8.

Interculturally competent global leader

“Multicultural education uses learning about other cultures in order to produce acceptance,
or at least tolerance. Intercultural education aims to go beyond passive coexistence, to
achieve a developing a sustainable way of living together in multicultural societies through
the creation of understanding of, respect for and dialog between the different cultural
groups.“

Multicultural (Intercultural) education is rooted in:

 Understanding cultural differences (between cultures and within the same culture)
 Enabling people to acquire greater intercultural competence.

ICGL

 Globalized society and on the global marketplace;

 Cultural diversity – part of the company policy;
 Which skills, attitudes and intellectual capabilities are essential to be a global leader
in the global intercultural environment ???
 How those abilities can be learned?
 Requires a mind-set, heart-set, and skill-set that can carry across cultural boundaries.

While some may be born to be leaders in their own culture, (Lipman-Blumen) leaders with
an ability to deal constructively in intercultural situations are made. These leaders must
reach a new realization of how worldview and behavior are deeply influenced by cultural
origin and how these differences can be bridged. They must learn to be interculturally
competent.“ (Margaret D. Pusch)

INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE
 Ability to relate to and with people from vastly different cultural and ethnic
backgrounds;
 Intercultural competence is the appropriate and effective management of
interaction between people who, to some degree or another, represent different
affective, cognitive, and behavioral orientations to the world.
 Intercultural competence as the overall capacity of an individual to enact behaviors
and activities that foster cooperative relationships with culturally (or ethnically)
dissimilar others.
 DEARDORFFS PYRAMID MODEL OF INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE

Must have motivation to explore “edgewalker“

CHANGE IN ATTITUDES
Need to function and navigate in unfamiliar cultural environment

MOST IMPORTANT SKILLS AND HOW THEY CAN BE ACQUIRED

1. mindfullnes
Mindfulness - being cognitively aware of our own communication and the process
of interaction with others.
• ◊ “What is happening here?”, ”How are we reacting to each other?” “What can I say
or do to help this process?”
• ◊ Focusing on the process rather than the outcomes, but being able to have a vision
of the desired result.
• ◊ Essential for the global leader: to recognize differences, discover what they mean,
create new ways of relating, to be able reflect on and learn from the experience.

2. cognitive flexibility
• . Cognitive flexibility - being able to create new categories;
• ◊ Make more rather than fewer categories; avoid the tendency to stuff new
information into old, preset categories.
• ◊ Being open to new information, being aware of more than one perspective, and
becoming aware of how we interpret messages and situations differently than
others.

3. tolerance for ambiguity

• Tolerance for ambiguity - the ability to be in a situation that is unclear and not
become overly anxious, but to determine patiently what is appropriate.
• ◊ Low-tolerance people seek information to support their own beliefs.
• ◊ High-tolerance people seek “objective” information to understand the
situation and to accurately predict the behavior of others.
• ◊ “Embracing duality” - ability to manage uncertainty and balance the tensions
present when global and local needs and interests come into conflict.
• ◊ Global leaders seek situations and environments with high level of tension and
uncertainty → energizes.

4. behavioral flexibility
• Behavioural flexibility - the ability to adapt and accommodate one’s own
behaviour to people from other groups.
• ◊ Important - to know more than one language, but language skill does not
translate automatically into intercultural skill!!!
• ◊ ”It can be very dangerous to pick people because they have language skills and
then find out they have very little cultural adaptability and little interest in adapting”
(Brake)
• ◊ Ability to engage in chameleon-like behaviour remains critical to functioning
interculturally!!!

5. cross-cultural empathy
• Cross-cultural empathy - being able to participate in another person’s experience;
thinking it intellectually and feeling it emotionally.
• ◊ Ability to connect emotionally, show compassion, listen actively and mindfully,
and view situations from more than one perspective.

The importance of developing Ethnorelative perspective

• Cultures teach us to be ethnocentric (to think of own cultures as central in the

universe);
• ◊ Provides the “natural” way of doing things;
• ◊ To be ethnocentric - default position of people.
• The global leader cannot fall into the default setting, but must move beyond
ethnocentricity.
• ◊The global leader is one who embraces difference and has achieved a state of
ethnorelativity.
Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (Bennett)

Framework
• Identifies the personal change in individuals as they move from being ethnocentric
to ethnorelative perspective.
• The transition shows progression in levels of intercultural sensitivity.

Ethnocentric perspective

• People deny cultural differences, insist that their way of doing things is the only one
appropriate; refuse to consider alternatives.
• Attempts to change people according their own expectations, rather than ‘remaining
different.’

Ethnorelative perspective

• People would accept and adapt to cultural differences.

• Would take into consideration other people’s world-views, when interacting with
them.
• Would acquire a certain fluency in navigating through different world views.

Developmental model of intercultural sensitivity DMIS

“states” of ethnocentrism
1. denial of difference
• Seems impossible to understand cultural difference;
• “Others” tend to be dehumanized or identified in the most general terms or
stereotypes.
• Cultural differences are seen as something that happens somewhere else.
• Due to: ignorance of, isolation from other cultures.

2. defence against difference

• More active - there is a recognition of difference, and it is seen as threatening.
• May take three forms (strong orientation to dualistic thinking):
• 1. Denigration (degradation) – evaluated negatively, criticizing
• 2. Asserting superiority
• 3. Reversal, a tendency to see another culture as superior to one’s own (requires
experience).

3. minimization of difference
• Similarity seems more compelling than difference, based on:
• Physical universalism
• Transcendent universalism – at the core of human existence, we are all the
same and can understand each other once we get past relatively superficial
cultural differences.
• Transition stage
“states of ethnorelativism
1. acceptance of difference
• Requires a significant other-culture experience;
• 1. Respect for behavioural differences become recognized, appreciated, and
respected;
• 2. Respecting the beliefs and values of another culture.
• Consciously incompetent but learning more effective ways of interacting across
cultures.
2. adaptation to difference
• Individual more consciously and skillfully relates to and communicates with people
of different cultural origins.
• 1. More empathetic, able to shift worldviews, but not giving up the home culture;
• 2. Internalizing more than one worldview and shifting between them with some
ease and less conscious attention.
• One can move beyond conscious ↔ unconscious competence, but this is an unequal
process – state of discovery.

3. integration of difference
• Brings the person to the state of being a multicultural/ integrated person.
• Is able to function between and among many cultures, no longer identifies solely
with one culture.

Ethnocentrism
 One is in a state of unconscious incompetence;
 It is possible to begin to be consciously incompetent in minimization, to recognize
cultural insensitivity, and to attempt to learn new ways of relating to people and
behaving.
 Тhere is an increased interest in learning about other cultures, but mainly at a level
of holidays, food, and celebrations.

Other skills
“global mindset” – to be able to stretch ones mind to encompass the entire world with all its
complexity
• Inquisitiveness (curiosity) – oriencation to learning is essential in a fast changing
world - “Greatest survival skill is the ability to learn how to learn. The best way to
learn how to learn is to love to learn, and the best way to love to learn is to have
great teachers(mentors) who inspire you.”
• Ethical behavior
• making ethical decisions, taking into account the concerns of local people as well as
global goals in a given situation.
 One of the first steps in becoming an interculturally competent leader is to achieve
awareness not only of one’s home culture + its influence on one’s behavior, values,
and ways of looking at the world.
 Early step in becoming globally competent is to begin to experience life in places
other than your home country/culture (studying/working/communicating).
 Possibilities to participate in structured learning experiences abroad.

 REQURIEMENTS

 Higher level of commitment - one that involves taking responsibility for being
personally connected with and learning from and caring about those who are unlike
ourselves, and a serious exploration of our own beliefs and our convictions.
 Reordering of one’s mental map, of stretching one’s mind beyond the known to
include the entire world. While no one can know everything about every country or
region of the world, one can take on that “global mind-set” that recognizes that the
map that was developed while growing up does not transfer to the rest of the world.

7. cultural taxonomies

 Specific conceptual taxonomies - are useful for understanding cultural differences.

 REMEMBER: cultural taxonomies describe characteristics of cultures (in general) and
individual members of a culture may vary greatly from the pattern that is typical of
that culture. An individual person may or may not be a typical representative of that
culture.
  RECOMMENDATION: as studying the approaches, you (students) are encouraged to
make some judgments about how your own culture fits into the pattern. Then, as
you place it within the pattern, also try to discern how you, as an individual, fit into
the patterns described.

Cultures are organized by the amount of information implied by the setting or context of
the communication itself, regardless of the specific words that are spoken.

• High-context culture
• Prefer to use high-context messages - most of the meaning is either implied by the
physical setting or presumed to be part of the individual's internalized beliefs, values,
norms, and social practices
• Japanese, Mexican, Latino culture

• Low-context cultures
• Prefer to use low-context messages - the majority of the information is transmitted
through the explicit code.
• - Every statement must be precise, message must be overt and explicit.
• German, Swedish, European American, and English.

COVERT AND OVERT

Covert
• Meanings of messages are internalized, no need to be explicitly and verbally
transmitted – interpretation is already known
• - Much more is taken for granted and assumed to be shared
• - Large emphasis on nonverbal codes
• - Preprogrammed – understand the message by the context
• - Reactions – are reserved (purpose - to promote and sustain harmony among the
participants)

Overt
• - Details are expressed precisely and specifically in the words used.
• - Reactions – are explicit and observable (purpose - to convey exact meaning).
• - Message explicit = reaction explicit (feedback)
 Geert Hofstede’s Cultural Taxonomy

Identity
- individual is conscious about own identity
- can change it to some extent
• Cultural conditioning
• - culture as a part of individual’s worldview and individual’s identity.
• Cultural conditioning denotes the most solid moral circle in which individual feels
included.
• Societies/countries have different cultures.
• Research studies
• - show that cultural differences between societies are larger than cultural
differences within societies.
• → allows to obtain an insight the ways in which individuals have been culturally
conditioned.
• Research studies
• - Possibility to define patterns
• - Trait-based perspective on culture.

 Every culture has different unwritten cultural assumptions, different explicit rules →
NOT possible to define which approach is the best.
 “People are moral, but culture modifies that morality.“ Hofstede

 Basic value orientations of societies described with five basic issues.

 Predictive value
 *In this paradigm, “culture” is not an attribute of individuals but of societies.

• Identity:
• Individualism Versus Collectivism
• Hierarchy:
• Large Versus Small Power Distance
• Gender and Aggression: Masculinity Versus Femininity
• Anxiety:
• Weak Versus Strong Uncertainty Avoidance
• Gratification:
• Short- Versus Long-Term Orientation

POWER DISTANCE – HIREARCHY

• Characteristics
• Level of status or social power (superior/subordinated)→ inequalities seen as
good/bad, right/wrong
• How the power should be distributed
• Manifesting power
• Rules
• In family/ school
• In organization: Leadership
• Small power distance
• Egalitarian society, minimizing inequalities
• Hidden
• Distribution of duties/decision-making/autonomy
• Bad subordinates expel good leaders
• Austria, Denmark, Israel, New Zealand…
• Large power distance
• Authoritarian society: unequal distribution is normal, beneficial, appropriate
• Manifested, have right to use it
• Authorities should NOT be challenged/questioned
• Distribution – weakness/dependent/centralized/ /leader must solve every
issue
• Bad leaders expel good subordinates
• Arab countries, Malaysia, Philippines…

ANXIETY/UNCERTAINTY AVOIDANCE

• Characteristics
• Attitude toward changes
• Coping with changes
• Weak uncertainty avoidance
• Opportunity
• High tolerance/accepting differences
• Less rules, rituals
• Taking risks, trying new things
• Tendency to laxness as long as there is no urgency.
• Conflict and competition are natural
• Young leaders are accepted
• Emotions – to avoid
• Denmark, Ireland, Singapore
• Strong uncertainty avoidance
• Threat
• Avoidance/Defence: through formalization/rituals that promote cohesion
(food, song, dance)
• Don’t tolerate/allow deviated behaviour
 • Anxiety→ aggression
• Old, experienced leaders
• Emotions – to express
• Greece, Portugal, Uruguay

IDENTITY

• Characteristics
• Relying on self/the group
• Responsibility for own destiny
• Worldview
• Emotional dependence (family)
• Part of group
• In organizations
• Individualism
• Individual
• Voluntarism
• Independent/Unique
• Individual is free to choose and to revoke its alliances.
• Independence, privacy, self, I
• Hires and fires people because of their performance.
• Austria, Belgium, Netherlands, USA
• Collectivism
• Community
• Determinism
• Emotionally dependent/Conforming
• Individual is a member of network of relationships of interdependency.
• “WE“, belonging, loyalty
• One hires people for in-group membership, and firing is difficult.
• Japan, Indonesia, Guatemala, Pakistan

GENDER AND AGRESSION

• Characteristics
• Orientation toward:
• Importance of…
• Masculinity
• Doing cultures
• Results, achievements, ambition, aggressiveness,
• To be rich, powerful – to display
• Gender differences: men-assertive, woman-nurturing
• Austria, Italy, Japan, Mexico
• Femininity
• Being cultures
• Interpersonal communication, values, harmony, quality of life-intrinsic
aspects, service to others
• To be respected, connected
 • Gender equality-less prescriptive role behaviors
• Sweden, Chile, Portugal, Thailand

GRATIFICATION

• Characteristics
• Point of reference about life and work
• View of time and the importance of the past, present and the future.
• To understand motivation
• In organization
• Short - Term Orientation
• Focused on the present or past/ Consider them more important than the
future
• Opportunistic, quick results
• Concerned with short-term gratification than long-term fulfillment
• Employee: bonus
• Europeans: zodiac month intervals
• Long-Term Orientation
Focused on the future
Long-term commitments
Willing to delay short-term success or gratification in order to prepare for the
future.
Value persistence, saving and being able to adapt.
Employee: retirement fund

• Indulgence VS Restraint
• Hedonism
• Pleasure, enjoyment, spending, consumption
Self-discipline
Control of hedonistic gratifications, pleasure and enjoyment are discouraged
• Monumentalism VS Self-Effacement
• Stability
• Proud, uncheangeable, upstanding
• Change
• Flexibility, humility, adaptation to the situation, feel comfortable about life’s
inconsistencies

Those from self-effacement cultures adapt relatively easily to foreign environments

because their selves are fluid and flexible. are not overly proud of their cultural
identity, and do not insist on retaining their cultural heritage. Conversely, people
from monumentalist cultures may consider
cultural adaptation a sort of treason. because they are more proud of who they are
and subscribe to the view that some self attributes, such as values and beliefs, must
remain immutable.
 The GLOBE Cultural Taxonomy
 Project GLOBE, - Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness.
 Collected information from 20,000 middle managers in 61 cultures.
 9 dimensions
 6 based on the work of Hofstede
 3 based on the work of Kluckholm and Strodtbeck

Power distance

Uncertainty avoidance

In-group collectivism Low in-group (individualistic)

High in-group (collectivistic)

Institutional collectivism How decisions are made and resources are allocated
- High institutional collectivism: support, value and prefer gr
- Low institutional collectivism: what is good for the individu
group

Gender egalitarianism Belief in equality between women and men

- High in gender egalitarianism - equality is preferred/uneq
discrimination
- Low in gender egalitarianism - engage in unequal treatme
roles and expectations is seen as normal and natural
Assertiveness Preference for forceful assertiveness or tender nonaggress
- High in assertiveness - value strength, success, initiative, co
winning is desirable
- Low in assertiveness - value modesty, tenderness, warm rel
cooperation. Competition is bad, a win-lose orientation is un

Performance - Degree to which a culture encourages High performance-or

orientation and rewards people for their - Status based on wha
accomplishments. accomplished, educati
- Regarded superior because of family success, expected to
status/achievements expectations are high
- Relationship to the natural and spiritual - Task-oriented, gettin
world - Dominance over nat
their needs
- Low-context
* Canada, Singapore
 Future - Extent to which a culture plans High in future orienta
orientation forthcoming events - Current pleasures ar
- Gratification (long – short term) future benefits
- Believe in planning,
that have a delayed im
* Iran and Hong Kong

Humane Extent to which cultures High in humane orien

orientation encourage and reward their members - Value expressions o
for being: caring,
- benevolent and compassionate toward compassion, expressi
others or help others financially
- are concerned with self-interest and empathy and love.
self-gratification. * Zambia and Indone

 Cultures vary systematically in their choices about solutions to basic human

problems.
 The taxonomies offer lenses through which cultural variations can be understood
and appreciated, rather than negatively evaluated and disregarded.
 In any intercultural encounter, people may be communicating from very different
perceptions of what is "reality," what is "good," and what is "correct" behavior.
 NOT to interpret real-world events using just one dimension.
 Understanding the cultural dimensions leads to a greater awareness of acceptable
behaviors and thus adoption of such behaviors in intercultural communication.
 The competent intercultural communicator must recognize that cultural variations in
addressing basic human issues such as social relations, emphasis on self or group,
and preferences for verbal or nonverbal code usage will always be a factor in
intercultural communication.
Developing intercultural competence beyond one’s moral circle is a key goal.

6. THE SUBJECTIVE ASPECT OF BEING

 Education institutions do not operate in a vacuum but are part of the society.
 Education institutions ↔ society
 Curricula have to adapt to changes including those proposed by stakeholders
in the labor market;
 Students’ beliefs, values and expectations of the school change and thereby
have the potential to promote change, at an institutional level.
 Changes are happening at different levels.
 If students are active participants and protagonists in the learning process and not
only passive learners, will be more conscious of changes that are occurring and will
be more aware how those changes influence them.
 Transformation happens when individuals are engaged in collaborative interactive
processes.

 Individuals can NOT be seen in isolation of factors that have impact on their lives.
 Person-in-environment perspective - highlights the importance of understanding an
individual, and individual behaviour in the light of the environmental contexts in
which that person lives and acts’.

Global
environment

Community

School, peers

Family

The Model of Bronfenbrenner

 People interact on different levels.

 Their interactions on all these different levels connect together.
 Individuals can not be seen as acting in isolation but rather as acting in the context
of an interactive system in which other social actors, and in which other constituent
elements of society, are involved.
The theory presents the ecological environment as a set of nested structures
 Global
environment

Community

Family

1. Micro-system

• ◊ Interactions students have with people in their immediate surroundings (members

of family, peers, partner, colleagues);
• ◊ Feel close to, give support;
• ◊ Differences in every developmental phase (relatedness, importance of influences);
• ◊ As one grows older, it is likely that the number of micro-systems in which one is
actively involved also increases.
• ◊ Family is a particularly influential during whole life.
• ◊ Micro-system can have a lasting influence on people’s lives throughout their
lifespan.

2. Meso-system
 Community, university
 Relations between two or more micro-systems (peers-family / partner-family)
 Network of micro-systems
 Impact on student’s behaviour / learning
 Difficulties can arise in multicultural groups: woman to address a man whom she
does not know – in some countries is taboo, in other usual behaviour.

• 3. Exo-system
• Characterized by the policies of larger social systems and how they influence
indirectly on students’ lives.
• Policy that influence on the student, when it does not apply directly to
him/her.
 • 4. Macro-system
• Characterized by the cultural values, customs, laws, and other regulations
that impinge on students’ lives.
• National policies, the state of the economy, the system of government →
influence on individuals

Chrono-system

• ◊ Relates to temporal change either ‘in ecological systems’ or ‘within individuals’.

• 1. Ecological systems-based change:
• - change in specific properties in the system → has influence on people’s everyday
life (parents getting divorced, attending new university, change in education policy)
• 2. Life-course approach to understanding social reality:
• - Relation between human lives and a changing society.
• - People’s knowledge, world view, the way they experience reality, and the way in
which they position themselves in that social reality changes.
• - Is personalized and individual change.

APPLICATION OF BRONFENBRENNER’S THEORY

• Links the local to the global
• Decisions taken on a micro-level can be influenced by information obtained virtually
or decisions and policy changes made on macro level. (EU, Erasmus +, visas to
travel…).
• Multicultural education
• enables people to consolidate their global orientation as it empowers them to adopt
greater self-efficacy in intercultural situations due to the intercultural sensitivity that
they foster.
• Cultures change and evolve
• The idea of an unchanging culture ‘is a myth.
• All societies and cultures change and adapt.

Shift of the focus of Multicultural education related with contextual ecologies

• Multicultural education in university context - centred on

• - The pedagogies employed
• - The prescribed curricula
• - The ‘student as a learner’
• Multicultural education contextual ecologies – to be centred on
• - How students can access holistic and critical appreciation of the influences of
culture and society on their lives.

AT EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS
 Understanding of reality that is dynamic.
 Banks: Equity pedagogy to build an environment which is sensitive to the dynamic
influencing effect of the different social and cultural structures.
 Curricula should recognize and appreciate the diverse knowledge that students
bring, including their community-based identities, social histories, and even family-
based traditions and outlooks.
 Experiencing acculturative stress among certain students. (application of
Bronfenbrenner’s theory)
 (US context - African-American students who do well in their studies can be
humiliated for doing well by their peers/ blamed for internalizing the norms,
behaviors, values, mind-set of their White peers).

 The ‘Millennial Generation’ (‘Gen Y’ ,‘Net Generation’ - centrality of Internet

technology in their lives).
 ‘Generation iY’ (born after 1990) - are exposed to an increasingly diverse world, not
only in terms of readily coming into contact, virtually or physically, with people of
different races and ethnicities, but also in terms of becoming aware of people with
different sexual orientations, social class backgrounds, religions, and other
attributes.
 ‘Generation Z’ (‘Homeland Generation’) - born after 2004, spend more time at home
using their multiple digital platforms than any earlier child generation in history.

 When thinking in terms of:

 Quality of education
 Possibilities for good career/employment
 Quality of life

5. LINKING THE SUBJECTIVE AND PERSONAL ASPECTS OF SELF TO MULTI

 Childhood → socialization → worldview → open-minded/stereotyped

 Disposition to relate to culturally different individuals ← multicultural education
 To deconstruct stereotypical messages → to co-construct a culture of respect
 In this chapter: to show how people’s individual perceptions, beliefs, and messages
are influential components that have effect on successful interpersonal and
intercultural encounters.

• Multicultural education
• To engage students in recognizing and accepting cultural differences.
• To give all students opportunity to express their views.

Lifelong learning for skills

• Students will be part of increasingly global and diverse workforce.
• To learn to adapt in an ever-changing labour market/ globalization.
• !!! “Communication apprehension” (McCroskey)
• ‘‘an individual’s level of fear or anxiety with either real or anticipated
communication with another person or persons.’
• multicultural education at universities → to reduce this apprehension
• Leadership
 • ‘A versatile process that requires working with others, in personal and
professional relationships, to accomplish a goal or to promote positive
change’ (Patterson)
• Issues and challenges that students need to address in today’s changing
world.

Challenge for education institutions/universities

• Some universities may actually reinforce discrimination by causing students to

operate within existing systems rather than challenging the current systems or the
status quo.
• ◊ To enable an ethos that is rooted in:
• - understanding of cultural diversity (content integration/knowledge
construction)
• - engagement in the struggle for equity (equity pedagogy/prejudice
reduction)
• - commitment to promoting educational achievement for all students.
(sch.culture)
• ◊ Need schools/universities to include students from diverse backgrounds.
• ◊ Emphasis on assisting students to acquire knowledge and skills/create work
situations that enable them to interrelate.
• ◊ Ability to relate to people of different cultural backgrounds is coming to be
seen as an essential life-skill in further education, as well as in the broader
context of life-long learning), particularly due to globalization.

• Some universities may actually reinforce discrimination by causing students to

operate within existing systems rather than challenging the current systems or the
status quo.

• Cultural encapsulation
• Well-informed learning → enables students to overcome the
• cultural encapsulation
• Takes place when people fail to engage in understanding how their own
cultural heritage and its associated worldview stands in relation to other
cultural heritages.
• The more exposure students have to different cultural frames of reference →
• the more likely they would be to understand that their own cultural frames
of reference are not the only ones that people use.

Frames of reference
a set of ideas, conditions, assumptions or perspectives that determine how
something will be approached, perceived, or understood.

• Cultural reality is subject to human interpretation and definition

• - if people are unable to discern other realities or world views, they may become
accustomed to their own reality.
 • Cultural plurality – need to recognize it and appreciate it.
• - example: country where people believe in white and black magic– to be aware that
some beliefs are developed in childhood, as part of upbringing → to foster an
attitude of respect for different and diverse ways of viewing and understanding
reality.
• Importance of peer learning
• - can help to increase student’s awareness about different realities, by sharing
informed learning experiences with one another.
• To be aware that some previous (early) education experiences can be based on
stereotypes (e.g. gender stereotypes)
• - need to effectively deconstruct them in later life (during university) in order not to
further perpetuate the stereotypes.
• Stereotypes can lead to discrimination of the ‘some’ by ‘the others’ leads to the
adoption of deficit narratives

• Respect for diversity

• Ability to be responsive to people from different cultures
• Democratic citizenship
• Through education to acquire the skills, knowledge, disposition, and capacity to
engage in active and purposeful action.
• To enable students to learn how to take responsibility of moving society in a
direction where democracy would be practised and not simply preached.

School books
categorization, classification of cultures
(scientific approach/need)
Need for students to be able to look beyond the given information
→ to realize that cultures cannot be neatly defined and categorized

• - People categorized because of cultural backgrounds

• - Seen as part of unified whole – culturally influenced
• - Stereotyped
• - People to be seen as an individuals (own ways of coping and dealing with
challenges)
• - Free to be themselves in everyday interaction
• - Richness of personal qualities and aptit

No place for ‘stereotype consistent information’ in multicultural education!!!

Effective ways of countering ‘stereotype consistent information

• - Exposing people to other people from different cultures.

• - Relating to one another: people can both share and receive insights and
information → will enable them to understand one another. (Bennett)
• - Awareness: people must not only do things, but they must also know why they are
doing them, and why are doing them in one way and not in another.
• - When relating to people from different cultures, to question:
 • ‘What are we expecting out of the relationship?’; ‘How am I prepared to contribute
to it, without being judgemental to other person’s worldview?’
• - Always a certain amount of risk. ‘What risks am I taking if I disclose something?’
important to ask, particularly in multicultural contexts, where misunderstandings
may surface because of the different expectations that people from different cultural
backgrounds have.

Philosophy for Children’ (P4C) Lipman, Sharp, and Oscanyan

• Teaching approach
• Basis: formation of a
• ‘community of inquiry’
• During people’s interactions (which at a more meaningful level become dialogic
exchanges), people build common understandings and shared beliefs based on the
information previously relayed to them.
 CRITICAL THINKING
• Rooted in acquisition of complex cognitive skills - being able to examine, review and
evaluate.
• ◊ Development of open-mindedness, acceptance of criticism, thoroughness, and
other attributes.
• ◊ Enables to intervene appropriately in order to challenge any arising fallacies or
incongruences.
• ◊ Engagement in ‘a reflexive and active scepticism’
• ◊ Contributing factor to this process, is the self-corrective dynamic in groups where
present individuals learn from each other and from sharing their ideas
collaboratively.
• ◊ If challenge is carried out appropriately, an ambience/atmosphere of cooperation
prevails.
• ◊ The goal is not to have winners and losers, but winners only.
• ◊ Applied in practice: stories and case-studies which raise points of philosophical
interest

CREATIVE THINKING

• Thinking outside the box, see things from different perspectives, develop different
meta-positions in relation to different realities.
• ◊ Creative thinking involves being playful with ideas, looking for alternative
explanations, and searching for fresh perspectives.
• ◊ It operates in terms of posing and suggesting possible answers to questions like ‘Is
it possible that this reality is seen differently?’ → It thereby stimulates further
exploration of a given topic.

• Collaborative thinking
• Characterized by a sense of mutuality, wherein individuals combine their
efforts to explore topics of interest.
• According Splitter, collaborative thinking is an important aspect of student
learning since it enables the ‘nurturing the lives of their minds.
• He argues that a ‘great deal of contemporary policy-making in education has
a narrow conception in treating learners as isolated individuals’.
• Caring thinking
• Based on the notion that emotions are an essential component of
judgements on matters of importance and are thereby an integral aspect of
any inquiry.
BEFENFICT OF THE COMMUNITY OF INQUITY
• 1. Enables students to build on their knowledge in ways that they find relevant,
interesting, and important.
• 2. Students go beyond what is presented to them and unpack it critically, questioning
its deeper meaning and exploring if there is any ‘left out data’ in order to obtain a
stronger grip on the situation.
• 3. Education seen as an ‘inquiry response to a problematical situation’
• where students question → challenge each other → are being reflexive → engage in
the ‘inquiry’ → enables student’s thinking to be cultivated.
• Wakefulness in group contexts:
• A way to speak about:
• - reflexitvity (examine different perspectives) and awareness of what one is ready to
invest to make the relationship happen, and
• - being critical and thereby ensure that respecting one group of people does not
translate into failing to give another group its due importance.
• Wakeful person
• Would be able to take critical perspectives into consideration ‘while protecting the
authenticity of participants’ accounts and her own intellectual independence’.

 Constructions, such as being a Jewish/Black/Macedonian/ Albanian….., may be used

as markers of diversity.
 Therefore, one person might be a female, a lecturer, a student, a writer, a married
person, a Canadian citizen…yet ‘these various classifications are not all equivalent in
terms of their conceptual roles and powers’. (Splitter)
 Some of these classifications are involuntary (such as gender we are born with),
others are not (can change citizenship, profession…).
 Constructions need to be ‘unpacked’
 ‘To insist that one such association is exclusive, is to commit to the ‘Fallacy of
Singular Affiliation’ which is seen as being at the very heart of much of the
intolerance and discord to which we witness around the world today’. Amartya Sen

 By being wakeful, people who are interacting with one another would explore not
only their own perspectives, or those of others, but also explore how these
perspectives are located among those of others and how the perspectives of others
relate to theirs.
 As a result, they would be better empowered to construct strength-based
narratives, as would be more likely to see both their own and other people’s
perspectives in a balanced way.
 Seen in this way, wakefulness is in service of ‘cultural humility’ – when processes of
self-evaluation and self-critique are constantly present in people’s interactions with
each other. (Tervalon and Murray-Garcia)

Cultural humility
a process of reflection and lifelong inquiry, involves self-awareness of personal
and cultural biases as well as awareness and sensitivity to significant cultural issues
of others. Core to the process of cultural humility is the individual's purposeful
reflection of her/his values and biases.

Broadly presented ideas of culture

→ can be misleading
• Multicultural education to learn how
• to appreciate cultures in an open and
• non- stereotypical way.
• Spirit of mutual cohesiveness
• → is rooted in Respect
• ←understanding others
• will enable experiencing of mutual growth (caring thinking).

Remember that “just as one can disagree with others, one can disagree with oneself“
• Disagreeing does not mean being disrespectful;
• Just as people can change other people’s minds in the course of a dialogue, they can
change their own minds too.
• → can help to break out stereotypes
• Interacting with other people →learning more about others and about oneself
→strengths-based narratives → no place for stereotypes

Respect and acceptance

• ‘Evolving respect’ - process of accepting people for who they are.
• Acceptance implies recognition of another person’s dignity and value as a person,
regardless of that person’s individual qualities or cultural background.
• Acceptance does not mean identifying with, or blindly internalizing another
person’s behaviors, attitudes, or standards.
• In the absence of better knowledge, people tend to assume that behaviors are
inappropriate, particularly when they cannot make out what is the meaning of the
behaviors to the people involved.

Perspective is important
Ethnocentric perspective
• ◊ People see the things from perspective familiar to them and do not
experience a need to question it or to deconstruct it.
• ◊ Ethnocentric perspective is adopted almost instinctively. (black and white
magic/devils and angels)
• ◊ Seeing ‘what people are used to doing’ as the right way to do the

Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (Bennett)

FRAMEWORK
• Importance of the transition from an ethnocentric perspective → an ethnorelative
one in multicultural contexts.
• Transition shows progression in levels of intercultural sensitivity.

• Ethnocentric perspective
• People deny cultural differences, insist that their way of doing things is the only one
appropriate; refuse to consider alternatives.
• Attempts to change people according their own expectations, rather than ‘remaining
different.’

• Autocorrelative perspective
• People would accept and adapt to cultural differences.
• Would take into consideration other people’s world-views, when interacting with
them.
• Would acquire a certain fluency in navigating through different world views.
 Multicultural education at education institutions / work organizations

• Need for students/

• employees to develop:
• ◊ Ethnorelative perspective (seeing cultural differences not as a threat,
something to be eliminated, but as something to be appreciated and
understood).
• ◊ Ability for intercultural communication – to learn to live together – mutual
respect.
• ◊ To be able to see the value judgements that they internalized from their
own cultures as less central to the widened perspectives that multicultural
context offers to them.
• ◊To adopt a questioning position: would enable them to see what others are
communicating from the perspectives of larger cultural representations of
reality
• - being able to look from the outside-in (picturing what others may be
thinking), rather than
• - simply from the inside-out (assuming that others are thinking what one is
thinking).
• ◊ Situational understanding - How does the person learn what is appropriate
or inappropriate in a given social (multicultural) context?’
• - Questions like: ‘When to speak up?’ ‘When is it improper to speak up?’
‘How should I address my lecturers/managers?’…
• ◊ To develop personal acumen (awareness, ability to make good judgments
and quick decissions) to their own cultural assumptions but also to remain
open to learning new ones.
• ◊ If, foreign students are not shown what is expected of them, they are at
risk of being led by: other foreign students who do not know local customs
and practices well enough, leading to ‘blind leaders of the blind’ or to be
leaded by people who lack awareness of cultural differences and who
stereotype people.

Culturally relevant pedagogy at University

• Based on 3 criteria:
• 1. Students must experience academic success;
• 2. Students must develop and maintain cultural competences;
• 3. Students must develop a critical consciousness through which they
challenge the status quo of the current social order.
Around 15,000 people graduate in Malta every year. That is an enormous amount of
people. I have a title. Not the title of King or Prince. The title of illegal immigrant. I
have lived in Malta all my life. I am not Maltese though. I depend on the ‘goodness’
of the Maltese government to remain here. I just want to be one of the others who
come here. I want to be one of them, while being true to my true self.
(ethnorelative position) I want to understand them. I want them to understand me.
I want to enjoy my lessons. I want to enjoy having them in my lessons. I just want to
be one of the others, plain and simple, one of the others. Why is that just so difficult
for everyone to understand?“
 Organizational Responses

 Culturally responsive pedagogy to develop an organizational ‘mind-set that respects

and honors students’ cultures, experiences, and histories, and finds ways to include
them in the curriculum’.
 → to allow the students to use their own cultural frames of reference to
understand, explore and challenge what are being taught – students to be given a
voice.
 Focus on interactive collaboration and promotion of co-reflexive dialogues (to
counter deficit perspectives);
 To create a classroom environment where students can share diverse cultural
narratives.

Space where hybridity and diversity merge together in student learning.

◊ Boundaries are crossed and successful communication is created.
◊ Brings knowledge that challenge and reformulate current academic literacy and
discourses in students’ lives.
◊ This knowledge is shared in first and second space.

• Third space (merged)

• new knowledge and
• new forms of literacy are formed.
• Second space
• more formalized institutions (school, religious institutions, work)
• First space
• students’ homes, peer networks, and local communities

 If the students are aware of what draws them together and what sets them apart,
they can bring about a more cohesive learning environment at university. If they
involve themselves and promote change, this can lead to a meaningful
transformation. This makes the possibility of the arising of basismo less likely.
 ‘Basismo’: situation where ‘people are content with mediocrity and with being fed
the illusion of political participation which leaves them at a dead and therefore
exploitable level’.
 If students are engaged in thinking critically about the discourses they have been
presented, they will be less likely to perpetuate basismo.

4. CHARACTERISTIC FEATURES OF MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION

 Today, multicultural education is concerned with any form of oppression and racism

• Evolution of oppression and racism in society.

• “the Ideal type“, norm, mainstream population
• Excluding everyone different
• (is seen as “culturally deficient“)
• Changes in society → change of “the Ideal type“
 • Multicultural education as a way of raising awareness about the various forms of
subordination that can coexist in society at any given moment in time. (Banks)

• 1.Raising awareness what is oppressive

• 2.Promoting social equity
• Content integration
• Knowledge construction process
• Equity pedagogy
• Prejudice reduction
• Empowering school culture and social structure

• Integration of material into the curriculum.

• Aim: to generate students’ curiosity and engage them:
• - to want to learn more about other people’s cultures
• - to understand how historical struggles they had in past influenced on the manner in
which they express in the present.
• For content integration to be effective, the curriculum needs to be built on a critical
reflection of:
• - what teachers teach and
• - what students learn.

• ‘Foods and festivals events’ as stand-alone interventions

• - Help to learn about different cultures but don’t always enable students to see the
wider picture of what they are taught.
• One-sided pictures of culture
• - Attractive or bad characteristics of the culture;
• - Fail to engage in questioning about differences or discrimination.
• Media
• – Influence on people to think in a certain way.
• - Can generate sensationalism/ exaggerated reaction.
• - Sometimes share only small part of the story

KNOWLEDGE CONSTRUCTION PROCESS

• Information included in the curriculum

• Students make a sense of given information
• Need for students to reflect on given information
• To question:
• which and whose knowledge is being presented???
• Whose side of the story???
• Importance of
• ‘critical pedagogy’
• to empower students to become aware
• Whose interests are being promoted?
• To be able to recognize ‘oppressive ideologies’
• Need to question any given information, in order to avoid making themselves
vulnerable to misinformation.
 • Curriculum:
• What is omitted and why?
• What is included?
• What is the underlying message that information is intended to
convey?
• How we interpret included information?
• Subjective aspect of meaning-making
• students to be able to make their own informed reflections.
• Knowledge construction is a social construction
• It can be changed
• If students are able to think critically →
• Will be empowered to think about an alternative narrative
• Will be able to make own interpretations of reality (knowledge construction)
• Deficit-thinking → Strength-based narratives.

EQUITY PEDAGOGY

• What is?
• Methods that teachers use in order to enable all their students to learn,
irrespective of characteristics as gender, cultural or racial background.
• Goal is
• To ensure that what is being taught is accessible and understandable to all
students.
• Based on
• Reflective aspect of knowledge construction →
• to engage students in questioning the meaning of the information they are
given, in an active way.
• POWER – is shared with students
• “The more power we give away, the more power exists“

• To take into consideration different aspects of the knowledge construction

process:
• 1. Viewpoint in science:
• - ‘Western’ VS Folk thought’ (science from other cultures)
• - How scientists look like??? (gender, race, physical appearance) → false
impression that these attributes are determining in choosing profession,
science subject
• 2. Differences in:
• - communication patterns, social values, learning styles, time and space
orientations, discussion and participation modes between students -
lecturers need to be aware of.
• 3. Important: Lecturers not to fall into temptation of lowering academic
expectations for low-income and ethnic minority students.
• - stereotype by seeing them as being deprived and disadvantaged → it means
using a deficit-centered manner of thinking.

• The key to equity pedagogy is AWARENESS

• If we say that: Multicultural education is for people,
• by people (who construct and promote values), and
• with people (who relate to one another)

• Prejudice reduction
• less inclination to stereotype others

BANKS

• Human rights-based dimension to multicultural education.

• ‘Talking at’ → ‘Talking with’ people can bring higher sense of mutuality.
• Lecturers speaking from ‘do as I say’ position→ students obliged to ‘obey’, even if
disagree
• Society: politicians, managers…
• Interventions focused to address social disadvantages is likely to be more effective
if marginalized groups are included rather than excluded from society.

FREIRE

 Liberating process through ‘conscientization.’

 1. First step - which factors in society cause or support oppression.
 2. Second step - purposeful action based on this awareness.
 Praxis: when both steps are simultaneous and cyclical
 reflection ↔ action
 Emancipatory
change

Transforming

‘Conscientization’
awareness +
action

Knowledge
construction

• People to understand the interplay between

• majority (advantaged) and
• minority (disadvantaged) groups
• Aristotelian principles:
• people to uphold respect for both
• rights and responsibilities in order to participate meaningfully in wider society
• When more and more actors across all levels of a system possess the skills and
commitment to advocate, adopt, and implement reforms
• ‘When rhetoric becomes reality and principles become practice’
• →
• social and cultural development can take place more effectively.
• Breakdown of prejudice will happen when
• included actors will invest time, energy, and effort to challenge the narratives of
prejudice, stereotypes
• will see ‘the other side of the coin’
• (strength VS deficit narratives)
• Positive contact between majority and minority groups → awareness of injustice.
• More difficult for oppressors.

Creating an empowering school structure and culture

• To create culture where students believe in their ability to master things, to create
things, and to do things!!!
• - Involvement of all students in activities: participation, decision-making in
particular areas of the curriculum, institutional bodies….
• - Active involvement of lecturers: multicultural education needs to be both
practised and preached
• Approaches to put multicultural education into practice:
• - Formation of student bodies constituted of students from diverse
backgrounds
• - Universities to have a staff from different parts of the world
• - Policies for equitable chances for promotion of the staff
• - Recruitment procedures

 To remember that: Positively discriminating in favor of some translates indirectly

into negatively discriminating against others;
 To help the students to leave their ‘culture comfort zone’ of monoracial/
monoethical friendships and encourage them to engage in interracial/interethnical
interactions;
 To adopt an educational philosophy and pedagogy that fosters an appreciation of
multiple perspectives of knowledge and their influence on cultural diversity;
 To promote respect for human rights and aim to decrease racism and other forms of
discrimination;
 To develop ‘whole-school’ university practices and policies that promote an
appreciation of ethnic and other forms of diversity and that are directed at enhancing
the well-being .

3. WHAT IS MULTI

• MULTICULTURAL
• USA, Australia, Asia
• Descriptive, diversity of cultures
• INTERCULTURAL
• Europe (Council of EU)
• UNESCO
• - Dynamic concept
• - Interaction of and relationship between different cultural groups

• Multicultural education is rooted in:

• - Understanding cultural differences (between cultures and within the same culture)
• - Enabling people to acquire greater intercultural competence.
• How Multicultural education can help us in promoting mutual understanding
among different people?
• Aim:
• To empower students to be better informed about the personal
development needs of people from different cultural background, with aim to
bring greater social equity in society.
 • Unless people can feel for one another, unless people can feel with one
another, and unless people can ‘conceptually’ enter the world of each other,
• no amount of multicultural education can generate mutual understanding.
• - ‘How can I relate differently to others?’
• - ‘What can I do about the things in society that I would like to change?
• - ‘How can I empower myself to change the things I would like to change?’

• 1. It is seen as promoting understanding and sensitivity among people of different

backgrounds.
• 2. It is seen as a force that operates against oppression and is thereby based on
raising people’s awareness about what is oppressive in society.

• OPPRESSION
• Transnational politics: immigrants, asylum seekers
• Racism
• form of passive aggression, emotional abuse, insults, overt for of aggressive
behavior
• Racism against ‘visible minorities’ (Black people, Asian, African, African-
Caribbean, Chinese people)
• Xenophobia

• Assimilation
• Assumes that one culture is better than another, and that the ‘better’ culture
seeks to ‘convert’ newcomers, implying that those who fail to convert will be
made to ‘suffer’ in some way.
• Power game
• 1. The powerful - legitimizing certain ways of societal working and cultural
products
• 2. The powerless, are being unable to counter the acts of the powerful.
• -The dominant group’s cultural capital is seen as more desirable by the wider
society.
• - One is expected to behave in a certain way or will face social, cultural, or
legal sanctions.
• Acculturation
• Process where one culture gradually ‘dissolves itself away’ as people
increasingly adopt the cultural morals, norms and practices of a dominant
culture within society, while letting go of their own.
- People come to appreciate that if they do not do things in the manner in which
they are normally carried out in the host society, they will lose.
- They gradually internalize the norms, traditions, and customs of the host society in
order to feel part of it.
- Result: cultural products of dominated people are eliminated over time.

 The difference is in the directness of the approach:

 Assimilation is far more direct.
 Acculturation is a more subtle process.
 In reality, cultures are seen as ‘constantly changing and intermingling’ and it is
possible for people to occupy various different cultural spaces at the same time.
 Example: language we use in communication with other students at IBU.

McLaren: in schools and universities, teachers need to move away from aiming at
‘building a common culture.’

Educators need to be actively engaged in valuing ‘multiple identities and multiple

perspectives’.

• It can happen to: denigrate certain cultures and glorify others.

• Will promote an idea that students’ identity can be derived from their membership
or affiliation with one culture
• Will fail to focus adequately on their individuality.
 To prevent giving importance to collectives > rather than to individuals
• Unable to do this, educators will adapt ‘converting the natives’ attitude – focusing
too much on what is believed that needs to be changed (will distant students from
being who they are truly, as individuals).

People may have multiple identities in a qualitative sense, which are aspects of
people’s ‘being’ that they give different importance to, at different points of live.

• Literal identity
• Just one
• Get at birth and do not lose it till we die.
• Personal identity
• Malleability (plasticity – can be shaped, molded without breaking)
• Evolves (student at university, worker at institution, citizen of one city…)

• Culture influences on developing worldview (adopting culturally influenced schemas,

monoculturally inclined)
• If not exposed to Multicultural education - this particular world-view/cultural view →
part of personal identity.
• Is possible this view to be changed, adapted, or reinforced (through exposing to
different cultures, influence of Internet, books, media)

• Culture
• Use cultural lens in interpreting the reality → make a sense of reality that is
familiar to us
• Restricted to what students already know and experience in everyday life
• Education
• Offers more, challenges us to reconsider our perspective and point of view.
• EDUCATION IS TRANSFORMING

• Multicultural education is characterized by a coordinated effort, within educational

institutions, to engage students, individually and collectively, to accept cultural
 similarities and differences among people in an informed way, and to then act by
promoting social equity both among themselves and in the wider society.
• Final aim: to develop multicultural education in a transforming way
• - in a way that brings about meaningful change, in a way that enables them to
activate their strengths, abilities, wisdom and potentials in order to craft the world
into something that is more beautiful for all.
• Multicultural education is based on three premises. It is:
• (1) rooted in awareness,
• (2) rooted in subjectivity, and
• (3) is both action-centered and results-oriented

• Freire: education is transforming because education is not instruction!

 It is not about knowing what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and for whom to do
it. It is about understanding both what one is doing and what one is not doing. It is
about being conscious of what is inserted in the curriculum and left out of the
curriculum, and trying to foresee the effects on oneself and on other people through
such insertions or omissions. In other words, teaching and learning, unlike
instruction, looks to the why of the matter!
 Because education is about asking ‘why’ - education can be seen as transforming!!!
 To be transforming, students need to adopt a critical outlook to any information
which they are presented! (education systems, media, society)
 Otherwise, students would simply retain the status quo, following rather than
leading, complying rather than reasoning things out, and reacting rather than
responding.
 Education is empowering when it enables students to be purposefully creative, doing
more than simply reproducing ‘words’ that already exist, but rather being enabled to
form their own ‘words’.
 Ideal of education - a mean of promoting social equity (education as a primary asset
of engaging people to become better equipped to pull themselves out of
oppression).

• In a multicultural society: What is “our own“ culture and what is “alien culture“?
• Multicultural education needs to be rooted in understanding people as people, and
not simply as components of some abstraction such as the culture or way of life.
(McCormick)
• How stereotypes influence on us???
• In order to be adequately informed we need ‘to put the limits of our own
experience to the test of our own thinking→ to ask ourselves:
 How much we know and how much we don’t know about some culture?
 What does this knowing and not knowing say about me, in a sense of how I
picture one culture to be like?
 Could it be that I would end up with an airy-fairy picture of reality that did
not feed my capacity for recognizing injustice and for bringing about
purposeful change?’’

 How individuals rely on personal experiences when engaging in intercultural

communication.
 Outside layers of the onion can influence at the core. / The core is central
 ‘Intercultural sensitivity is a personal characteristic, which enables an individual to
perceive intercultural differences, whereas intercultural competence is the ability
to deal with those differences adequately’.

• Multicultural education: not only presenting information, but also enabling people to
relate to one another meaningfully, to be able to distinguish reality clearly.
• Requires: in interpersonal relationships to be focused on:
Deficit-based thinking
- deficit discourse, use of negative images
- clear distinction between ‘them’ and ‘us.’
• Strength-based narratives
• efficacy-based perspectives focused on possibilities and solutions

“Strength-based narratives are the realistic messages that people give both to
themselves and to one another, about their own capacity to face ongoing
challenges. They are focused on what people can do rather than on what they
cannot do.“

2. CULTURE

CHARACTERISTICS OF CULTURE
• Culture is learned / transmitted (to develop a common set of meanings and
expectations)
• Culture includes: beliefs, values, norms, social practices
• Culture exists in: objects and minds
• Culture is a set of shared interpretations (objects, behaviors, symbols)
• Culture affects behavior: predictability and expectations, BUT no one is entirely
“typical“, every person is unique
• Culture involves large groups of people (seen in traditional form “ethnicity“/ related
to similar groups of individuals)

• Functions of culture
• Collective representation
• fosters sense of belonging, feelings of unity, loyalty, mutual support of members of
the group
• Orientation
• what is important in life, what is morally right/wrong, where the social group is
located compared to other social groups…

people from cultures differ in

• Obvious ways
• food
• clothing
• Subtle ways
 • Shared interpretations - lead to behaviors regarded as appropriate and
effective within a culture
• Unseen, but widely held and shared expectations how people should behave
(predictable behavior patterns) are called Cultural patterns.
• Cultural patterns
• Shared beliefs, values, norms and social practices that are stable over time
and that lead to roughly similar behaviors across similar situations.
• Are shared mental programs that govern specific behavior choices.

• Culture
• Beliefs
• Values
• Norms
• Social practices

 A belief is an idea that people assume to be true about the world.

 Set of learned interpretations that form the basis for cultural members to decide
what is (is not) logical and correct.
 Culturally shared beliefs → people are usually not conscious of them and are
typically unnoticed.
 Examples: Earth is flat; separation between physical and spiritual world.

values
 What a culture regards as good or bad, right or wrong, fair or unfair, just or unjust,
beautiful or ugly, clean or dirty, valuable or worthless, appropriate or inappropriate,
and kind or cruel.
 Desired characteristics or goals of a culture and serve as guiding principles in
people's lives.
 From culture to culture, values differ in their:
 valence (+/-)
intensity (strength or importance)

• - Norms are the socially shared expectations of appropriate behaviors.

• - Violating the culture's norms → social sanctions!
• - Can vary within a culture in terms of their importance and intensity.
• - Norms may change over a period of time, whereas beliefs and values tend to be
much more enduring. Examples: Greeting behaviors, good manners, when and how
to engage/disengage in conversation, what to talk about…
• - People are expected to behave according to their culture's norms so those norms
are seen as the "right" way of communicating.

• Social practices are

• predictable behavior patterns that members of a culture typically follow.
• Are the outward manifestations of beliefs, values, and norms.
• All members of a culture do not necessarily follow that culture's "typical"
social practices
• Types
 • Informal social practices
• Everyday tasks: eating, sleeping, dressing, working, playing, and talking to
others. Are predictable and commonplace within a culture. But good
manners in one culture may be bad manners in another (use of cutlery)
• Formal and prescriptive social practices
• Rituals, ceremonies, and structured routines that are typically performed
publicly and collectively: saluting the flag, praying, honouring the dead at
funerals, getting married…

Cultural identity
 Socialization process:
◦ Teaches children/individuals to identify themselves as members of particular
groups (to identify with the families/peer group, vocational interest…)
◦ To identify as members of/ which groups belong (ingroups)
◦ To which groups do not belong and should be avoided (outgroups)
 Universal human tendency
 Individual’s identity (self-concept) is built on:
◦ cultural
◦ social and
personal identity.

• Cultural identity
• Refers to one's sense of belonging to a particular culture or ethnic group.
• Results from membership in a particular culture, and it involves learning
about and accepting the traditions, heritage, language, religion, ancestry,
aesthetics, thinking patterns of a culture.
• People internalize the beliefs, values, norms, and social practices of their
culture and identify with that culture as part of their self-concept.
• Social identity
• Develops as a consequence of memberships in particular groups within
one's culture.
• The characteristics and concerns common to most members of such social
groups shape the way individuals view their characteristics.
• May include perceived similarities due to age, gender, work, religion,
ideology, social class. place (neighbourhood, region, and nation ), and
common interests.
• Personal identity
• Is based on people's unique characteristics, which may differ from those of
others in their cultural and social groups.
• Preferences for music, literature, sport, art, science…

Formation of cultural identity

• 1. Unexamined cultural identity stage

• One's cultural characteristics are taken for granted, and there is little
interest in exploring cultural issues.
 • Young children, typically lack an awareness of cultural differences and the
distinguishing characteristics between cultures/ Some teenagers and adults
may not have explored the meanings and consequences of their cultural
membership but may simply have accepted preconceived ideas obtained
from parents, the community, the mass media, and others.
• Consequently, some individuals may unquestioningly accept the prevailing
stereotypes held by others and may internalize common stereotypes of their
own culture and of themselves.
• 2. Cultural identity search
• Process of exploration and questioning about one's culture in order to learn
more about it and to understand the implications of membership in that
culture.
• Increased desire to learn about one’s culture, increased social and political
awareness (conversation, reading, attending cultural events, museums…)
• Emotional component can be included - can involve tension, anger, outrage
toward other groups – become aware of the effects of discrimination on
present and future lives and the potential difficulties in attaining educational,
career, and personal objective.
• 3. Cultural identity achievement
• Characterized by a confident acceptance of oneself and an internalization of
one's cultural identity.
• People in this stage have developed ways of dealing with stereotypes and
discrimination so that they don’t internalize others' negative perceptions
and are clear about the personal meanings of their culture.
• Contributes to increased self-confidence and positive psychological
adjustment.

 Once formed, cultural identities provide an essential framework for organizing and
interpreting our experiences of others.
 Cultural identity is central to a person's sense of self. Like gender and race, the
culture is more "basic" because it is broadly influential and is linked to a great
number of other aspects of self-concept.
 Some components of our identity, become important only when they are activated
by specific circumstances (living in another culture/multicultural environment –
triggers an awareness of own cultural identity)
 When some component of the identity becomes conscious, important to individual,
or "activated,“ → experiences get filtered through that component of the identity
and are interpreted and “framed“ by individual’s cultural membership.
 Cultural identity is dynamic and changes with ongoing life experiences.
 Over time, by adapting to various intercultural challenges, cultural identity may be
transformed into one that is substantially different from what it used to be.
 Intercultural contacts can make a profound changes on individual’s cultural identity.