Multiculturalism and Interculturalism

People often confuse these two concepts, and since I was one of those people, I decided to do a little research to clarify it.

Multiculturalism: relates to communities containing multiple cultures. The term is used in two broad ways, either descriptively (cultural diversity in a specific place) or normatively (ideologies or policies that promote this diversity or its institutionalization).

A multicultural society is one where people from different cultures, nationalities, ethnic and religious groups live in the same area but are not necessarily in contact with one another. What we actually see is that the mutual differences are often the basis for discrimination, where minorities may be tolerated, but are seldom fully accepted or valued. Sometimes, even the law isn’t applied equally to everyone, despite the fact that legal rights exist to counteract these practices.

Interculturalism refers to support for cross-cultural dialogue and challenging self-segregation tendencies within cultures.

An intercultural society is one where people from different cultures, nationalities, ethnic and religious groups live in the same area and keep an open and impartial relationship with one another, within an environment that promotes and encourages the dialog and interaction.

Multicultural education:

• Considers only performing actions in schools where are students from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds.
• It focuses only on the curricular aspects.
• Recognizes the school as a space to recreate ethnic relations, from the static conception of cultures, and considering as a priority interest the differences between them.
• Basically, looks for educational interventions focused on contact strategies of different groups approach.
• Includes numerous cultural topics in the curriculum.

Intercultural education:

• It means to write objectives that incorporate criticism, the free explanation of ideas and open spaces where to express without prejudice. Is working together with the will of all concerned, changing attitudes that predispose to the acquisition of a more relative perspective of the world.
• It has a comprehensive approach that incorporates educational proposals in social projects and is moving towards the establishment of peer relationships.
• Facilitates and promotes exchange processes, interaction, and cooperation between cultures with equal treatment of them.
• It focuses not only on the differences but also similarities.
• Assumes a dynamic concept of culture and cultural identity. 
• Analyzes and critiques cultures.
• Rejects cultural gaps and the organization into a hierarchy of the cultures.
• Shows clear concern among difference and equality.
• Understands cultural diversity as an enriching element, not as a conflict that confirms more differences. But talking about multiculturalism requires to consider the social and educational perspective of the cultural differences. The socialization of students in multicultural contexts is a dynamic and complex process that lasts a lifetime, going through phases of varying intensity.

THE 8 COMPETENCES OF AN INTERNATIONAL TEACHER

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. 

How to become a good International Teacher?

- Language proficiency: developing fluency and accuracy in a second language in listening, speaking, reading and writing. An emphasis on using language for communicative purposes, with the educated native speaker as the goal. Actfl Proficiency (Alice Omaggio-Hadley, 1993)

Alice Omaggio-Hadley is a professor in the department of French at the University of Illinois, where she teaches courses in methodology, supervises teaching assistants, and directs basic language courses.
Her best-known books are:

     - Research in Language Learning: Principles, Processes, and Prospects. The ACTFL (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages) Education Series, 1993.

     - Vis-à-vis: Beginning French (several authors)

- Communicative competence: developing language abilities for effective and appropriate communication within cultural contexts of the target language-and-culture. Includes other specific language competencies: grammatical, sociolinguistic, discourse, strategic.
(Canale & Swain 1980, and Savignon 1983)

Canale & Swain understood communicative competence as a synthesis of an underlying system of knowledge and skill needed for communication. In their concept of communicative competence, knowledge refers to the (conscious or unconscious) knowledge of an individual about language and about other aspects of language use. According to them, there are three types of knowledge:

      - Knowledge of underlying grammatical principles,
      - knowledge of how to use language in a social context in order to fulfill communicative functions,
      - and knowledge of how to combine utterances and communicative functions with respect to discourse principles.

In addition, their concept of skill refers to how an individual can use knowledge in actual communication. According to Canale (1983), skill requires a further distinction between underlying capacity and its manifestation in real communication, that is to say, in performance.
To understand that, it must be understood that Canale (1983), as well as Canale and Swain (1980), pointed at the importance of making a distinction between communicative competence and communicative performance, that is to say, actual performance which is the term Canale used in order to avoid (negative) connotations with Chomsky’s concept of performance.
Some of her best-known books are:

      - Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing,1980.

      - A Theoretical Framework for Communicative Competence, 1981

- Cultural competence: developing the ability to act appropriately (alongside communicating appropriately) in the target culture. Gestures, body movements, action sequences such as nonverbal greetings, table manners, manipulation of cultural products.
(Steele and Suozzo, 1994, Damen, 1987 and Stern, 1983).

Hans Heinrich Stern was Head of the Modern Language Center at the Ontario Institute of Studies in Education from 1998 to 1981 and Professor Emeritus in the Department of Curriculum at the same Institute from 1981 to 1987.

From his published books, we can highlight:

      - Fundamental Concepts of Language Teaching, 1986. H.H. Stern applied linguistics research into its historical and interdisciplinary perspective, giving an authoritative survey of past developments worldwide and establishing a set of guidelines for the future. There are six parts: Clearing the Ground, Historical Perspectives, Concepts of Language, Concepts of Society, Concepts of Language Learning, and Concepts of Language Teaching.

     - Issues and Options in Language Teaching, 1992.

- Intercultural competence: developing the ability to interact effectively and appropriately in intercultural situations, regardless of the cultures involved. (Lustig & Koester, 1999, Samovar, Porter & Stenia,1998, Fantini, 1997). Intercultural competence is also called "cross-cultural competence".

If I had to describe in my own words the concept of Intercultural Competence, I would say that it is the ability to work successfully within and across cultures from which we are surrounded.
Encompasses all knowledge, skills, and personal attributes needed to live and work in a diverse world. This includes cultural sensitivity, intercultural communication skills, personal and collective attitudes toward other cultures, and knowledge about other cultures.

Myron W. Lustig is a renowned teacher, writer, scholar, and researcher. After receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, he had a distinguished career as a professor of communication at San Diego State University (SDSU), where he is working now, besides other merits. He is a former editor of Communication Reports and is currently on the editorial boards of several intercultural communication journals. His teaching and research interests include intercultural group and interpersonal communication theories, methods, and processes. He has gained additional practical and theoretical lessons about Intercultural Competence while teaching intercultural communication to undergraduate and graduate students at Shanghai International Studies University.

Jolene Koester was president of California State University, Northridge, one of the largest and most diverse campuses in the 23 campus that it gained this system, from 2000 to 2011. She worked to make the University more learning-centered and focused on student success. She is currently serving on the board of directors of NAFSA, an association of international educators, among other important associations.

Both are authors of the famous book called Intercultural competence, 1999, which blends both the practical and theoretical, offering students the requisite knowledge, the appropriate motivations, and the relevant skills to function competently with culturally-different others. It provides a discussion of important ethical and social issues relating to intercultural communication and encourages students to apply vivid examples that will prepare them to interact better in intercultural relationships.
We have been discussing in English class a fragment of this book, which I found very interesting, in speaking of stereotypes.

- Intercultural communicative competence: developing intercultural competence and communicative competence. (Byram, 1997)

Michael Byram is a Professor of Education at Durham University, United Kingdom. He is Professor Emeritus since October 2008.
His work in the School comprised initial teacher education and has a Director of Research Degrees with the supervision of research students. He studied French, German and Danish at King’s College Cambridge, and wrote a Ph.D. on Danish literature. Then he taught French and German at the secondary school level and in adult education in an English comprehensive community school. Since being appointed to a post in teacher education at the University of Durham in 1980, he has carried out research into the education of linguistic minorities, foreign language education and student residence abroad.

He is a Programme Adviser to the Council of Europe Language Policy Division and is currently interested in language education policy and the politics of language teaching.

Byram has numerous publications, but the fragment we have been reading in class belongs to the famous book called Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence (Chapter 2: "A model for Intercultural Communicative Competence", 31-55).

What it means to be a teacher?

     

              To be a teacher means to have acquired (because I believe you can acquire them) the necessary skills to be capable to transmit knowledge so that pupils create a positive image of the subject that is being treated. It means to me that independently that some pupils will like and enjoy some subjects more than others, it is not the attitude of the teacher what makes the difference in those feelings. And that is why I agree that it is very important to choose to be a teacher of subjects which you feel passion for.

When I look back on my primary and secondary school time, I try to remember which teachers meant something to me, why I remember them and how were they teaching. And I remember that I could stand out some features that they had in common:

- They had social skills: fluent interaction, great communication, comprehension, empathy, open-minded, conflict resolution, and team-building skills.

- They had previously prepared every single class: even pupils that had not passed the following year, and had to repeat the same course again, noticed that some things had changed because they adapted the theory to the real needs of the class and also enjoyed innovating constantly.

-They were fresh and creative: including situations where having prepared the class, something failed and they could not go along with it. But they had the capability of improvising something else that still made sense and kept our motivation up.

-They were ready to learn and accept their mistakes: I remember them leading by example, teaching pupils how to apologize in front of others by doing it themselves and admit and accept one's mistakes as a daily action. That was one of the ways they did respect pupils, and I remember them as well gaining respect thereby.

- They were listening in all the ways that a teacher can listen: they were listening with the eyes (by observing the needs of each student, individually, and their attitude through their body language, observing whether they were boring, distracted or enjoying), with the ears (by listening carefully what pupils had personally to say about the subject and the way the class was being held, through their complaints or positive comments). And also they were listening with the heart. And I have to say that, when I was a little girl I was not able to realize all these teaching techniques I have commented below. However, the thing that I realized was that passion, coming from the heart, combined with a special dynamic energy that also enveloped simple explanations making everything understandable and enjoyable and creating an environment where the relationship teacher-pupils was very close. They also seemed to really care about their pupils, and not just as a part of an automated behavior based on established standards of performance.

- They took care of the environment and the pupils themselves: they were concerned about the amount of light that was in the class, so they had no trouble reading or staying awake, the heat and ventilation in class, and the way they were sitting. And after that, they made sure to create a social environment: changing the distribution of the tables and creating interpersonal relationships among the pupils by promoting activities involving group work. They paid much attention to that the pupils had as much homogeneous participation as possible (always taking into account the personal aspects of each pupil).

I have a special comment about self-confidence. Because many people think that is essential for a teacher to have a great grade of self-confidence. But it is not a feature that the teachers that meant something to me, had in common. Therefore, I consider more important the interest (I rather prefer to call it passion) and the ability to awake interest among the pupils, than a part of the personality that implies having self-confidence (though I would encourage everyone to work on raising it). And that reminds me of Per F. Laursen when he mentions in his book Teacher Professional Development in Changing Conditions, the empirical research that was used during the last 100 years to select teachers based on the personal characteristics. In his own words, "The study demonstrates that authenticity is neither a matter of feelings nor personality. It is a matter of competence". He refers authenticity as the relationship between teachers and their students: to see pupils as fellow human beings, respect them, give them reasons for the issues being addressed instead of manipulating or force them to think in a specific way, to get close to them, to feel a person who inspires...Definitely, where he is using the word authenticity, I have been using passion to explain the same concept. Concluding, and after have made my own researches, I completely agree with the author that the fact of selecting future teachers by making an intelligence or personality test, leads to a complete failure results. And "today most researchers seem to agree that the relevant personal characteristics concern the knowledge or competence of teachers".

And all these make me wonder things like: How does a teacher influence the future decisions of pupils? Are we aware of the importance of the role that teachers play within the society, despite having suffered a decline in popularity/prestige as a profession?

I believe it is important to reflect on how important it is, by the future teachers, to take very seriously the point where they are going to be definitely a big influence on the future of maybe thousand children (if you work for many years), and so reflect upon what would they really like to teach about and put all interest in their training as a teachers. It is a responsibility that must be assumed. When a person receives a diploma saying that is a teacher, it is not just a paper that involves that have gotten the skills and the knowledge considered indispensable to be a teacher. It also involves that this person will take a part of the responsibility of educating the children that will continue building our society, and all that this implies. The way how teachers influence their pupils is bilateral:

1) Globally: about how to behave and treat others within society. Educating them within values of tolerance and respect, among many others, will be the positive side of this influence.

2) Individually: about what profession they will choose in the future. This will be influenced by the image that the teacher has helped to create in the pupil about the subjects they have had at the school. A good teacher will actually not be an influence of what the pupil will choose, but a trampoline that helps the pupil to discover his/her own strengths, develop them, and go to achieve their goals with the same passion as he/she has learned.
If a teacher influences the pupil to choose not to study a specific subject, for instance, that means to me that he did not a good job, when the pupil does not like it because has negative thoughts and images about it.

"Teaching is the one profession that creates all other professions"

Therefore WE, the future teachers, are being instructed to be an instructor of the new generations of the future citizens. We are the future. And we have the future in our hands.

My First Impression: The class

I must say that this is the first time in my life where I belong to such an international class! I felt in a dream, excited to talk with everybody. Well, above all, I was looking forward to listening to everybody. I love to meet new people and learn from other cultures, and this is one of the reasons because I have chosen these studies. In the beginning, I thought that I knew a little bit of every culture, but I realized how little knowledge I had about them! Stereotypes were flying above my head, like this little flies that are very annoying when you open the window. And that is what happened, I opened the window. And something amazing happened while I was getting rid of them!

I think that there is always a reason/origin because a picture becomes a stereotype, even if it is not the reality that represents the entire concerned group. And not be aware of that matter, may be very dangerous!
But in my case, I came here with the mind, eyes, and ears completely open, and there is nothing more pleasant than hearing how others see life from a point of view that, otherwise I wouldn't have taken in consideration, ever.
I feel like there are people that really look forward to telling others their point of view, and the way they have been living in their respective countries. And other people might have learned (I guess) that in Europe is frowned upon certain aspects of their culture, and I perceived a bit fearful to express their opinion or explain those parts of their culture that may not be accepted here. I guess, for me it is easy to do it, being as there are only several things that are different from Danish culture, but in general, we share many values or the way to see life... Anyway, I think we all have in mind the following words, or else we wouldn't choose to be where we are (or else we are in the wrong place) so I hope that everybody, sooner or later, feels free to talk openly about their culture, or whatever they feel to:

I must say, that everybody was very nice and friendly from the beginning, and that makes a huge difference in the time spent at the college as if people were behaving in another way. It is such a nice environment! And I really appreciate seeing how everybody do their best to make this happen.

Thanks all of you, for making me feel so good, and for making my time at the University so easy and bearable!

My First Impression: The University

 My first day at the University was amazing. I was wondering what will I find at the encounter, how would be the people...and if I actually I would find the address of the college, being as it was the first time that I was visiting Vordingborg. And what was my surprise when I got off the train and there were two people holding a sign saying "WELCOME ITEPS". My mouth drew a smile in my face, and it was a great pleasure to find out that actually there were people holding signs along all the way up to the college. And here I found the first distinction regarding Danish and Spanish universities: I was at the university in Spain, and the first thing they did was warning us about the difference between the high school and the higher education, so "we could be prepared for very hard work!"

And much less you will find coffee and something to eat at the meeting room. That was awesome! But if there was something that really attracts my attention was: the tutor figure. I think it is a great idea to give a job to a student at the university, it makes people get involved and earn some money, and offer to other students the option to consult information to a very close person, being as they are also students. It is the first time I see this project, and I think the tutors around me were doing a great job.
Sadly I could not attend to the parties that the tutors organized, but I was aware of all the activities, and I think it is very well thought to get to know each other this way.
Noteworthy was also the friendliness of all the teachers and old/new students that attended the event.
And here I will take the opportunity to express my gratitude for all those people that made possible such a warm welcome.