Practicing Intercultural Pedagogy
Benefitting from Different Perspectives in the Classroom
Take a moment to think about an experience when you felt that more or different teaching strategies were necessary regarding considerations of cultural diversity in your field or discipline. What were the barriers to learning? What further considerations were necessary? Or conversely, call to mind a time when you took note of a productive teaching strategy regarding considerations of cultural differences in your field. Why do you think it was effective?
In today’s classroom, we must prepare students for a world that is increasingly interconnected, interdependent, and diverse. In order to harness the power of a culturally difference classroom, it is important to be deliberate in shaping our learning environment so that our various intercultural perspectives can complement and build on each other. Each time we engage with a new group of students, there is an opportunity to learn from each other’s perspectives, as well as to reconsider one another’s expectations.
This process requires both self-awareness and awareness of others, leading us to a renewed understanding of how we and others make meaning. Hopefully, this ultimately helps us to make sense of our own values and assumptions and how they might be culturally similar or different from others’. When it comes to developing our own self-awareness, it is especially beneficial to consider different aspects of one’s own positionality, or what we might think of as our individual social location based on our unique combination of social identities.
Developing our awareness of our own and others’ social and cultural identities is an important stepping stone in building intercultural competence. Fostering these skills invites us into a process of continuously and critically refining the ways in which we engage and communicate with others with the goal of cultivating intercultural learning.
As you think about ways to practice intercultural pedagogy in your own teaching, consider the following approaches:
Actively facilitate conditions for inclusive dialogue
Part of what we can do to help students develop more culturally responsive behaviors is to design and support structures that promote students’ respectful engagement with each other, and even the ability to be vulnerable. As you think about your class(es), how can you explicitly cultivate an atmosphere in which students are heard, feel comfortable, and trust one another to explore and engage across cultures and various disciplinary content areas?
Maximize and facilitate purposeful interactions
As you consider ways of incorporating intercultural pedagogy into how students engage with each other, one way you might go about this is to establish community guidelines or ground rules for interaction. (See more on “Teaching in Difficult Times”.) You may also want to consider ways of modeling and promoting active listening techniques, for instance, when pairing or grouping students in a discussion. Finally, you may want to create opportunities for students to work in small groups that each emphasize different roles and/or tasks students take on, so as to help emphasize the learning benefits offered by the variety of perspectives students bring to the classroom.
Value the assets students bring to the classroom
In taking stock of the different materials you bring into the classroom—from readings to theories to research findings—strive to include multiple examples that are representative of various cultural perspectives. You can also think about ways to build in questions, feedback, and narrative storytelling for students to have opportunities to share their interests and experiences, and ultimately engage more deeply with the topics at hand.
Balance support and dissonance
Engaging differences is crucial for learning as well as for intercultural engagement. Take the time to consider how you might facilitate the process of understanding new or contradictory knowledge, or even turn controversy or a tense topic into a learning opportunity. With this goal in mind, you might try modeling the balance between non-judgment and constructive critique, framing for your students how both of these stances, when taken together, benefit the learning process.
Manage the stages of interaction
Structure activities that involve a first stage in which students cannot express or evaluate judgments about the other person’s views—in other words, frame this stage as a process focused on listening and/or interpreting. This step provides space for skill development as students recognize that their views and interpretations are not necessarily those of others. It also gives them the chance to consider that there can be value in the dedicated act of listening to an alternative perspective, and invites them to be accountable for representing that perspective accurately, without first interjecting a dissonant point of view.
Welcome different styles of communication
Different communication styles are normalized for students if at least some class activities require everyone to think quietly for a brief period of time before responding or providing answers. Intentional periods of silence especially help introverts as well as students whose backgrounds acculturated them to allow for silence before speaking. Ask yourself, are there ways you can incorporate activities or even interactions that are silent, whether students are working on their own together, or perhaps collaboratively but without speaking?
Further Support
To request a one-on-one consultation to explore how you might incorporate intercultural practices into your pedagogy (or to discuss any aspect related to teaching), email Alexia Ferracuti, Director of Inclusive Pedagogy (aferracuti@vassar.edu).
Resources
Ambrose, S. A., Bridges, M. W., DiPietro, M., Lovett, M. C., & Norman, M. K. (2010). How learning works: Seven research-based principles for smart teaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Deardorff, D. K. (2009). The SAGE handbook of intercultural competence. Sage.
Ginsberg, Margery B., and Raymond J. Wlodkowski. Diversity and motivation: Culturally responsive teaching in college. San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons, 2009.
Hearn, Mark Chung. "Positionality, intersectionality, and power: Socially locating the higher education teacher in multicultural education." Multicultural Education Review 4.2 (2012): 38-59.
Kumagai, A. K., & Lypson, M. L. (2009). “Beyond cultural competence: critical consciousness, social justice, and multicultural education.” Academic Medicine, 84(6), 782-787.
Lee, A., Poch, R., Shaw, M., & Williams, R. (2012). Engaging diversity in undergraduate classrooms: A pedagogy for developing intercultural competence: ASHE Higher Education Report, Volume 38, Number 2. John Wiley & Sons.
Steele, C. M. (2010). Whistling vivaldi. WW Norton & Co.