Canadian Culture Bow Valley College Objectives To examine the - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Canadian Culture Bow Valley College

Objectives

 To examine the meaning of culture

 To examine intercultural awareness and competencies  To examine the kinds of learning that are suited to teaching culture  To create a task that helps build cultural awareness

Overview

 Awareness activities  Importance of teaching culture  Characteristics of culture  What our focus should be  Intercultural competencies  Stages of intercultural development  Who the culture ‘experts’ are  Awareness activities  Types of learning that work  Creating a task  Points for reflection

Importance of teaching culture

 Empowers newcomers with the ability to

interact more effectively  Helps with integration  The 5th skill?

Characteristics of Culture

 Culture is learned  Culture and its patterns change  Culture is a fusion of material, social and subjective elements  Not all culture is evident to an 'outsider' - many aspects are hidden  Culture is not distributed uniformly among all members of a group  Culture is context driven  Culture is diverse within a given country  Culture is very closely related to language

So, what should we teach?

Some considerations  Our multicultural environment  The impossibility of learning everything about Canadian culture  The characteristics of culture  The stages of acculturation The answer?  Building intercultural awareness and competence

What is intercultural competence?

According to Barrett et al. (2013): “It is a combination

• f attitudes, knowledge, understanding and skills

applied through action which enables one singly, or together with others, to:

 Understand and respect people who are perceived to have different cultural affiliations from oneself  Respond appropriately, effectively and respectfully when interacting and communicating (---)  Establish positive and constructive relationships (---)  Understand oneself and one’s own multiple cultural affiliations through encounters with cultural ‘difference’ “

Bennett’s stages of intercultural development

Ethnocentric Ethnorelative

• Denial of cultural difference
• Defense against cultural

difference

• Minimization of cultural

difference

• Acceptance of cultural difference
• Adaptation of cultural difference
• Integration of cultural difference

Who is the culture expert?

 Can culture be taught by a volunteer

tutor in a non-formal setting?  Can culture be taught by someone who hasn’t traveled much?  Can culture be taught by an immigrant tutor?

What works best?

Learning that is:  Experiential  Interactive  Cooperative  Task based  Reflective  Pedagogically sound  Engaging

Points for Reflection

Keep a journal on:  Where you are on this continuum:

ethnocentric ---------------------ethnoreflective  Critical incidents you encounter  Actions/lack of actions on your part. Reasons.

References

Barrett, M., Byram, M., Lazar, I., Mompoint-Gaillard, P., & Philippou, S. (2013). Developing intercultural competence through education. Retrieved from Hub.coe.int Bennett, Milton J.(2004). Becoming interculturally competent. In J.S. Wurzel (Ed.) Toward multiculturalism: A reader in multicultural education. Newton, MA: Intercultural Resource Corporation. PDF retrieved from www.idrinstitute.org Byram, M., Gribkova, B. & Starkey, H. (2002). Developing the intercultural dimension in language teaching: A practical introduction for teacher. Retrieved from http://www.coe.int Peterson, E. & Coltrane, B. (2003, December). Culture in Second Language Teaching. Retrieved from cal.org Sauvé, V. (1996). Working with the cultures of Canada in the ESL classroom: A response to Robert Courchêne. TESL Canada Journal, 13(2), 17-23. Retrieved from http://www.teslcanadajournal.ca