Teachers’ Collaborative Conversations About Culture: Negotiating Decision Making in Intercultural Teaching

Abstract

This article presents findings from a study that investigated intercultural teaching through teachers’ collaborative conversations about critical intercultural incidents in schools. The data were generated through Web-CT and face-to-face dialogues between preservice, inservice, and university teachers about critical intercultural incidents identified by the preservice candidates during practicum experiences. Findings focus on teachers’ intercultural decision making within two broad categories: “minding” (making choices, enabling cultures, respecting and sharing power, and arbitrating and agonizing what is just) and “responding” (fostering intercultural communities, opening “safe” spaces, protecting students and surroundings, and “stepping up” to address it). Implications include the role of social and emotional learning and power dynamics in intercultural teaching and the potential for a case-study approach to intercultural teacher education.

Changing School Demographies - Asking Teachers about Their Training Needs in Intercultural Education: A case Study in Greece

“…As discussed above, due to the steady increase of migration, the number of students who are found to be of an ethnic and/or cultural minority in the classrooms is on the rise globally (Bifuh-Ambe, 2006;Hachfeld et al, 2015;MacPherson, 2010). Especially in Greece, since 2015, when immigrant flows abruptly increased due to the climaxing crisis in Syria, changes in school demography have been indeed spurring.…”

“…This however entails the introduction of a more sophisticated cognitive framework that will help teachers re-examine their assumptions. In effect, having trainees engage in self-reflection is a necessary starting point for developing ethno-relative orientation to diversity, cultural sensitivity and an integrated worldview (MacPherson, 2010;Rissanen, Kuusisto & Kuusisto, 2016;Yuen, 2010).…”

“…Schools nowadays increasingly accommodate students from diverse racial, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds (Bifuh-Ambe, 2006;Hachfeld et al, 2015;MacPherson, 2010). This raises expectations for teachers who should possess the intercultural skills demanded to address the humanitarian mandates innate in their role, that is, to assist all learners reach well-being through education.…”

“…The sought after intercultural competence development is thus inherently intertwined with certain attitudinal transformations. In specific, in order to address the culture gap and meet the educational needs of diverse students in the classes, teachers they (it must be removed) must be culturally conscious and interculturally sensitive (MacPherson, 2010;Marx & Moss, 2011).…”

Social Justice and Teacher Education: A Hammer, a Bell, and a Song

“…Chubbuck's (2010) conceptual analysis in this issue stresses the basic role of care in helping preservice teachers analyze students' learning difficulties. The theme of caring runs through MacPherson's (2010) case study that describes how participants worked collaboratively using Web-based communication to address intercultural education in a Canadian province with a fast-growing immigrant population and sizeable indigenous communities. University researchers, inservice teacher mentors, and preservice teachers conversed online about critical intercultural incidents they witnessed.…”