Educational Journey towards Multicultural Competence:

from Information to Transformation

Lasma LatsoneLatvia/ UK

June 3-5, 2013lasma.latsone@liepu.lv

• Why are we talking about multicultural issues?

• What do we want to achieve?

Students desire ….. society • positive and optimistic (32%); • educated (25 %); • loving and caring and supportive (20 %); • tolerant, respectful and without prejudices (19 %)• kind, friendly and polite (12%)• socially and emotionally intelligent (12 %); • prosperous and economically stable (9 %); • compassionate and empathetic (6 %). • Non-violent

• What are the resons for not reaching what we want?

• How can we get closer to the world we desire?

My intercultural experience

• Latvia (as part of USSR)• USA• SA• UK• Latvia (as independent country)

Human rights and multiculturalism – declared values of the 21st century*

How we as teachers/academics can help to enliven these values in our students?

* Valoda, vide, sadarbība, tradīcijas, vērtības, līdzdalība, kultūra. (2011). Mācību metodiskais materiāls starpkultūru saskarsmē. IAC, Rīga.

Multicultural competenceCulture-sensitive termCulture – oxigen “Cultural variables are woven into an intricate tapestry – pull one thread or change one colour of the tapestry and the composition of the entire picture may be altered,” (Loveland, 2010).

What is cultural competence?• Desire to become culturally competent• Cultural awareness• Cultural knowledge• Cultural skills• Cultural encounter (first-hand experience)(Banks 1997; Leavitt 2010; Campinha-Bacote 2002; Lake 2010 etc.)

Self-analysis, self-reflectionEmpathy

Is intercultural understanding possible ar all?

• Education • Communication skills • First-hand experience • Self-development • Social activities and state policy

Are there any ethnic tensions in your surroundings/ at your workplace and how these tensions could be diminished?

Experience, power of story, and empathy

«All genuine education comes about through experience” (Dewey, 1938)

Personal story and self-reflection: “If we are critically conscious, we will see ourselves in the story of others, which in turn enables us to see beyond external abstractions of humanity into the lived experience of others… without self-reflection, empathy is impossible” (Lake, 2010, p. 43).

Humans are able to empathize, feel compassion, fear or other emotions when watching a film or hearing a story, therefore also they are able understand inexperienced things within certain limitations.

Empathy and body language

Ethics of care: Nel Noddings (2002)

• Caring should be a foundation for ethical decision-making

• Care as basic in human life - all people want to be cared for, but longing for goodness arises out of the experience or memory of being cared for

• ‘Empathy' vs ‘Sympathy’ (feeling with)

Social intelligence: Goleman (2006)

Toxic and nourishing people:negative emotions as second-hand smoke

Social corosion

Forgivenes: is it a topic for higher education?Forgiveness does not require forgetting what has happened or total reconciliation. It means “finding a way to free oneself from the claws of obsession about the hurt” (Goleman, 2006, p. 308)

Social intelligence as tool for reaching cultural competence

Different faces of social corrosion (Goleman, 2006)

– TV (40% 2-year olds watch TV at least 3 hours a day )

– Fear to help others

– Virtual belonging to organizations, with no social contact

– Earphones: life in one own’s world. Social autism

– Cars replace being on the street

– Working on holidays: barriers the telephone and e-mail creates for personal life

– TV in bedrooms, kisses and hugs via the internet

Anything sounds familiar?

Social intelligence (SI): D. Goleman

Social awareness:• primal empathy (feeling

with others, sensing nonverbal emotional signals)

• attunement (listening with full receptivity, attuning to a person)

• empathic accuracy (understanding other person’s thoughts)

• social cognition (knowing how the social world works)

Social facility:• synchrony (interacting

smoothly at the nonverbal level)

• self-presentation (putting someone at ease)

• influence (shaping the outcome of social interactions)

• concern (reflects a person’s capacity for compassion)

Information

Knowledge

Intelligence

Understanding

Wisdom

Transfor-mation

Adapted from T.Hart From information to Transformation: Education for the Evaluation of Consciousness(2009)

In multicultural education there is a need for a flexible model which would allow to mediate between relativism and ethnocentrism and to develop a third position which transcends the values of foreign and people’s own cultures helping learners to develop empathy and mutual understanding (Bredella, 2003, p. 47).

Not always students, even within teacher education programs, are endowed with the desired attitudes and wisdom that allow them to embrace diversity and culturally inclusive attitudes (Szecsi, Spillman, Vazquez-Montilla, and Mayberry, 2010, p. 44).

Why so often information on cultural competence remains on the level of information without reaching the stage of transformation?

How

Power of personal example of teachers/parents

We learn to care-about through our experience of being cared-for. Instead of starting with an ideal state or republic, care theory starts with an ideal home and moves outward - 'learning first what it means to be cared for, then to care for intimate others, and finally to care about those we cannot care for directly (Noddings 2002).

Research on example of teachers

Education from the care perspective/N. Noddings/

• Modelling. Educators have to show in their behaviour what it means to care. “We do not merely tell students to care and give them texts to read on the subject, we demonstrate our caring in our relations with them”

• Dialogue about caring. It can help people to think critically and better understand their own relationships and practice.

• Practice. The experiences in which we immerse ourselves tend to produce a ‘mentality’. ‘If we want to produce people who will care for another, then it makes sense to give students practice in caring and reflection on that practice’.

• Confirmation. Confirmation as an act of affirming and encouraging the best in others (based on M. Buber’s philosophy)

Are we/students able to care? Have we/students been in caring relations/ What is our/students’ experience from our schools in terms of caring?

We learn care from experiencing and observing it (Noddings). How much we can observe care in today’s society?

Good education includes the education of the mind and the heart,

balances intuition with the intellect andmastery with mistery,

and cultivates wisdom over the mere accumulation of facts

(Hart, 2001, 2)

“Please remember it is what you are that heals, not what you know.” (C.G.Jung)

Thank you!