The importance of taking into account the cultural dimension in teaching is nowadays widely recognized. Yet it is still unclear what ‘taking culture seriously’ actually means and intercultural training programs for teachers often present contradictory messages. As a result, teachers hesitate between the urge to prize cultural diversity and the urge and to treat pupils equally in order to avoid any discrimination (Cochran-Smith, 1995).

Like all professionals active in a context of cultural diversity, teachers are confronted with the dialectics of interculturality: the values of diversity and equality are both desirable, but are antagonistic. Teachers’ understanding of this complex issue and the answers they will adopt in teaching depend upon their cultural sensitivity (Bennett, 1986) which develops all through their personal life history. But individual understandings of culture and cultural difference also have to be related to the cultural context in which they are embedded. The social meaning of culture and cultural difference is not the same in San Francisco, Tokyo or Lyon. Societies historically develop different appraisals of culture, and different ways to manage cultural diversity (in particular multiculturalism, which can be related to the value of diversity, and assimilationism, which can be related to the value of equality). Yet most research on intercultural communication and training comes from English-speaking contexts, where the perspective on culture and cultural difference is quite different from the perspective found for example in French-speaking contexts, still very much influenced by the universalist ideal of the French Lumières.

Using the “dialectical square of cultural difference” (Edelmann, 2007; Ogay & Edelmann, 2011) as the conceptual framework for the analysis of the respondents’ discourse, the research reported in the communication aims at identifying the meanings that prospective teachers, living in a French-speaking context, attach to the concept of “cultural difference”. The context studied, Geneva in Switzerland, is particular: Geneva is culturally (and, obviously, geographically) very close to France, it is international by its population and at the same time belongs to Switzerland, a country with four national languages. Do the teacher candidates perceive the complexity of adopting an intercultural approach in teaching? How are their interpretations of cultural difference related to their conceptions of their role as teachers in a multicultural context? Is there a difference between those who have a family migration background and those who have not?

Bennett, M. J. (1986). A developmental approach to training for intercultural sensitivity. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 10(2), 179-196. Cochran-Smith, M. (1995). Color blindness and basket making are not the answers: Confronting the dilemmas of race, culture, and language diversity in teacher education. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3), 493-522. Edelmann, D. (2007). Pädagogische Professionalität im transnationalen sozialen Raum. Eine qualitative Untersuchung über den Umgang von Lehrpersonen mit der migrationsbedingten Heterogenität ihrer Klassen. Wien; Zürich: LIT. Kaufmann, J.-C. (1996). L'entretien compréhensif. Paris: Nathan. Ogay, T., & Edelmann, D. (2011). Penser l'interculturalité dans la formation des professionnels: l'incontournable dialectique de la différence. In A. Lavanchy, F. Dervin & A. Gajardo (Eds.), Anthropologies de l'interculturalité (pp. 47-71). Paris: L'Harmattan.