Teachers’ cross-cultural competencies in intercultural communication at Lentiz Life College, Schiedam, Netherlands Cross-cultural competencies as an enhancement of teachers’ action repertoire: intercultural communication can be learnt.
A practical study by Toon van der Ven (Tony)
‘I have finished my task, can I help you now?’. ‘Okay, great; come along. I’ll check up on your work later.’ A conversation between pupil and teacher: very telling of the atmosphere, about having confidence in one’s pupils and making demands all the same. This is the kind of interaction I have often observed during my field study of ‘cross-cultural competences as success criteria in intercultural interaction’ at Lentiz Life College, Schiedam (‘the school of your life’). Lentiz Life College Schiedam (LLC) is a progressive secondary education school that offers regular and land-based education for pupils from eleven to eighteen years old. The pupils come from the metropolitan urbanized area of Schiedam and Rotterdam; they show a great diversity of cultural, ethnic and linguistic background. LLC emphasizes in all its programmes 'custom-made talent development’. The school supports and encourages its employees to make use of this ‘organic diversity’. This proactive approach is visible everywhere and anywhere in their beautiful modern building, for instance in the 'culture carriers': posters with keywords and a crisp subtitle. "Thus study success is above all one’s personal social success", explains team leader Arij Hoogendijk, "here you learn who you are and how you fit in society. This society, for most pupils, is the Randstad (Rotterdam, Utrecht, The Hague and Amsterdam): urban and dynamic." The fabric of the LLC teams supports a fair degree of variety in the employees’ cultural and ethnic backgrounds. The school organizes lectures for employees and students which contribute to awareness and talent development: Ilias el Hadioui talked to them about the triangle school, street and home culture; Joseph Oubelkas about how he survived in a Moroccan prison, thanks to ‘400 letters from my mother’. So we may absolutely call this a multicultural school, because this means simply that there are various cultures within a single group. The trick is to develop multicultural into intercultural: have these different cultures enter into a positive relationship with each other. Multicultural does not evolve into intercultural just by itself: this only works in a joint process. There are instruments that help us raise our awareness of ourselves and others in this respect. LLC shows a dynamic approach in professionalization: 21st century skills, the seven competencies for teachers and many more tools force themselves upon the researcher. There are plans for teacher video coaching. A suggested follow-up of working on cross-cultural skills was welcomed by the team: you don’t have to be sick to get better. So what are the cross-cultural competencies (CCC, see box)? In the box they are illustrated in some detail. One could call them points for attention, aspects, in fact, that play a part in any human interaction: whether one takes a highly flexible or empathic stance, or the opposite, one’s actions will always generate a certain effect. But in ‘intercultural interaction’ these competencies may enhance the awareness of the effect of one’s actions.
Acting mindfully In this dynamic climate at LLC the relation between intercultural communication and successful interaction in the classroom was the focal point of my field study. In a few cases I observed how a too strict approach may lead to ineffective unrest and, on the other hand, how personal interest involves a risk of becoming too intimate. Generally I saw committed teachers and really mixed pupil groups who worked together to achieve fairly successful education in a positive climate. Teachers and pupils accepted my prying eyes for three months and more; the observed group interactions felt natural. Business as usual occurred, of course: latecomers and rowdy boys and girls, who were corrected strictly but calmly, lots and lots of requests for aid, but also, remarkably, many pupils who helped and corrected each other. Some classes went so smoothly that the observation hardly rendered any items for discussion; others were more problematic. It is then that the observer can recognize aspects that are crucial to the classroom process. What, e.g., happens to the entire body of pupils if some pupils from one cultural-ethnic group try to extend and often cross borders? I shared my observations with the three teachers involved, we discussed their own impressions and we related this to the digital CCC scan that all teachers had taken prior to the project (FORCEIT scan, see box and www.iccn.nl). This scan led to a ‘profile picture’ that showed the way teacher involved scored on every aspect, e.g. high F and low O, etc. During these meetings and the reflection on one’s personal behaviour the usefulness of these FORCEIT score became apparent. The beauty of the profile is especially visible in the fact that the score is free from value-judgements: one may score high or low, but this doesn’t mean good or bad. It may even be a good idea to vary one’s performance in, say, social initiative from one group to another: sometimes a business-like start is preferable, sometimes it works better to create a positive atmosphere. Thus the teacher’s technical repertoire is effectively enhanced.
FORCEIT62 scan profile 1
From this latest example it will be clear that cross-cultural competencies are not static, but, rather, offer a framework for acting mindfully. Or for reflecting mindfully on situations in retrospect, so that they may foster a learning outcome, increased insight. This is exactly what emerged during these interviews: often the teachers involved recognized themselves in the conclusions of the observations, and, sometimes, in the CCC profile. Where these diverged, interesting discussions arose, searching for the backgrounds of these differences. But, similarities or differences: all teachers called the mirror I held up to them interesting and instructive. Various aspects of this process led them to control the class interaction more consciously with their own actions: acting mindfully as a success criterion. Instead of Lentiz Life College stimulates awareness in its quality cycle in many ways. It seems pointless to add another toll to the existing lot. Will it be possible to organise ‘instead of’ rather than ‘on top of’? This was the mission for a final workshop last January 22 with representatives from the teams involved. There it became clear that staff members do know about the school’s quality instruments, but are not concerned with them on a daily basis, let alone work with them: today’s classes are, after all, always more urgent than next week’s study day. The workload in education is very high, also at LLC. Cross-cultural competences were judged to be absolutely useful by the teachers, but adding them to the professional repertoire without stacking them on top existing tools turned out be very hard. Charlie Hebdo The events at Charlie Hebdo in Paris, however, two weeks before the workshop, proved to be the key to practical insight. All teachers had found it hard to impossible to discuss the assault in a meaningful and respectful context in their multicultural classes. In one group the events led to denial or aggressive language, in another the theme was at best ignored. ‘If only we would have had these cross-cultural competences on hand then; we could have discussed together, before the start of the classes, how to deploy them.’ Teachers then declared that CCC should form part of staff’s action repertoire, at this multicultural school. “I’m really happy with these conclusions”, says Paul Lakens, headteacher at Lentiz Life College. “Here is a perfect match with our motto ‘the school of your life’. For our pupils it is of vital importance to acquire the proper knowledge and skills, and especially the suitable attitude, that will help them come to grips with reality in the complex, multicultural community that is formed by the ‘Randstad’*: there is more than just the small circle of home-street-school.” “By developing an effective concept for this issue, in the curriculum, the heterogeneous composition of the teams, and the prevailing school culture, we contribute to the success of these children. Many of them live at the bottom of the social scale: to manage one level up is the first goal. Here these cross-cultural competences are of great value, because with us, all interaction is intercultural.” ‘For our school, and I could name many more’, it is constructive and useful to embed cross-cultural competences in the annual training programme, together with our ‘culture vehicles’: the posters. Thus, they will be included in our quality cycle and mentorship; they will be effective in practice. Also, pupils should be aware of them. This will develop ‘multicultural’ into a functional meeting of cultures.” If CCC help teachers to become more competent in crisis situations, maybe this will prove to be the opening to regular class interaction, and not just at Lentiz Life College. The necessary motivation is surely to be found in this teachers’ team in Schiedam, the headteacher is happy accommodate the process, all there is left to do now is find the time for it – or organise that time.
CROSS-CULTURAL COMPETENCES In this study the FORCEIT62 cross-cultural competences as defined by researcher Richard de Ridder were used, with whom Stoas University works closely together. These are an extended version of the competences as formulated by Van der Zee & Van Oudenhoven (2000). In a nutshell • Flexibility: the ability to adjust one’s behavior to new and unknown situations. • Openness: the ability to be open and unprejudiced when encountering people outside of one’s own cultural group or organization. • Respect: the ability to accept people with different opinions and attitudes unconditionally. • Cultural empathy: the ability to identify with the feelings, thoughts and behavior of people from different cultural backgrounds. • Emotional stability: the ability to remain calm and optimistic in stressful situations. • Social initiative: the ability to approach social situations actively and to take initiative. • Trust: the ability to accept loss of control and risk of disappointment in situations of being dependent upon others. For the scan and more information see: www.iccn.nl
Tony van der Ven Teacher – researcher at Stoas Wageningen University of applied sciences
[email protected] www.linkedin.com/in/toonvanderven @TvenST * The Dutch term Randstad (‘border city’) refers to the urbanised industrial and metropolitan region of Amsterdam, Utrecht, Rotterdam and The Hague, that have become more or less one built-up conglomerate around what is called ‘the green heart’. It houses more than seven million people and its population is characterised by, among other things, great ethnical and cultural diversity.
This article was published in Dutch in vocational education magazine Profiel: Van der Ven, T. (2015). Intercultureel communiceren is te leren. Profiel, 24(8), 22-25
