Session Information
Contribution
Description: The experience of (or confrontation with) cultural difference has nowadays become daily routine for a large number of professionals. Teachers, as essential cultural actors and mediators, are particularly questioned by the cultural fragmentation of post-modern societies. They are placed in front of a "diversity imperative" as formulated by Johnson (2003), an author who urges schools and, more generally, European nations to build a "culturally responsive ethos". Consequently, new expectations arise for the training of teachers: thanks to appropriate intercultural training, they should develop their intercultural communication competence and be better prepared to manage intercultural contexts.
In line with mainly US research showing how central teachers' conceptions are for the success of intercultural training, the research reported in the paper aims at understanding how future teachers in Geneva give meaning to cultural difference, and how this meaning transforms itself during initial training. The focus has been set on the concept of cultural difference because of the ambivalence it produces, at the same time popular and taboo, revealing a tension or dialectics between making differences (with an aim of recognition of the Other) and avoiding to make differences (with an aim of equality). The singular form, "cultural difference", is used on purpose to indicate that we are not interested in describing specific differences that these student teachers would perceive between cultural groups, but to their understanding of cultural difference on an abstract level. Especially critical is how our respondents talk about differences they would perceive between cultural groups (talking enthusiastically about differences, or, on the contrary, reluctantly), what kind of explanations they give to these perceived differences, how they conceive the significance of culture for individuals (e.g. an enrichment necessary for identification, a point of reference for signification, or a yoke diverting the individual from reason, science and progress) and relate it to other dimensions of diversity, and how they consider the influence of culture in the process of communication.
The concept of "meaning" is taken from symbolic interactionism. It has been preferred to the other concepts offered by the social sciences (beliefs, conceptions, theories, representations, etc.) because this theoretical framework emphasizes the interactive dimension of the meaning-making process. Professionals in their practice are guided by the meanings they give to the situation, these meanings are not individual characteristics but are constructed in interaction, socially shared and continually reinterpreted. It is therefore particularly interesting to address these meanings in the context of training.
Methodology: The research is longitudinal and uses qualitative interpretive research methods. Informants are 14 primary school teachers trained at the University of Geneva, in a specific option (Licence Mention Enseignement, LME) of the degree in Educational Sciences. Individual interviews are conducted each year with respondents, who have also completed a series of questionnaires (on acculturation orientations and values) short after they started University, one year before entering the LME program. The paper will present results from the analysis of the two first series of interviews (at the beginning of and at the end of the first year of training).
Conclusions: The research reported in the paper is an ongoing longitudinal research. It is expected that the presentation of these preliminary results will give rise to an interesting discussion on the difficult concept of cultural difference, with which not only teachers but also researchers may feel uneasy with. Sharing with other researchers on these preliminary results should be useful for the remaining of the research.
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