacher education practice. Further, we suggest there are increased possibilities for the use of intercultural literacy with ECE preservice student teachers using virtual and explicit collaborations and texts as explained in this research.     

The religious and worldview dimension of intercultural education: the Council of Europe’s contribution

ABSTRACT

This article traces the Council of Europe’s work on teaching about religions and non-religious worldviews, regarded as an important contributor to intercultural education. It explains why studies of religions came late in the Council of Europe’s educational work and traces the development of a project which led to a Recommendation from its Committee of Ministers on teaching about religions and non-religious worldviews. It summarises follow-up work by the Council of Europe and the European Wergeland Centre, which led to the publication of Signposts. It outlines new research on themes identified in Signposts and discusses the relationship between intercultural education and studies of religions, in the context of the Council of Europe and responds to criticisms of its work. An account of the development of a new teacher training module, based on Signposts, is given. The module can be adapted for use in Council of Europe member states and in different settings, including university and school-based teacher training. An account is given of the work of the module’s writing group, its structure and chapters, the piloting undertaken and how it could develop. Finally, this article introduces the concept of ‘dialogical liberalism’, aiming to promote dialogue and discussion, rather than imposing equality.     

Interculturalism in Times of Crisis

This article locates the discussion of this Special Section within the wider analysis of Interculturalism and intercultural dialogue as a new way of framing dynamic inter‐ethnic and broader community relations, and considering how perceived and real crisis affects both states’ and societys’ understandings of ethnicity, culture and diversity. Taking cases from Catalonia, Spain, the European Union, this Special Section's multi‐level approach illustrates how intercultural dialogue can be developed at the sub‐State, State, Region and international levels. By surveying the articles in the Special Section, this introduction critiques the Interculturalism framework and develops it. Crucially, drawing out insights from across these different types of groupings and from theorists offering a range of perspectives, this collection is able to offer new insights on Interculturalism, its relations with Multiculturalism, and forms of intercultural dialogue.     

European Perspectives on Intercultural Communication

Some of the major aspects of intercultural communication in Italy in particular, and in Europe in general, are summarised in this paper. In the wake of developments in favour of political and social minority rights in the United States, voluntary movements in Europe arose in the 1970s and became stronger in the 1990s. Among their many activities, volunteers working to further intercultural education have taken on the role of multipliers, spreading the application of intercultural learning. They have served alternately as trainers of young people and students of experts, functioning as hinges between teaching and learning. In many European countries, intercultural education in schools is still left to volunteer initiatives. The peculiarity of intercultural communication lies in its pragmatic approach to reality. It is based on a few abstract general truths, such as the fact that all humans have a culture, value orientation, etc. allowing them to understand and interpret an endless amount of practical experiences. Here, we shall present an anthropological approach to intercultural relations, considering various issues, such as the differences between cultural and national identities, the development of ethnocentrism as a response to perceived foreign threats, and the differences between assimilation, inclusion and integration. The focus on the Mediterranean region provides an example of the intercultural communication that takes place among many western and eastern cultures.     

Some issues for cooperative learning and intercultural education

This article connects the two fields of cooperative learning and intercultural education. We argue that cooperative learning strategies need to be equipped with intercultural understandings. Two key points that are raised here are: (1) that issues of competitiveness amongst learners and students must be dealt with head on rather than treating it from the sidelines or by brushing them aside; and (2) for learning to take place in a truly cooperative manner, there must be an emphasis on an intercultural focus within the curriculum; the content of knowledge within the curriculum needs to be non-centric. This article emphasizes that cooperative learning strategies are effective when the curricular knowledge taught in the school is drawn from all groups (dominant, subordinate or minority groups).     

Qur’anic education and non-confessional RE: an intercultural perspective

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the reported experiences of Muslim students that regularly shift between Muslim ‘supplementary education’ (including its traditional confessional focus on learning to read Arabic and then memorise and recite the Qur’an) and mainstream school education (including its ‘inclusive’ form of religious education’). The aim has been to better comprehend how these students make sense of this dual educational experience while negotiating the knowledge, skills, and values that are taught to them by two often seemingly disparate institutions. A further aim is to place our findings within the growing field of intercultural education. Though both types of education are often thought to be distinct and oppositional – the former as non-confessional and ‘modern’, the latter as confessional and ‘outmoded’ – both English and Swedish students were able to identify a degree of symbiosis between the two, particularly in relation to the process of memorisation. Thus, it became increasingly clear to the researchers that Muslim student reflection on their participation in both traditions of education had an intercultural dimension in the sense of encouraging dialogue and discussion across educational cultures prompting new knowledge and understanding. This article lays out some of the evidence for this conclusion.     

Problems and Possibilities of Dialogue Across Cultures

In a liberal, democratic culturally plural society, it is to be expected that people will differ in their views of the good life and that they will proceed differently in cognitive, moral and political matters. This paper argues that, although the problems of inter-ethnic conflict, cultural or ethnic differences pose a challenge, they do not pose an insurmountable challenge to the possibilities of dialogue across cultures. Granting this, teachers and educators should be asking themselves: what positive conditions, norms and principles make dialogue across cultures possible and what can they do to promote those conditions, norms and principles. The paper assumes a context of diversity of cultural values and offers some guidelines for the conduct of dialogue across cultures. The assumption here is, that by being conscious of the successes and failures, aims and objectives, norms, principles and procedures of dialogue, teachers and other relevant individuals would be clearer about how to proceed in dialogue or discussion across cultures and what to expect from such dialogue.     

Ethnographic Film as Exchange

This paper discusses how film impacts on the relationship between researchers/filmmakers and their collaborators in the field. Film can function as a gift that strengthens reciprocal relationships and it is a medium that facilitates dialogue and intercultural exchange. The author argues that film has great potential for eliciting cultural differences and enhancing intercultural communication as people relate to the same visual material from their different perspectives more easily than in the case of written text. Through ‘feedback’ and the ‘parallax effect’ film contributes to a reflective space both for the researchers and their local collaborators. Local collaborators often have different stakes in the film and the filmmakers may find themselves in the role of circumstantial activists with only limited control over the film's use and impact once it is produced.     

Examples of practice: an intercultural approach to translate Romanian children’s folklore into Spanish

Due to the great number of Romanian pupils in Spanish public school, the local administration organises extra-curricular Romanian courses in order to preserve the Romanian language and culture. This is a way to contribute to build and consolidate a bicultural and bilingual profile of the young people. Besides, it is also an opportunity to align with plurilingual and pluricultural competence established by The Common European Framework of References for Languages (2002). Based on the premise that “children's literature is an intercultural instrument”, I choose as corpus the Romanian children's folklore represented by games, formula-songs, recital-stories, household words, incantations, riddles and lullabies to translate into Spanish. After the translations, Romanian children had to find similarities and differences between the Romanian and Spanish children's songs, in order to augment the knowledge about both cultures.     

Citizenship in the classroom: transferring and transforming transcultural values

The aim of the paper is to present and discuss a Report from a Comenius 2.1 project, aimed at developing teachers’ interpersonal, intercultural, social and civic competence. The study presented in the report was a multiple case study, and the methods for collecting data were focus group dialogues (with 34 teacher students), one video recording in each country and a document analysis of a European overview of citizenship education in Europe. Five countries participated in the study (the Netherlands, Portugal, Poland, the UK and Sweden) and the study focused on 12 year‐old pupils. One conclusion was that teacher education needs to focus more on horizontal classroom dialogue if goals for citizenship education are to be reached.     

The role of reflexive thought in the achievement of intercultural competence

ABSTRACT

Reflexivity refers to the capacity for individuals to understand the cultural system and manage their own position within it. Reflexivity is a key concept in the understanding of intercultural communication, particularly in recognising the ability for individuals to understand and adapt to new cultural contexts. However, the prevailing methods used in intercultural communication (namely that of intercultural competencies) do not place a great emphasis on the role of reflexivity in achieving cultural adaptation. In this paper, I argue for the central positioning of the concept of reflexivity in intercultural education as a mechanism which mediates between intercultural experiences and individual behaviour. I present evidence of the reflexive sequence (subject-object-subject) from the reflections of a cohort of students (n = 19). Finally, I suggest a pedagogical instrument (a heuristic) for empirically exploring reflexivity in intercultural communication.     

Moral education as intercultural moral education

In a diverse country such as Peru, moral education should reflect social, cultural, political and spiritual dilemmas of both indigenous and non-indigenous peoples and their communities. To promote understanding and respect amongst people from different sociocultural backgrounds, moral education should encourage a dialogue between indigenous values and mainstream hegemonic values. In this article, we argue for the need to conceptualise moral education as intercultural. Against a common view that portraits indigenous people as incommensurable, that is, as trapped in their own radically different moral perspective, our own research in Shipibo-Konibo and Asháninka communities show that indigenous people display a moral point of view when analysing cultural traditions and practices. This moral point of view appears intertwined with their cultural values and ethnic identities and allows intercultural dialogue. In this vein, we argue for the need to incorporate intercultural moral conflicts and dilemmas into moral education to promote understanding and respect for others.