Sara Ganassin

Developing intercultural understanding for study abroad: students’ and teachers’ perspectives on pre-departure intercultural learning

This study reports on students’ and teachers’ perspectives on a programme designed to develop Erasmus students’ intercultural understanding prior to going abroad. We aimed to understand how students and their teachers perceived pre-departure materials in promoting their awareness of key concepts related to interculturality (e.g., essentialism, stereotyping, otherising) during an intercultural education course for mobile students. Twenty pre-departure Erasmus undergraduate students from an Italian university, four teachers and one observer participated in the study. Seven hours of audio/video recordings of classroom discussions and teachers’ retrospective narratives were analysed thematically. Although students initially subverted the goals of one of the tasks, they demonstrated foundations of intercultural thinking; followed by movement from self-interest to intercultural awareness of the other; and finally, developing intercultural awareness, supported through opportunities to express emotions/feelings and discussion and application of key concepts of interculturality. Teachers’/observer’s perspectives confirmed the quality and flexibility of the materials in developing students’ intercultural awareness. The findings suggest that pre-departure materials can help students to recognise variety and complexity in self and others in intercultural encounters. But students’ primary needs for practical information should first be satisfied; interactive spaces for expressing emotion and feelings are important for understanding self and others; and scaffolding activities help students to understand intercultural concepts.

Interculturality and the Study Abroad Experience: Students' Learning from the IEREST Materials.

ABSTRACT This study investigated how a ‘while abroad’ (IEREST) intercultural experiential learning programme (i) encouraged mobile student sojourners to explore the concept of ‘interculturality’; (ii) promoted their intercultural engagement/communication during their stay abroad; and (iii) invited them to reflect on their own (developing) interculturality. As students demonstrated their intercultural learning and perspectives, how did they (re)interpret and (re)construct the IEREST learning materials? Data drew on questionnaires, reflective journals, and focus groups from two groups of mobile university students (in Italy and the UK). The findings illustrated how students’ initial expectations of the programme (meeting new people and improving language) were exceeded. Through reflection on experience and discussion with peer, tutors and members of the host community, students realised that ‘interculturality’ is multifaceted and complex; they expanded their small culture spheres to explore community cultures (gender, age, and locality); they acknowledged the effort, work, and time required in interpreting bilateral understandings of self and other, and the possibilities of such understandings for global/intercultural citizenship. The outcomes offer implications for intercultural learning and training in the study abroad context, materials development, and further research concerning student mobility and intercultural education in other contexts.

Chinese Community Schools in England as Intercultural Educational Spaces: Pupils’, Parents’ and Teachers’ Constructions of the Chinese Language

This chapter presents reflections arising from a 14-month in-the-field research on pupils’ identities within Mandarin Chinese community schooling in England. The research aims to explore the social, cultural and linguistic significance of Chinese community language schools for those who are involved in them. The research draws on the data from two Chinese community schools, Apple Valley and Deer River, to investigate how the schools provide a context for pupils, parents and school staff to (re)construct understandings of Chinese language. In particular, the chapter investigates how they construct ideas around Chinese heritage language (CHL) (He 2008, Chinese as a Heritage Language: An Introduction. In A.W. He and Y. Xiao (Eds.), Chinese as a heritage language: Fostering rooted world citizenry (pp. 1–12). Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press) and native speakerism (Creese et al. 2014, The Modern Language Journal 98(98):937–951) and how the status of ‘heritage language speaker’ risks being constructed as a homogenous and fixed system (Doerr 2009, Introduction. In N. M. Doerr (Ed.), Native speaker concept: Ethnographic investigations of native speaker effects (pp. 1–12). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter; Kramsch 2012, Critical Multilingualism Studies 1:107–128). Literature on language community schools suggests that these schools play a political role in countering the monolingual orientation of mainstream schooling (Li and Wu, 2008, Code-switching: Ideologies and practices. In A. W. He & Y. Xiao (Eds.), Chinese as a heritage language: Fostering rooted world citizenry (pp. 225–238). Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press; Archer et al. 2010, Oxford Review of Education 36(4):407–426.). They also support pupils to resist ethnic categories and social stereotypes associated with static identity markers (Creese and Blackledge 2012, Anthropology & Education 43:306–324). The findings presented in this chapter suggest that although participants implicitly construct a complexity of language-related positions (e.g. the role of other fāngyan as CHL contrasting the dominance of Mandarin), stereotypical discourses are still powerful in their explicit narrations.

Teaching and learning about Chinese culture: pupils’ and teachers’ experiences of Chinese community schooling in the UK

ABSTRACT This article investigates how pupils and teachers in two Chinese community schools in the UK understand Chinese culture as regards the classroom teaching and other activities offered by the schools such as the celebration of festivals. Working from a social constructionist perspective and building on the work of Adrian Holliday, the study explores both how participants understand and negotiate culture, and what processes inform their constructions. Overall, this study demonstrates complexity in pupils’ and teachers’ understandings of Chinese culture and how such complexity lies in participants’ personal trajectories and on the significance they attribute to Chinese culture in their lives.