Towards new teacher and student perceptions of interculturality

The reason for the study was the increasing Danish and international orientation of the curriculum towards intercultural competence and in recent years interculturality. The purpose of the study was to explore and develop a theoretical and a pedagogical foundation for the teaching of interculturality. In this presentation focus is on research findings that concern teacher perceptions and practices of interculturality in comparison to students’ perceptions and engagement in interculturality before, during and after two explorative interventions. The study reveals that teacher’s perceptions and practices of interculturality evolved in the course of the explorative work. Initially, teachers’ perceptions and practices demonstrated examples of essentialism, culturalism and culture as explanation. There was a marked lack of a conceptualisation and metalanguage of culture learning and interculturality. Students from the initial focus group interviews reported that they did not experience culture texts and media used in class as ‘culture learning’, but as a means to learn the language. They expressed a desire to “think more” about texts and media used in class. The explorative interventions demonstrated that knowledge about Cultural studies, critical intercultural communication and critical media literacy supported the teachers’ conceptualisation and development of a metalanguage which qualified teacher decisions about learning objectives and selection criteria for texts and media. Furthermore, the explorative interventions also developed teacher and student criticality of for example identity, diversity, celebrities, fame, media representation and power. Finally, the study raised the question: what kind of knowledge and skills do teachers need to contest essentialism and culturalism?