Intercultural Understanding

Intercultural Understanding

Students explore the significance of cultural identity and diversity as the ability to understand and appreciate multiple cultural perspectives leads to highly effective and empathetic people within personal and professional situations. From this introduction you will be able to move on to explore topics that explore curiosity, cultural sensitivity and navigating difficult conversations as well as pay explicit attention to pathways and life skills.

Starting with the theme

Intercultural Understanding needs active discussion from the start to develop a student's sense of self. The guide suggests various topics and sub-topics that could be explored in this theme which you will find below.

As we we explore Intercultural Understanding, you will find an introduction to 'What is my culture?', imagining the world as a village of 100 people and establishing a definition of culture. There is also a lesson plan that introduces students to Intercultural Understanding, International-mindedness and connections to ATL and the rest of the PPS course.

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Developing the course with staff and students

What makes us who we are?

Establishing a definition of Culture

a) Having completed and discussed the results of the presentation in 'Intercultural Understanding in Context' above, respond to the following words in a visual way finding images to illustrate your subjective understanding. It helps to make initial notes by asking 'What is my ... personality?' or ' What is my ... culture?' and so on...

Personality         Culture          Environment        Values and Norms       Empathy    Commonalities      Cultural change
 

b) Share ideas with each other. Who has a different response to you? Where are the commonalities? In terms of culture, environment and values and norms, who might have a different perception to you?

c) Consider who might share your experience across the world.

d) Now use the following presentation and explore different dynamics of culture.

What is Culture?
Teacher's notes: consolidating understanding of culture

This is a good constructivist opportunity to establish ideas and then ask students to transfer their understanding to a different context. You may choose to ask students to research and present on key ideas that have emerged to explore the different aspects of culture and encourage students to make careful reflections along the way of their emerging understanding.

You might like to stagger the 'What is Culture?' presentation over a number of lessons as introductions and ask students to reflect upon how each point adds to their understanding of culture.

 

Quick ideas: Plenaries and reflections

Plenaries and reflections can be utilised at any time through a lesson for all sorts of reasons from considering the work that has just been done, making plans for the future or even changing the dynamic of a class that has got rather heated from a debate. It is all part of letting PPS take you in directions that really inspire, challenge and motivate students. As ever, educators often find activities of this type can be anything from 5 minute distractions to a full series of lessons.
The following is an interesting way of consolidating discussion of individual culture, especially if you find it difficult to identify key identifiers of your own culture.

Consider working in professional scenarios and watch the video below. Can you imagine how it might apply to your career-related study? 

  Reflect, in your journal, on the attributes of the learner profile and how they apply to showing  intercultural understanding.

Approaches to Teaching and Learning

Approaches to learning

The lesson plans and activities on this page can be delivered to include explicit and implicit reference to a range of Approaches to Teaching and Learning. The IB's suggestions for ATL skills in the 5 key areas are not exhaustive and you are encouraged to contextualise and add to these as appropriate. The key to students being able to identify skills and use them in a range of situations is to teach the skill explicitly before incorporating it implicitly in a range of contexts. Here we focus on a key ATL skill, that can directly relate not only to the reflective project criteria but also to the following PPS learning outcome.

LO4: Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of communicating effectively and working collaboratively

ATL Skills area
Communication skills

Specific ATL skills explored
Negotiate ideas and knowledge with peers and teachers[1]

Link to the reflective project
Criterion B: 'demonstrate awareness and understanding of the impact of the ethical dilemma on a local/global community and the cultural influences on, and perceptions of, the ethical dilemma'[2]
Making the links: Further teacher notes

Where next?

The particular focus here is on the ability to 'negotiate ideas and knowledge with peers and teachers' as part of Communication skills which directly relates to the students exploring and evaluating the implications of their ethical dilemma on different stakeholders in their reflective project. However this might be just a starting off point for you.

This particular set of exercises sets up the development of Research Skills and Thinking Skills well and this area in itself directly links to all the PPS themes, especially Thinking Processes and Effective Communication. Skills that might be explicitly drawn out include:

Research Skills
- being able to accumulate a range of perspectives from varied sources
- recognise and evaluate the role media representations play in our understanding

Thinking Skills

- be able to consider ideas from multiple perspectives
- be able to analyse complexity, break down into parts and then synthesise to create new understandings.

Again, remember to contextualise and be explicit about what skills students are developing here and why. You may find choosing one of the following directly complements the suggestions for research skills above.

Further links with the reflective project: a continuation of Criterion B - Knowledge and Understanding in Context
Criterion C: 'Demonstrate logical reasoning processes and the ability to interpret, analyse and evaluate material' as well as 'develop the ability to synthesie information, making connections and linking ideas and evidence' [2]

Top Tip: Remember that 'less is more' when making the links to ATL.

It can be a temptation to draw students' attention to the sheer number of ATL skills that they are accessing at any particular time. You know within PPS that a topic will be exploring any one of the five themes even if your introduction is through explicit focus on one; the same applies to ATL. Try isolating a specific skill and then:

Make explicit reference to it and establish prior learning and experience
Make it useful with ways to practice it so students can experience how it works
Make it transferrable by having moments to consider where they have used this skill before, how they are developing it and where it might be useful in the future.
Make it visible by have the students record and reflect upon the processes they have used.

Footnotes

  1. ^ Reference adapted from Approaches to Teaching and Learning 2015, https://xmltwo.ibo.org/publications/DP/Group0/d_0_dpatl_gui_1502_1/static/dpatl/guide-comm-skills.html accessed 6th October 2021
  2. a, b IBO, The Reflective Project Guide, for use from 2016, p28

Where next?

Making links between PPS and Language Development

Creating connections between Personal and Professional Skills and Language Development

You may want to take the link between Intercultural Understanding and Language Development further - or indeed any PPS theme. In these short activities, students are asked to take a step out of their context and consider themselves as users of language. This is very much intended as embracing all PPS themes in some way but you may want to zoom in on one in particular. It certainly makes for a good introduction to Personal Development which can be revisited throughout their CP journey.

This activity is not focused on language proficiency but about the way we use and change the we speak for particular people and environments. Taking inspiration from a fascinating BBC podcast called Deeply Human, students can consider the broad question of why people speak the way they do, and how this develops and changes over time. Thrown in as well are some opportunities for active listening and communication skills development. Also provided is a transcript of the podcast with soundbytes from experts which can be activators for whole class discussion.

Language development and PPS

This page takes a step back for students to consider language development, language acquisition and linguistic skills in a broader more conceptual way that links directly to their personal development,...

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