Intercultural Activities Research Articles

Some experiences of non-EU international students following an access to Higher Education Diploma course in a general further education college in the North of England

ABSTRACT This study provides a basis for deepening understandings of approaches which offer effective and enhanced learning experiences for predominantly East Asian international students following provision alongside local students in UK general further education colleges. A mixed methods approach employed a largely quantitative questionnaire to access the views of 25 international students, 22 of whom were Chinese nationals, and to identify four participants (two Chinese, one Japanese and one Maldivian) for subsequent semi-structured interviews. This fieldwork was supported by the collection of college achievement data for the international students and for the local students who had studied directly alongside them. The outcomes indicate that the international students achieved at least as well as the local students in relation to academic outcomes, and that they valued teachers who allowed their cultural experiences to directly contribute to classroom learning. The study also highlights the importance of inter-cultural activities. More prosaically, the outcomes also suggest that important concerns for these international students were that they should receive clarity in answers to their questions as part of the processes of learning, as well as the resolution of ostensibly more peripheral issues such as the quality and type of food available in the college catering outlets.

Edukacja międzykulturowa w edukacji wczesnoszkolnej: perspektywa historyczno-pedagogiczna i dobre praktyki nauczycieli na przykładzie Prywatnej Szkoły Podstawowej „Mieszko” w Poznaniu

The aim of this article is to present a historical perspective on intercultural education, contemporary methods of supporting foreign students as well as the role of the teacher and the specific competence required to teach effectively in an intercultural environment. Contemporary methods of support are presented based on the example of good educational practice taking place at “Mieszko” Private Elementary School in Poznań. Actions that can be initiated by a teacher in early education have been divided into four areas: physical, didactic, social and in the classroom. The physical area addresses the issue of school space and activities that help to identify and address students’ difficulties in areas related to senses and coordination. The didactic area represents cultural events designed to entertain and educate; there are also examples of how to equalize educational opportunities among students. The subsequent area, encompassing activities carried out within a class group, show intercultural activities included in the curriculum and indicate which activities may help to control difficult behaviours of children. The social area activities are designed to support students in maintaining meaningful relationships with their peers and collaborating with other organizations that can complement and enrich intercultural formal education.

Digital learning across cultures: an account of activity theory

ABSTRACT This paper explores a teaching and learning process as it unfolds in an online offshore classroom. The paper reports on teaching and learning narratives distilled from different cultures, namely the cultures of educators and students in the context of digital learning environments. Drawing on activity theory as a conceptual framework to analyse the narrative, we employ self-study as a methodological tool for capturing the dynamism and complexities that unravel in intercultural and technology-enabled teaching activities. The framework explores the relationships, tensions and opportunities of diverse activity elements that constitute the design and delivery of digital pedagogies. In the networked intercultural system, sustaining the position of activity elements and the specific relational circuit that they institutionalise is a key task for understanding digital technologies as an influential tool for effective learning and teaching practices. We argue that seeing the digital platform from the perspective of its role in creating dynamic interrelationships in a complex activity system is one way to move beyond the cultural confines of any particular element in the system.

O lugar das matemáticas na formação de professores indígenas da região do Alto Solimões/AM

O presente artigo aborda as práticas matemáticas no Curso de Licenciatura em Formação de Professores Indígenas da Universidade Federal do Amazonas/Câmpus de Benjamin Constant, num contexto de diversidade cultural e linguística. Para a reflexão acerca dessa temática, tomamos como ponto de partida a seguinte indagação: Em que termos formativos as práticas matemáticas, via Material Concreto, repercutem nos modos de ensinar e aprender dos discentes indígenas da turma do Alto Solimões/UFAM? Nesse sentido, objetivamos descrever as distintas abordagens metodológicas quanto ao ensino e a aprendizagens de alguns conceitos no âmbito da Geometria Plana, junto aos estudantes indígenas do Curso de Licenciatura em Formação de Professores Indígenas/UFAM. O estudo possui uma abordagem qualitativa pautada na pesquisa etnográfica, tendo como recolha e análise de informações: as impressões, as percepções e os episódios junto aos colaboradores, assim como as atividades interdisciplinares, intraculturais e interculturais potencializadas na compreensão de alguns conceitos da Geometria Plana, com destaque para as cestarias das artesãs Ticuna. Nossas reflexões evidenciam, dentre outras coisas, a aquisição de novos conhecimentos, a criação, a elaboração e a proposição de distintas atividades e práticas matemáticas para as ações docentes futuras nas escolas de suas comunidades.

Intercultural Competence Development of German Nursing Personnel via Advanced Training Projects

This paper describes the advanced training projects to develop the intercultural competence of German nursing personnel. There are many German projects, which promote the development of intercultural competence and other professional competences of doctors and nursing personnel. Within this paper, the authors analyzed the following projects: “Migrants in Geriatric Nursing” (MigA project), “German Professional Language in the Geriatric Nursing” (FaDA Projekt), “Intercultural Open Nursing Service AWO in Ulm”, “Interprofessional and intercultural activities in the area of medicine, nursing and social services” (IPIKA project), IPIKA Plus project, “MIG-COMM-EU ‒ Multilingual Intercultural Business Communication for Europe” (MIG-COMM-EU project), “Intercultural Medical Communication in Europe” (IMED-KOMM-EU project). The authors have paid much attention to the significance of the concept of intercultural competence in nursing care. Besides, the article highlights the issue of the increase in the number of people with a migrant background in Germany. This study also provides another perspective on the advanced training projects for intercultural competence development of German nursing personnel. https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.19.4. 6

An Investigation of the Relationship between Global Perspective and Willingness to Communicate in English in a Chinese University Context

In an era of increasing global connectivity, acquiring a global perspective (GP) and being able to communicate in English are important for both personal and professional development. People with a GP are expected to be more willing to engage in intercultural activities, and more willing to communicate in English. Although previous studies have focused on having a GP and willingness to communicate (WTC) in English, few have investigated whether there is a correlation between these two variables. This study, conducted at a Chinese university, aimed to determine the relationship between GP and WTC in English. Data were collected from students via a questionnaire (n = 114) and interviews (n = 7) at the end of the autumn semester in 2018. The findings demonstrate that the students’ GP and their WTC in English through the English curriculum did not progress to a significant extent, and their GP and WTC in English were correlated. Furthermore, three themes that affected the interviewees’ WTC were extracted from the interviews: global cognition, self-actualization, and intercultural experience. These findings suggest that it would be beneficial to learn English by developing a GP, and that educators can enhance students’ WTC by helping them cultivate that perspective.

Online collaborational practice for active learning in the visual age

According to the Burges Communique “Supporting vocational education and training in Europe”, to meet the challenges of increased unemployment of young people, global competition, Europe’s ageing society and shortage of skills, education organizations need to network and collaborate to achieve inclusive education and training services: diversification of learners, the opening up of education, the preparedness to merge international and intercultural learner groups and to provide learning services for work-based learners.Vocal project is responding to this need by training teachers to develop their skills to adapt their „traditional” curricula towards more collaborative and more intercultural activity focused online modules. But how does this upcoming educational practice responding to the needs of the visual age? Based on Vocal project findings, this presentation is analysing the synergy of this online collaborative educational practice with visual learning and thinking.

Computing Education for Intercultural Learning

This paper explores computing education as a potential site for intercultural learning and encounter in post-conflict environments. It reports on ethnographic fieldwork from the Nairobi Play Project, a constructionist educational program serving adolescents aged 14-18 in urban and rural multi-ethnic refugee communities in Kenya. While the program offers programming and game design instruction, an equal goal is to foster interaction, collaboration, dialogue and understanding across cultural backgrounds. Based on fieldwork from two project cycles involving 5 after-school classes of 12-24 students each, we describe key affordances for encounter, important resistances to be managed or overcome, and emergent complications in the execution of such programs. We argue that many important accomplishments of intercultural learning occur through moments of friction, breakdowns, and gaps -- for example, technical challenges that produce sites of shared humour; frictions between intercultural activities and computing activities; acts of disrupting order; and unstructured time that students collaboratively fill in. We also describe significant complications in such programs, including pressures to adopt norms and practices consistent with dominant or majority cultures, and instances of intercultural bonding over artefacts with xenophobic themes. We reflect on the implications of these phenomena for the design of future programs that use computing as a backbone for intercultural learning or diversity and inclusion efforts in CSCW, ICTD, and allied fields of work.

The Encounter between Cambridge Literary Criticism and China

The purpose of the present paper is to study the impact of Cambridge Literary Criticism (CLC) on Chinese scholars, since the visit to Peking’s Tsinghua University by Prof. Igor Armstrong Richards, the initiator of CLC, in 1929, until present times. That first encounter signed the beginning of a fruitful intercultural communication activity between the two countries, which lasted for a decennial. Those contacts between the British literary world, imbued with the scientific spirit that was the basis of ‘Cambridge Criticism’, was very stimulating for the Chinese academic world, of that was being born. Unfortunately, those contacts were forcefully interrupted in 1939, in the raging of the anti-Japanese war. They resumed, with fruitful results, toward the end of last millennium, when the Chinese government issued a “Program for Education’s Reform and Development in China”. In present times the new movement of ‘Ethical Literary Criticism’ is developing in China by initiative of Prof. Nie Zhenzhao, from Peking’s ‘Central China Normal University’, who took inspiration from the works of the Cambridge literary critic Frank Raymond Leavis.

A Study on the Reflection of Intercultural Activities of Korean Language Teachers

A Study on the Reflection of Intercultural Activities of Korean Language Teachers

Translation of Culturally-Loaded Words With Chinese Characteristics

Translation is an intercultural activity which is closely related to language and culture, and translation is also one of the important ways to spread Chinese culture. This paper explores the translation of culturally-loaded words with Chinese characteristics from the perspective of cultural translation. It puts forward three English translation principles which are conciseness, appropriateness, faithfulness and smoothness. And then it points out the three translation methods including transliteration, literal translation, and liberal translation. It is not only helpful for English-speaking people to have a better understanding of the culturally-loaded words with Chinese characteristics but also beneficial to the export of Chinese culture to a certain extent.

Affective factors, virtual intercultural experiences, and L2 willingness to communicate in in-class, out-of-class, and digital settings

This quantitative study examines whether and to what extent affective factors (i.e. motivation, self-confidence, risk-taking, L2 speaking anxiety, and grit) and virtual intercultural experiences are linked to willingness to communicate in a second language (L2 WTC) in in-class, out-of-class, and digital settings. Participants included 176 Korean undergraduate and graduate students of English as a foreign language (EFL). After adjusting for demographic factors, hierarchical regression analyses revealed three major results: first, those with higher levels of L2 motivation and grit as well as a lower level of L2 speaking anxiety had higher L2 WTC inside the classroom. Second, students who majored in English and had higher levels of L2 self-confidence and risk-taking had higher L2 WTC outside the classroom. Third, individuals who were younger, had a higher level of L2 self-confidence and engaged more frequently in virtual intercultural experiences had higher L2 WTC in digital settings. Results suggest that demographic and affective variables as well as involvement in virtual intercultural activities play distinct roles in influencing EFL students’ WTC in three different L2 communication contexts. Based on these findings, this study provides pedagogical suggestions for L2 practitioners.

Facebook debate: facilitating international, intercultural knowledge exchange and collaboration in the field of international intellectual property law

ABSTRACTThe project discussed here involved an online debating activity between intellectual property (IP) law students in Egypt and the UK, using a closed group on Facebook. The aim was to harness freely available online social media technology to create a space in which valuable discussions and learning could take place. We showed that Facebook can be a powerful educational tool to encourage active learning and usefully connect learners across continents. In enabling the exchange of views between students in different jurisdictions, Facebook provides exposure to different cultures and different perspectives as well as different legal cultures and different legal systems, while also, importantly, enabling participants to identify commonalities. This debate focused on IP law, which is of increasing international importance, and specifically on the topic of access to medicines, which is highly contentious. Through the activity, students learned that they need not only to learn the law, but also to appreciate the socio-cultural and political complexity underlying policy issues in different jurisdictions. On reflection, the Facebook debate definitely enhanced the study of IP law through an interesting and enjoyable international, intercultural activity, led by staff and students, which successfully extended the classroom experience.

Albanian Literary Circle In Italy

Italy's Literary Circle with his creation after the political emigration wave (1945-1990), in the context of Italian - Arbëresh Colony, as a paradigm of the Albanian Literary System during national Revival, was involved in an aggregate of literary and cultural activities. The Literary Circle of Albanian Diaspora in Italy, marked in production, volume, and norm and determined by university institutions of Palermo - Rome - Naples - Bari. Those universities rendered possible the appropriate climate to set up a national literary sub-system model with all systemic components: production, publications and system-creative magazines as Shêjzat [The Pleiades] (august 1957 - 1978), Koha e Jonë [Our Time] (1962-1992); systemic-center authors as: Father Georg Fishta O.F.M.-Ernest Koliqi and Martin Camaj. But, Ernest Koliqi was as the director of the Albanian Studies Institute at Rome University, the master-key of an increasing in the volume of the intercultural activities, as regards the institutional critique, various national celebrations of emigrants, and international symposiums such as the 20-s anniversary of the death of Father George Fishta O.F.M.; or the celebrations on the 500th anniversary of the death of Scanderbeg, in Palermo and Rome (1968). But the main merit of Koliqi was to restore a new Albanian Literary Center in the West and the foundation in Rome of Shêjzat leterary magazine. The Albanian Rome Literary Circle was the counterpart of the National Center of Tirana and sometimes even an antagonist. Various outstanding achievements in the visual arts were celebrated by the painter Ibrahim Kodra with about 20 international awards, as well as the iconographic painter Lin Delia who took part in some audiences with the Pope Pole VI etc... First Koliqi and then Camaj after his death took literary - cultural studies within the Albanian districts of Italy, tracing the genealogy of the Arbëresh migration in the United States in the years 1974 - 1986. After Koliqi’s death in January 1975 and the final departure of Camaj from the Italy Circle as e professor of the Albanian Language at the University of Munich (1978), closed the frame of four decades of the Italy Literary Circle as the core of the Literary Diaspora Sub-system.

Intercultural Communication and the Central States Region

This reflection essay describes the Central States Region as an area rich in intercultural communication. González describes Mexican American migrant farmworker organizing as an intercultural activity since the union activists attempted to influence both Mexican heritage and European heritage audiences. González also describes the many interculturalists working in the Midwest who influenced his early research.

Interculturalidad y variaciones linguísticas del español en una escuela en la frontera Brasil/Venezuela

This research was carried out in the rooms of the last years of high school at the Cicero Viera Neto State School, located in the municipality of Pacaraima-Roraima-Brazil, in order to investigate how interculturality is approached as well as the linguistic variations of the Spanish language in this area. institution. We analyze the problems that lead to not working the linguistic and cultural diversities that characterize Spanish. The methodological base that supported the research was the qualitative approach and the field study. As results we show that intercultural activities happen little in school, despite being an environment rich in diversity. The linguistic variation that is worked on in Spanish classes is peninsular, without concern for the linguistic reality of students and the border region.

The Role of The Teacher in Building Intercultural Communication Skills in Foreign Language Teaching: Teachers’ Views with Examples from France and Turkey

Globalization and communication technologies are making intercultural communication necessary in international platform. Individuals need some skills to communicate effectively. Current foreign language teaching programs need to be prepared with the practices aimed at building intercultural communication skills. As in every educational process, the teacher is the most responsible person in teaching these skills. To identify and compare views of foreign language teachers on the teacher's role in building intercultural communication skills in foreign language teaching, and to collect data, twenty teachers from two universities of France and Turkey were asked to complete an open-ended questionnaire and followed one by one interview. The ethnic and cultural diversity enabled us to make comparisons among different perspectives. The analysis revealed that all participants developed awareness about importance of intercultural communication, yet experienced difficulties in planning intercultural activities and covering them in actual lessons. It was revealed that none of the participants had received any special training on intercultural communication. Some different views of participants that emerged, as a result of this study, are attributed to their cultural codes.

СОЦИАЛЬНОЕ ПАРТНЕРСТВО КАК АКТУАЛЬНАЯ ФОРМА РЕАЛИЗАЦИИ АНТИЭКСТРЕМИСТСКОЙ ПРОФИЛАКТИКИ В МОЛОДЕЖНОЙ СРЕДЕ

The characteristic of youth extremism in the context of destructive way of solving social problems from the standpoint of extremist ideology is given. The main state directions of prevention of youth extremism are systematized and characterized: preventive measures against terrorism, anti-extremist information and education, integration educational courses on intercultural literacy, events organization for the development of social and cultural activity of the individual and the formation of active citizenship. The main vectors of youth extremism prevention, in which a special role is given to social partnership – the system of interaction of state structures and civil society, consolidating efforts in this problem solution. At the same time the effective forms of social and cultural activities aimed at solving the problem: monitoring, patriotic educational activities, organization of creative ethno-oriented evenings, international cultural and creative festivals are described. It is proved that social partnership has sufficient potential to make the process of extremism prevention most effective on the basis of complex interaction of state and public structures involved in the implementation of anti-extremist policy, taking into account religious interests, as well as differentiation of the targeted focus of preventive measures. The basic principles of social partnership are highlighted, without which it is impossible to build effective cooperation: integration and complementarity, confessional parity, targeted orientation. The analysis of social practices realized on the social partnership basis, aimed at intercultural dialogue, international cooperation, patriotism development and civic activity of youth is presented.

African Rhythms for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, percussion and piano

African Rhythms approaches composition from an intercultural perspective in that it amalgamates musical elements and processes from African and Western art music cultures. Minimalism co-exists with Western compositional devices with an added aspect of intercultural activity by using orchestral instruments in African percussive ways.

Research into practice: planning intercultural moments in the additional language classroom

With the socio-cultural turn in Applied Linguistics, the last few decades have seen a growing interest in the intercultural dimension of language pedagogy exemplified on seminal writings, such as Kramsch (1993, 1998), Byran (1997), and lately Liddicoat and Scarino (2013). Due to that, a vast range of research has been theorizing on how language and culture should be dealt in the classroom. However, despite the relevant theoretical framework developed so far, the influence these studies have had on teaching practices is still debatable (Baker, 2015, p. 130). Bearing that in mind, a research group – REAL-LCI – was created with the aim to promote empirical research about the relationship between language and culture on English teaching practices from different educational contexts in Brazil. This article aims mainly at discussing how interculturality can be constructed through planned activities in the classroom. In order to do so, we will briefly discuss some concepts related to interculturality, review some contributions from empirical research conducted by the research group, and propose some methodological movements for the design and implementation of intercultural activities. Finally, the windows of a real classroom will be opened to show how the insights and possibilities presented here can actually be enacted.