Research questions:

1.      What kind of intercultural sensitivity do teacher students have?

2.      What kind of experiences of Otherness do teacher students report?

The term intercultural competence is associated with global, international or multicultural education and culturally relevant or responsive education (Banks & Banks, 2004; Gay, 2000). Giroux (2009, p. 445) stresses the importance of the democratic and ethically based educational practices that facilitates the learning of students from multiple cultural backgrounds. In that respect teachers’ intercultural competence can be understood as an enlarged understanding of oneself, as a critical approach to one’s work, as flexible and divergent thinking, and as a comprehension of different realities and lifestyles (Talib, 2005). 

Usually teachers or teacher students, who are members of the mainstream culture, never have to question their positionality. Merryfield (2000) discovered in his study of 80 teachers, that most teacher of colour have a double consciousness due to having experienced discrimination and the status of being outsider. White middle-class teachers who were effective at teaching for diversity had their most profound experiences while living outside their country. As the study suggests, those who leave the comfort zone of their society for an extended period of time come to understand what it is to be perceived as “the Other”.

Staying in another culture, however, does not automatically make a person intercultural. Allport (1954) stresses that building authentic relationship is important in this cultural learning process through observing, listening, and entering into a dialogue with those who are from a different culture.

Bennett and Bennett (2004, pp.147–165) have developed the theory which explains the cognitive development that people go through when living in different cultural environment. In the ethnocentric stage of the intercultural process (denial, defence and minimisation levels), people experience their own culture as central to their reality. At the denial level, people are ignorant, indifferent to or neglectful of cultural differences. At the defence level, people evaluate differences negatively. At the minimisation level, people recognise cultural differences superficially. In the ethnorelative stage, (acceptance, adaptation and integration levels) people experience their own culture in the context of other cultures. At the acceptance level, people recognize and appreciate cultural differences. At the adaptation level, people are able to employ alternative ways of thinking and frames of references. At the integration level, people internalize more than one cultural worldview into their own.

Allport, G. (1979). The nature of prejudice. New York: Addison Wesley. Banks, J., & Banks, C. (2004). Handbook of research on multicultural education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Bennett, J., & Bennett, M. (2004). Developing intercultural sensitivity: An integrative approach to global and domestic diversity. In D. Landis, J. M. Bennett, & M. J. Bennett (Eds.) Handbook of intercultural training (pp. 147–165). Thousand Oaks: Sage. Gay, G. (2000). Culturally responsive teaching, theory, research, and practice. New York: Teachers College Press. Giroux, H. (2009). Teacher education and democratic schooling in A. Darder & P. Baltoano & R. Torres (Eds.), The critical pedagogy reader ( pp. 438–459). New York: Routledge. Hosoya, S., & M-T. Talib. (2010). Pre-service teachers’ intercultural competence: Japan and Finland. In D. Mattheou (Ed.), Changing educational landscape: Educational practice, schooling systems and higher education – a comparative perspective (pp. 241–260). New York: Springer. Merryfield, M. (2000). Why aren’t teachers being prepared to teach for diversity, equity and global interconnectedness? A study of lived experiences in the making of multicultural and global educators. Teachers and Teacher Education, 16, 429–443. Talib, M-T. (2005). Eksotiikkaa vai ihmisarvoa. Opettajan monikulttuurisesta kompetenssista. [Human dignity or just exoticism. About a teacher’s multicultural competence; in Finnish] Turku: Finnish Educational Research Association.