Student portfolios as windows into intercultural knowledge and knowing

This research paper deals with intercultural knowledge and knowing as displayed in higher education student portfolios. The portfolios were written by student pairs taking a global education course at Centria University of Applied Sciences, Finland, during seven academic years. Conceptual metaphor theory and metaphor analysis were utilised to explore intercultural knowledge and knowing in the portfolio texts. The study is one of the few metaphor analyses conducted in the context of intercultural/global education. For the analysis, we selected a sample of student portfolios that represented both degree-taking students and exchange students. In this study, interculturality was defined as interaction of people representing various cultural backgrounds, world-views and identities. The research questions were the following: What conceptual metaphors and metonymies do the students utilise when writing about culture and interculturality? What main conceptions of culture and interculturality do the metaphors and metonymies reflect? In the result section of this paper, we provide citations of portfolio text to discuss the four most frequently occurring metaphors and metonymies. We also discuss our interpretations about the underlying conceptions of culture and their significance for the practice of intercultural education.     

Developing intercultural understanding for study abroad: students’ and teachers’ perspectives on pre-departure intercultural learning

This study reports on students’ and teachers’ perspectives on a programme designed to develop Erasmus students’ intercultural understanding prior to going abroad. We aimed to understand how students and their teachers perceived pre-departure materials in promoting their awareness of key concepts related to interculturality (e.g., essentialism, stereotyping, otherising) during an intercultural education course for mobile students. Twenty pre-departure Erasmus undergraduate students from an Italian university, four teachers and one observer participated in the study. Seven hours of audio/video recordings of classroom discussions and teachers’ retrospective narratives were analysed thematically. Although students initially subverted the goals of one of the tasks, they demonstrated foundations of intercultural thinking; followed by movement from self-interest to intercultural awareness of the other; and finally, developing intercultural awareness, supported through opportunities to express emotions/feelings and discussion and application of key concepts of interculturality. Teachers’/observer’s perspectives confirmed the quality and flexibility of the materials in developing students’ intercultural awareness. The findings suggest that pre-departure materials can help students to recognise variety and complexity in self and others in intercultural encounters. But students’ primary needs for practical information should first be satisfied; interactive spaces for expressing emotion and feelings are important for understanding self and others; and scaffolding activities help students to understand intercultural concepts.     

Cultural Responsiveness: a framework for re-thinking students’ interculturality through study abroad

While intercultural competence is commonly a goal of university study abroad programmes, debates around criteria for assessing this competence have highlighted the challenges in appropriately identifying students’ intercultural learning in relation to specific university programmes. To overcome these issues, this research moves beyond conceptualising the intercultural in terms of ‘competence’ and instead proposes a framework termed Cultural Responsiveness to illustrate students’ intercultural learning. Through questionnaires and interviews, the experiences and perceptions of undergraduate students after a year of exchange in France or Switzerland were collected and analysed. Using the Cultural Responsiveness framework, three parameters of students’ intercultural experiences emerged: Awareness, Engagement and Bringing Knowledge Home.     

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.     

Personal Growth Towards Intercultural Competence Through an International Field Education Programme

Abstract

An international social work field education programme at the University of South Australia provides social work students with the opportunity to develop intercultural skills and intercultural sensitivity. The programme is conceptualised within a developmental framework that enables the identification of stages of personal growth and professional development from ethnocentrism to ‘interculturality’ or intercultural sensitivity. This framework, alongside the use of a clear ethical perspective and the reflective practice process, is a useful resource to assist students to identify their level of sophistication of cross-cultural competence and to respond to them in ways that facilitate their growth and development towards competent social workers working with difference and across cultures.     

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.     

Mediating transnational spaces: international students and intercultural responsibility

Despite the significant body of literature on international students’ intercultural development, the core issue of how they see their own responsibility in transnational intercultural spaces is largely neglected. This paper addresses this paucity by examining the intercultural responsibility perceived by international students. It is based on a four-year study that includes interviews with 105 international students and fieldwork in vocational education institutions. It draws on positioning theory and three key concepts: intercultural competence, intercultural capital and national attachment to interpret the nature of international students’ intercultural responsibility. The research underscores four main forms of intercultural responsibility perceived by international students: responsibility to represent the home country, responsibility to respect the host country, responsibility to assimilate into the host culture and responsibility to integrate into the host culture. Intercultural responsibility can emerge from international students’ national attachment and be embedded in their intrinsic commitment and imagination of their role in representing their home country in a transnational space. Intercultural responsibility can also manifest in international students’ self-determined responsibility to respect, accommodate or integrate into the host culture. However, the finding shows that international students’ act of positioning at the periphery of the host community and their perceived responsibility to assimilate into the host culture precludes their capacity to engage in and negotiate reciprocal and respectful intercultural interactions. The study highlights the role of international students’ self-positioning between and across home and host cultures in underpinning their perceived responsibility in transnational spaces.     

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.     

Teaching tourism in Jamaica: developing students’ critical consciousness and intercultural competence

Within this article, we convey ideas about stereotypes and ethnic supremacy that many university students tend to hold about Jamaica and the challenges of disabusing travellers of these notions and to achieve educational goals related to equity, diversity and inclusivity. We explore the concept of the tourism imaginary and key ideas in critical pedagogy, critical literacy and critical race theory that guided our course development, and we explain how we used these concepts as a framework for building intercultural competence within our student population. By addressing the complexities of Jamaica’s transnational cultural identity and using tourism to deconstruct the idea of experiencing an ‘authentic’ Jamaica, this two-part immersion course works to shift student consciousness from racial and ethnic superiority to a place of intercultural competence.     

When difference creates dissonance: understanding the ‘engine’ of intercultural learning in study abroad

Why do some study abroad students improve their intercultural skills, while others revert to less sophisticated ways of making sense of cultural difference? Both intercultural competence theory and transformative learning theory attempt to explain why student intercultural learning occurs, but they only provide partial answers. Building on our previous study assessing intercultural competence in a 2015 field school in India, this article applies the concept of cognitive dissonance to explain the process behind intercultural learning. In the context of study abroad, students experience cognitive dissonance when they encounter cultural differences or similarities that confound previously held expectations about culture. Adapting Maertz, Hassan, and Magnusson’s cognitive dissonance resolution framework, we employ qualitative analysis of students’ written reflections to show how the resolution of cognitive dissonance could act as the ‘engine’ of intercultural learning.     

Indigenous studies and intercultural education: the impact of a place‐based primary‐school program

The article presents a student‐impact assessment of a model two‐year place‐based intercultural approach to indigenous education. Students at Lewis & Clark Primary School in Missoula, Montana, connected face‐to‐face with tribal educators and members residing in the nearby American Indian reservation. The program’s learning outcomes included impressive gains in knowledge of Montana tribes, fewer stereotypical images, enhanced consciousness about the histories and cultures of the place in which students’ reside, heightened appreciation for and connectedness with Native Americans, and increased cultural awareness. The power of the place‐based intercultural‐education approach is that K‐5 students can acquire cultural knowledge, break stereotypes, and develop new appreciation for, and interest in, diverse peoples and issues by directly experiencing the local context in which diversity resides.     

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.     

Intercultural education through a bilingual children’s rights project: reflections on its possibilities and challenges with young learners

Despite the growing importance of intercultural education, literature is still lacking in related research with young learners. This study reports on a yearlong university–school collaborative research project that aimed to promote students’ intercultural competence and critical bi-literacy skills through their exploration of the issue of children’s rights. Grounded in the critical perspectives of intercultural pedagogy and dynamic bi-/multilingualism, the two collaborating Grade 3 teachers engaged their students in critical inquiry of children’s rights in both English and French. Through a range of hybrid translanguage literacy practices and experiential learning activities, students came to understand what children’s rights are and appreciate the importance of solidarity, equity, and compassion. Apart from highlighting some activities developed during this project and the impact of the activities on student participants, the study also attempts to critically reflect on some of the challenges in conducting intercultural education with young learners, in particular their emergent but conflicted understanding of other cultures. Further, the study speaks to the issue of how such an important education can be practiced in a non-reductionist and non-simplistic manner yet still be accessible to young learners.     

Intercultural competencies: what students in study and placement mobility should be learning

When promoting intercultural learning in the context of study and placement mobility, intercultural educators are specifying what students should be learning. Research not only confirms the genuine impact of real-life intercultural contact on intercultural learning, but also shows how this impact can be enhanced through institutional support and the integration of intercultural learning into the curriculum. In this position paper, we propose a number of considerations that need to be taken into account in setting learning objectives for mobile students. Referring to research and policy documents mostly in relation to the European mobility context, we address consecutively what students are learning in study and placement mobility; what they say they want to learn; what they should learn for; and finally, what they should be learning. We conclude that intercultural educators should pay heed to what students are actually learning in study and placement mobility over a time span that transcends the current sojourn abroad. We also recommend that educators take steps to support students in mobilising the intercultural skills they acquired abroad for increased employability.     

Deliberations on the development of an intercultural competence curriculum

Committed to developing an institution-wide intercultural competence curriculum for master’s-level students preparing for international careers, a team of nine professors from across disciplines deliberated for a year on their fundamental understandings of intercultural competence and what it would mean to facilitate the development of that competence in students. This article recounts the team’s philosophical debates related to intercultural competence: definitions, effective methods of teaching, intersectionality of identities, Western bias in the literature, power and inequity, and the role of language learning. The deliberations became the foundation for an institution-wide curriculum, focused on helping graduates to be not only effective workers and managers in multicultural settings, but also to be leaders in social change. This article shares the conversations and considerations of the planning process and the breadth and emphasis of the curriculum that emerged. Reflections on students’ learning and recommendations for curriculum developers are offered.     

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.     

Culture instead of politics: negotiating ‘Otherness’ in intercultural educational activity

Programmes based on intercultural encounters with the ‘Other’ place culture and cultural difference at their centre. ‘Cultural discourse’ has even been defined as a new epistemology and praxis that plays a key role in the process of recognition. In the light of these assumptions, this study used ethnographic field work to examine the ways culture was employed by Palestinian and Jewish students who took part in an intercultural programme in a large academic institution in Israel (2006–2010). The findings reveal two major discursive practices that were used during the meetings: individuation and collectivisation of culture. Individuation was used mostly by the Jewish group and served to emphasise the particularity of the participants. Collectivisation was used mostly by the Palestinian group and served to emphasise the particularity of the group. The different ways both practices used culture served to position majority–minority rhetoric outside national political contexts. Thus, by revealing the way power relations were discursively re-produced by the use of culture, these findings problematise the role and authority given to culture in encounters with the ‘Other’.     

Integrating entertainment and critical pedagogy for multicultural pre-service teachers: film watching during the lecture hours of higher education

This article discusses the pedagogical opportunities to use film as a tool to supplement lecture and classroom learning activities in a pre-service teachers’ course in a Malaysian higher education setting. While the multicultural participants participated in two academic courses to learn how to teach spoken English to young learners, movie segments were usually introduced in the middle of lecture periods before the lecturer moved to another topic. Movie watching was connected to follow-up activities such as classroom discussion, and later in the second course, dramatic dialogue practices. Results indicated that film watching was effective in providing students with a healthy outlet for boredom or stress and refreshing moments to recharge their attention span. Furthermore, film watching was perceived as effective in promoting critical thinking and intercultural competence, resulting in attitudinal growth regarding openness to other cultures and different people. This study encourages the use of films during lecture periods to make the academic learning process fun and to provide significant opportunities to promote learners’ intercultural competence and expand their perspective of multiple educational and social issues, which is the essence of critical pedagogy.     

Interculturalism in Italian primary schools with a high concentration of immigrant students

The present article focuses on quantitative research carried out on a statistically representative sample of Italian primary schools with a high concentration of immigrant students. Research data show that schools with a higher number of immigrant students offer a greater number and a wider variety of intercultural initiatives. The presence of immigrant students serves as an effective stimulus in enhancing intercultural approaches. Furthermore, the opinions of head teachers about the proposal of ‘separate classes’ for immigrant students and the proposed ‘limit of 30% on the presence’ of immigrant students are negative. These judgements do not change in a statistically significant manner in relation to concentration of immigrant students: in particular, higher rates of immigrant students are not related to more positive opinions. Continuing education on intercultural issues is widely adopted, mainly on behalf of teachers and less often on behalf of head teachers and other school personnel. Finally, activities by ‘linguistic facilitators’ and ‘linguistic and cultural mediators’ are not significantly related to a decrease in perceived concern regarding problematic situations.