Tania Ogay

‘Taking culture seriously’: implications for intercultural education and training

Abstract Albeit indispensable to understanding human action, the concept of culture has suffered from excessive enthusiasm in the fields of intercultural education as well as in intercultural teacher training, leading too often to culturalist stances. These excesses of intercultural education and training as well as their contradictory message (between praising and minimising – even ignoring – culture and cultural differences) have led some scholars to advocate for the abandonment of the concept of culture altogether. Rather than this radical and counterproductive approach, we propose a heuristic tool: the dialectical square of cultural difference, as well as three metaphors of culture, that should help teacher educators to foster a dynamic and complex understanding of culture and cultural difference among pre- and in-service teachers.

Conflict Mediation and Resolution: the contribution of social psychology

ABSTRACT Following an already widespread movement in North America, networks of mediators are being established in Europe. These mediators offer their services to the civil community in order to solve minor conflicts through negotiation rather than through penal action. By presenting the contribution of social psychology to conflict mediation, this article asserts the necessity of adopting a constructivist vision of conflict, by which the mediator will try to reconstitute the different perspectives of the actors vis‐a‐vis the conflict situation and then negotiate a common mode of interaction which can be accepted by all the parties.