Finding the (Inner) Interculturality
of the (Seemingly) Monocultural
María del Carmen Arau Ribeiro
Instituto Politécnico da Guarda, Portugal
Intercultural Competence: Traditions and Transitions
Fifth International Conference on the Development and Assessment of Intercultural Competence
January 21-24, 2016
Westward Look Wyndham Grand Resort, Tucson, Arizona
Abstract
http://cercll.arizona.edu/development/conferences/2016_icc
This history of emerging and developing interculturality based on local, national, and international studies presents the
best practices for developing sustainable work, using web 2.0 tools to create narratives that help students discover and
describe the intercultural contacts they have had in the past or would like for their future.
Constructive attitudes and behavior for developing intercultural competence can derive from a philosophical stance or
an inner belief about the right thing to do, say, or think in a given intercultural situation. In most cases, however, these
attitudes and behaviors need to be taught and, as a university professor who finds many of her students lacking in
these essential skills, the motto “better late than never” repeatedly validates the inclusion of these objectives in the
teaching program. Based on over two decades of action research at a modern school in the Portuguese mountain
regions, this paper provides a history of the exploration of interculturality among those who initially consider
themselves to be largely monocultural, presenting the best practices for developing sustainable work on interculturality
in young adults (18-25) and adults who have returned to school for re-education in a crisis ridden Europe, using web
2.0 tools to create the narratives that help students discover and describe the intercultural contacts they have had in
the past or would like to have in the future. Despite the decreasing contact hours in higher education in a Europe
harmonized by the Bologna Agreement, dropping all bachelor’s degree to just three years, the intercultural work, and
even more ongoing assignments, is a welcome plus for students who annually declare their horizons to have been
opened and their intercultural skills to have been honed. The (hi)story woven here draws not only on this teacher’s
experience in local but also national and international studies on intercultural education to reveal specific curricular
activities and materials that have been particularly insightful and inciting to further research for students in higher
education. At a national level, a study to create a country-wide teacher training course in CLIL (Content and Language
Integrated Learning), developed by ReCLes.pt (the Network Association of Language Centers in Higher Education) and
supported by a collaboratively written training guide, has raised a number of questions about the role of culture in CLIL.
Preparation for a more recent comparative study, covering intercultural education in European and South American
universities, seeks to unveil the hidden and institutional vehicles of intercultural education to promote intercultural
competence. In each of these cases, local, national, and international, evidence can be found that students respond
positively to activities that prepare them for the discovery of their intercultural skills and seek to further develop a
personal narrative featuring effective and appropriate communication across cultures.
The context of higher education in Europe
 fewer student contact hours
in higher education in a
Europe harmonized by the
Bologna Process
 46 “Bologna” countries
(see map, not Belarus)
 most Bachelor’s degrees
(exceptions for engineering and
medicine/nursing)
are just three years long
Bologna Process Characteristics





More focus on student-centered instruction
More ongoing assignments
More ongoing assessment
More IT support
More intercultural components to the syllabus
developing intercultural competence (IC)
Constructive attitudes and behavior based on essential skills…
a philosophical stance or an inner belief about the right thing to do, say, or
think in a given intercultural situation
Intercultural competence
How to teach these attitudes and behaviors in higher education?
“better late than never”
validation of the inclusion of these objectives in the teaching program
Based on over two decades of
action research at the
Polytechnic of Guarda on the
Portuguese border with Spain
intercultural competence
GOALS
Respect
Identity
Experience
Action
Confidence
Vision
Equality
Responsibility
Acceptance
Culture
Advantage
Diversity
Intercultural
Courage
Cooperation
Potential
Global citizenship
Knowledge
Success
Positive difference
VERBS
Act
Participate
Inspire
Communicate
Make corrections
Engage
Contribute
Share
(Ex)Change –
Education Abroad
Erasmus+
PRO-ACTIVE STRATEGIES
Presentation skills
Relaxation skills
Interpersonal skills
Personality inventory
Conflict resolution
Community leadership
Inclusion
Stress reduction
Soft skills
Build awareness
Workshops
Volunteer
Gain skills
Build relationships
Learn
Communities of practice
“Any language learner is a
language USER!” (Cook 2002)
…equal footing for teachers
and students
Rates of retention increase as
students demonstrate, discuss,
practice, and teach others in
Communities of Practice (Wenger
1998).
exploring interculturality
“But I am just Portuguese…
… so I only know about Portugal.”
monocultural perspective to be redefined pluriculturally
 young adults (18-25)
 adults who have returned to school for re-education in a crisis-ridden Europe
Web 2.0 tools to create narratives
Best Practices to…
help students discover and describe the intercultural contacts
they have had in the past or would like for their future inspired
on their experiences and/or expectations with their
Family, Friends, Community, School
Web 2.0 tools
Blackboard or Moodle
Blogs and wikis can be created on either but Moodle is free while Blackboard’s institutional fee
covers a world-wide plagiarism detection function that is useful for teaching students how to
report on their research and how to become more skilled at paraphrasing.
If your school does not provide either platform, other sources include the following:
•
Blogs
https://wordpress.com/
http://edublogs.org/
http://education.weebly.com/
These blogging tools provide opportunities for students to publish their own entries and comment
on those of others, engaging in a lively literacy community across cultures and topics. Wordpress
powers edublogs, which also offers e-portfolios and websites.
•
Wikis
http://www.wikispaces.com/
http://www.creativeeducation.co.uk/blog/index.php/2011/06/class-wiki/
Students can collaboratively contribute to the construction and updating of a wikipage they create.
WebQuests
http://www.webquest.org/
• This student-centered lesson
format created by Bernie
Dodge, at San Diego State
University, looks like a userfriendly website. Dodge offers
a number of useful resources
for website development so
that teachers can prepare
WebQuests focusing on any
topic that best fits their
collaborative student project.
Focus on social media
Creating videos/presentations/posters
• Powtoon http://www.powtoon.com/
• Animoto www.animoto.com
• Glog® http://www.glogster.com/
Social networking
Facebook
Linked in
Google +
Microblogging
Twitter
Instagram
Pinterest
Snapchat
IC through IT
Word play
• Wordle http://www.wordle.net/
Focus on social media
Timelines, timestamps, geolocation, and
realtime updates
• Dipity http://www.dipity.com/
nationally
Research has shown that learning is better and
deeper in your native language (Phillipson, 2000;
Skutnabb-Kangas, 2009) so why should we be
interested in teaching in another language?
A study to create a country-wide teacher training
course in CLIL (Content and Language Integrated
Learning), developed by ReCLes.pt (the Network
Association of Language Centers in Higher
Education) and supported by a collaboratively
written training guide, has raised a number of
questions about the role of culture in CLIL.
The solution is in the reinforcement of learning for
other languages through a CLIL approach which
covers scaffolding for new knowledge and
competences that is based on what you already
know and know how to do… rather than the
monolingual solution, the future is globalized and
the job market is international.
Education that ignores the need for
learning languages and simultaneously
cultures is not preparing professionals
responsibly.
ReCLes.pt CLIL Training Guide —
Creating a CLIL Learning Community in Higher Education
to download the full document,
go to http://recles.pt/
click on the tab “Publicações” [Publications]
The training manual…
 aims at facilitating the creation of CLIL modules and scaffolding
materials using Web 2.0
 is adaptable to each particular course area and preferred
collaborative modes of each of the participating higher education
institutes
 serves as a guide for each of the local 10-hour training courses to
enable the subject specialists to gain competences in using cognitive
and socio constructive educational strategies to later implement a
CLIL module with their own students
 provides myriad examples to support another 20 hours dedicated to
assisted preparation of these modules
 follows a 4 Cs model
4 Cs (content, cognition, communication, culture)
•
CLIL = 4 Cs
(Coyle, 1999; Coyle, 2008; Coyle, Hood
& Marsh, 2010)
•
•
•
•
Content is
required of the
foreign language
Cognitive skills
are to be used to
deal with the
content-oriented
information
Communication
is effective
Communication
is effective
…across cultures.
•Any topic at all. Why not favor
socially responsible topics like
recycling, renewable energies,
music, health, cultural
awareness, volunteer work,
etc.?
•Speaking, Listening, Reading,
and Writing via Web 2.0 tools
•Using Bloom’s new taxonomy
of higher order skills,
language users can identify
and solve problems, create,
analyze, and evaluate
throughout any activity.
Content
Cognition
Communication
Culture
•Finding all of the
meanings contextualized
within any artifact – articles,
songs, poetry – to determine
the cultural expression and
intercultural experience in
question.
•
•
•
•
commitment to the interactive creation of CoPs (Wenger, 1998) is at the root of the ReCLes.pt CLIL approach to
language proficiency
pluricultural learning outcomes are simultaneously driven by these learning communities
CoPs provide ideal conditions of mutual respect and equality among teachers and students alike, since all
participants are language users
CoPs promote social and shared meaning-making among all of the participants
Thanks to graphic recorder, Sam Bradd, for the hand-drawn images , at
http://ctlt.ubc.ca/2013/07/25/connecting-communities-of-practice-at-ubc/
Communities of Practice (CoPs)
Culture and CLIL
•
•
•
•
•
Can languages be taught through different
languages using the same methodology?
Do different cultures require different
methodologies to reflect conventions of
respect and to uphold academic
convention?
Can the study of the specific terminology of
a designated content area “level the playing
field” within a culture where social distance
must be maintained between students and
teachers?
How effectively can the plurilingual
learning outcomes and acquisition of
subject specialty competences be
supported by the scaffolding proposed in
any language?
Can language learning be content-oriented
for every language and in every culture?
IT Tools and EU-funded projects
IT tools that can be applied to task-based learning and
teaching are helpful for individual work and further
classroom interaction.
Some recent European Union-funded projects emphasize the
incorporation of these activities in language learning.
 PETALL - Pan European Task-based Activities for Language
Learning, combining the Common European Framework of
Reference (CEFR) for languages with ICT and TBLT
 iTILT - Interactive Technologies in Language Teaching which
focuses on the use of interactive whiteboards in the
communicative language classroom
internationally
• Proposed comparative study of intercultural
competence in European (Portuguese) and
South American (Brazilian) universities
• to unveil the hidden and institutional vehicles
of intercultural education to promote
intercultural competence
• documented, curricular, syllabi-based
Transatlantic project
coordinated by Principal Investigator Manuela Guilherme
• GROUP OF COMPARATIVE STUDIES IN INTERCULTURALITY
[Grupo de Estudos Comparados em Interculturalidade – GECI]
http://www.spce.org.pt/gruposecienen.html
• one of the four branches of the newly created Section of
Comparative Education
[Secção de Educação Comparada – SEC]
http://www.ceied.ulusofona.pt/pt/noticias/noticias-blogue/507-criacao-da-seccao-deeducacao-comparada-da-spce
• a member of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies
http://www.wcces.com/
• within the Portuguese Society of Educational Science
[Sociedade Portuguesa de Ciências da Educação]
• to include research carried out in Brazil by the Principal Investigator
under the auspices of a Marie Curie Research Fellowship
http://www.ces.uc.pt/projectos/glocademics/
•
Research team
Manuela Guilherme, Ana Gonçalves Matos, María del Carmen Arau Ribeiro, and Nicolas Robert Hurst
Overall
•
•
•
In each of the local and national cases, evidence can be found that
students respond positively to activities that prepare them for the
discovery of their intercultural skills and seek to further develop a
personal narrative featuring effective and appropriate communication
across cultures.
The EU projects PETALL and iTILT also confirmed that IT enhances student
involvement and engagement.
The transatlantic project aims to answer more of the questions that have
been raised about both the place and the value of intercultural
competences in higher education with respect to English and Portuguese.
Some of these questions are:
 Can these languages be used as tools for emancipation although they
have also been responsible for globalized hegemony and cultural
colonization?
 Is there a place for common ground for dialogue amongst the
different cultures through these languages?
 How are the home cultures and epistemologies to be translated?
 In what way do the languages serve to form the identities of local and
global citizens in the different spheres?
Conclusions
Local experience with IC in higher education based on intentional curricular activities involving
Web 2.0 materials that involve the language users in reading, writing, speaking, and most
importantly listening, all the while…
demonstrating, discussing, practicing, and teaching each other
At a local level, students annually declare their horizons to have been opened and their
intercultural skills to have been honed.
Working with intercultural competences is not only insightful but it is also inciting for the
students and for fellow teachers to consider.
This worthy activity will certainly bring about further research to broaden horizons and enrich
learning contexts for students in higher education.
Please feel free to contact me for any ideas, suggestions, proposals for collaboration!
[email protected]
[email protected]
References
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