Talking about cultural diversity at school: dialogical tensions and obstacles to secondarisation

Abstract

In Switzerland, as elsewhere, issues dealing with cultural diversity raise major challenges in education. At present, little is known about how students make sense of these highly sensitive societal issues and relate them to their everyday experience. Drawing on a sociocultural and dialogical approach to learning, this study aimed at understanding how the students made sense of themes related to cultural diversity. More generally, it sought to examine whether secondarisation (i.e. a transformation of everyday experience into a more generic and scientific form) took place. In this study, ten focus groups were carried out: five in primary school (11-to 12-year-old students) and five in lower secondary school (13-to 14-year-old students) in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. The specificity of the research design consisted of setting up a situation that had both similarities and differences with lessons on cultural diversity that had previously been taught in the classroom. We assumed that this would create dialogical tensions and thereby shed light on the obstacles that may arise when themes related to cultural diversity are taught in school. Analysis of the discursive dynamics of the focus-group discussions showed that education for cultural diversity cannot be considered independently of the student's other spheres of experiences. Personal, social and moral dimensions are part of the students' effort to make sense of the themes under discussion. Talking about cultural diversity, even though with pleasure and involvement, cannot be equated with learning and transforming these themes into scientific concepts. Moreover, dialogical tensions can create unexpected effects and even bring about the very phenomena that education for cultural diversity is supposed to fight.

Welcoming mobile children at school: institutional responses and new questions

“…Globalization and mobility are thus not addressed as an object of knowledge and shared reflection. A research in Switzerland suggests that teachers are not trained to address such issues with students as part of their standard curricula, and that in these conditions, interactions may become very difficult to handle (Grossen and Muller Mirza 2020;Muller Mirza 2016).…”

Regards croisés des approches cognitives et socioculturelles sur l’apprentissage collaboratif : quelles contributions dans le domaine de l’éducation ?

“…Un objet étudié à l'école est en effet également un objet dont parlent les médias, se trouve discuté dans des situations familiales ou sociales, et les différents sens qui y sont construits peuvent être convoqués en classe. Le fait que les élèves et les enseignants mettent en lien, de manière plus ou moins voulue et explicite, des objets de connaissance discutés en classe et des situations quotidiennes peut être un support à l'élaboration de la pensée, mais cela peut aussi constituer un obstacle à la transformation des processus psychologiques (Grossen & Muller Mirza, 2019a).…”

Incidents critiques en leçons d’éducation interculturelle

“…Nous considérons en effet qu'un examen minutieux de séquences interactives permet de mettre en lumière les décalages entre, d'une part, les intentions des enseignant•e•s qui visent à développer une compréhension des phénomènes tels que la discrimination sociale ou les stéréotypes, et, d'autre part, l'activité telle qu'elle se réalise entre les interlocuteur•trice•s. Il permet également de suivre la façon dont les interactant•e•s convergent vers un processus de secondarisation ou au contraire de cristallisation et de « monologisation » (de Diesbach-Dolder, 2018 ;Grossen et Muller Mirza, 2020 ;Muller Mirza et al, 2014).…”