Intercultural competence is the ability to communicate effectively with people of other cultures.
- Appropriately: valued rules, norms, and expectations of the relationship are not violated significantly.
- Effectively: values goals or rewards (relative to costs and alternatives) are accomplished.
In interactions with people from different cultures, a person who is interculturally competent understands the culture-specific concepts of perception, thinking, feeling and acting.
Includes the acceptance, recognition and enhancing of diversity in the classroom, and eliminating mechanisms of prejudices and discrimination.AT THE TEACHING PRACTISE
I can truly say that the teacher we were observing during our teaching practice had the ability to communicate within all the different cultures present in the class. He did not make any distinction at all and had been treating all equally. Additionally, he left no room for misunderstandings, demonstrating this way his ability to communicate with all of them.
Interpersonal competence: Interpersonally competent as an international primary school teacher shows good leadership. He/she creates a friendly and cooperative atmosphere and stimulates and achieves open intercultural and international communication.
"The Interpersonal competence domain focuses on students’ ability to interact with others and with the greater community. Competence in this domain includes the ability to foster and maintain healthy, mutually beneficial relationships with others, and the capacity for interdependence and collaboration."
AT THE TEACHING PRACTISE
Honestly, I did not see him taking any action in particular for stimulating an intercultural communication or even showing good leadership. He did not create a friendly and cooperative atmosphere, he remained just neutral. I think he lacked skills to create an environment where students feel motivated about the activities that were being carried out in the classroom. I had the feeling that he did not get involved in the relationships inside the class between the pupils.
So basically, he was explaining the activities, answering the questions, and promoting teamwork. Personally, I think is very important that in addition to a good organization at the institutional level, the teacher has to meet the objective of stimulating and promote the interest of the activities that are being carried out.
Pedagogical competence: stimulate children's socio-emotional and moral development.
“Pedagogical competence can be described as the ability and the will to regularly apply the attitude, knowledge and skills that promote the learning of the teacher’s students. This shall take place in accordance with the goals that are being aimed at and the existing framework and presupposes continuous development of the teacher’s own competence and course design.”(Giertz, 2003, p.94)
1. Shall be based on that which supports the students’ learning.
2. Shall include the teacher’s ability to develop with the support of theory and to make public their practice - Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.
3. Shall make it possible to describe a threshold value (the lowest level) and a progression of pedagogical competence.
AT THE TEACHING PRACTISE
I think the teacher was concerned about this competence, and we had the pleasure of witnessing one of his teaching strategies consistent in making some of his students, who were afraid of public speaking, lose the fear gradually. We were not at the school enough time to observe the results, but he was sure that his method was the best way to do it. My team and I had explained this particular case in the section "The study case: fear of public speaking".
Subject knowledge & methodological competence: must help children to acquire the necessary cultural and international baggage, which each citizen in the international society needs to be a full member of society.
- Subject knowledge: psychologist Shmuel Shulman identifies three kinds:
- Content knowledge is what most people would perhaps think of simply as ‘knowledge’, the kind of knowledge that comes from textbooks and reference books.
- Curricular knowledge refers to what you know about the formally defined curriculum for your age range.
- Pedagogic subject knowledge is the knowledge that practitioners have which helps them to teach and provide support as children develop their own personal subject knowledge.
- Methodological competence: is the procedure used to help children to acquire the necessary cultural and international baggage.
AT THE TEACHING PRACTISE
The teacher of our school used different textbooks. But he brought copies for each pupil of the pages with which they had to work on each day. He was very focused on the content knowledge, being absolutely not creative or improvise in that regard. I do not know if the curricular knowledge were being carried out. The only information we have though is that they were following the Danish curriculum. But I would say that the fact that he was taking over of his class always bearing in mind that it is the one with the lowest level on the English language of its grade, and adapting his explanations and annotations, therefore, made that the pedagogic subject knowledge was achieved successfully.
The methodology used by the teacher was based on the division of a class of the same course into groups according to the level of English. Here is where he was taking over the class with the lowest level of English, and was using textbooks with a lower level than the others, explaining the activities in English first, and translating all into danish afterwards, or even carrying out some activities as a solution for individual problems (see the case "Fear of public speaking" posted on this blog).
Organizational competence: must create a well-organized, neat and task-orientated international and intercultural atmosphere in the classroom.
AT THE TEACHING PRACTISE
I did not have the opportunity to observe deeper on the internal organization, and there was not really multicultural environment either, being as there was not an international school, so the official language was Danish and there was such a little diversity.
Competency for collaborating with colleagues: must be competent in collaborating with his/her colleagues.
AT THE TEACHING PRACTISE
I did not have the opportunity to attend to one of their meetings, and even if I could I would not have been able to understand it. So I can not talk specifically about whether the teacher of the class we were observing had or not competency to collaborate with colleagues or in which level. But I had some conversations with other teachers about it, and they told me that communication in the school between the teachers is very fluent, clear and efficient. They sit down very often to talk about general and specific problems, find a solution together and make a plan specifying which task should be performed each of them (if necessary) for the plan to work.
Competency for collaborating with the working environment: must keep in touch with the children's parents.
AT THE TEACHING PRACTISE
I think the fact that the school is situated in a very little town, makes people be closer to each other, and therefore the communication with the parents happens more often, as the teacher also bring his pupils to alternative extracurricular activities such as The Running Club of the town, where I believe that the teacher and the parents also meet, and have the opportunity to know closer whether there is any problem with their children at the school. So, I know they are constantly in touch, but I could not observe if the teacher had or not the skills to carry out properly the communication with the parents.
Competency for reflection and development: must permanently work on his/her personal and professional development.
AT THE TEACHING PRACTISE
The teacher is constantly thinking about how he can make it better for his pupils to achieve the goals in an efficient way. But he did not talk about his personal daily development to improve as a teacher.
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