Conference:
ECER 2004
Format:
Paper
Session Information
Session 10, Network 20 papers and poster
Papers
Time:
2004-09-25
09:00-10:30
Room:
Chair:
Maria-Angels Subirats
Discussant:
Maria-Angels Subirats
Contribution
One of postmodern society's most important areas for people to meet and the place where cultural encounters can develop diversity perspectives on culture, learning and knowledge are multicultural learning environments. When learning in multicultural environments through social interaction and intercultural communication is having an influence on the contents of teaching and the contents of knowledge and learning, we can speak of intercultural learning.My research on intercultural learning is based on the thesis that learning in multicultural learning environments, among both "young and old", cannot develop satisfying results for all participating individuals if the contents of learning, didactic and knowledge is a result of a one dimensional cultural process.From my starting point I perceive intercultural learning as a process of learning where different cultural values, norms, conducts, knowledge and thoughts of different individuals with various ethnic or cultural background, through social interaction and intercultural communication can influence subjective perceptions of different phenomena in the world around us. In this paper I want to describe how intercultural learning can contribute to a very central and significant variety of multicultural education. Various cultural perspectives through gender, class and education do often affect conditions on both teaching and learning. My summary of learning processes in intercultural learning is divided into several phases that are being used depending on the various didactical and cultural perspectives that exist in the learning environment. At first I want to emphasize the pedagogical assumptions necessary for a successful intercultural learning. An almost obvious assumption should be that intercultural learning has to comprehend all individuals in a multicultural learning environment without exclusion of any person belonging to neither the majority nor a minority group. Intercultural learning is neither restricted to people with foreign background, nor is it dealing with persons trying to learn to communicate with the majority culture. Intercultural learning should include all people independent of ethnical, cultural or religious background. The overall process of intercultural learning can be divided into four different phases. These are multicultural sensitivity, multicultural awareness, multicultural competence and eventually multicultural integration. These four phases are no "natural chronological order" towards personally multicultural integration. While learning processes are very individual concerns and learning is both a collective and subjective process, it will be helpful not to take my four phases for granted. They are more interpretations of how one could proceed.Phase 1, multicultural sensitivity, contains a learning of an introducing character while Phase 2, multicultural awareness, is containing a learning of a more analysing kind, while Phase 3, multicultural competence, is mostly aiming at intercultural learning within certain subjects. Phase 4 eventually may lead to the phase of multicultural integration. Phase 1 and 2 are demanding specially designed training for their objects, while Phase 3 is dealing with teaching in subjects that already exist in most educational systems, like language, literature, history or mathematics. Multicultural competence is not solely related to certain subjects, it is a state of competence that is both individual and collectively related to multicultural society. In phase 4, multicultural integration, one can summarise and evaluate intercultural competence in relation to the process of etnorelativity as personally integrated in "body and soul". The "pedagogical tools" being used in the different phases of intercultural learning can be illustrated with references to Berger & Luckmann (1966), Condon & Youssef (1975), Said (1979), Bennet (1986), Latour & Woolgar (1986), Hofstede (1987), Coelho (1996), Fennes & Hapgood (1997) and Lahdenpera, (2002).
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