The Role of Subjectivity for Understanding Collaborative Dialogue and Cultural Productions of Teachers in International Schools

Abstract

Gonzalez Rey has advanced the cultural-historical concept of sense through introducing the interrelated concepts of subjective sense and subjective configuration for explaining the development of human relations as a form of social production. The subtleness of Gonzalez Rey’s theoretical concepts when applied to the study of families in culturally diverse settings has provided nuanced understandings of children’s social productions. However, in this chapter his concepts are drawn upon to better understand how expatriate teachers working in an Australian international school situated in the Middle East socially produced cultural diversity. The focus of the study was on examining the social practice of sharing food at lunch times. During the sharing of food, dialogue acted as an important tool for illuminating individual subjectivities and for generating social subjectivities about cultural diversity. It was theorized that a sense of cultural belonging was created through the lunchtime practice of sharing food. Legitimization of cultural lunches was socially produced through reference to professional documents that detailed the concept of a sense of belonging. Indicators contributed to the development of the concept of cultural production realized through the lunchtime practices of teachers in an international school in the Middle East where cultural diversity is the norm.