Intercultural Understanding in 2020

Let's try not to read about intercultural understanding - let's actively discuss it. The following exercises are an excellent way of establishing Intercultural Understanding in context. This introduction follows three steps: What do I understand about myself and my own culture? What do I understand about the global culture? What role can empathy play in creating intercultural understanding?

Translating the global into the local: Imagine the world as a village of 100 people
'Before we change our world for the better, we need to understand what our world is like today'

What does this video tell us about our perception of the world? This is an excellent exercise for students and teachers alike for a fruitful discussion.

Before playing the video, ask your participants to consider the world as 100 people and the elements that make up their life: eg nationality, religion, gender, education, age, language... Who would be the main players and what percentages would they allocate?

Now play the video - Which parts surprised or did not surprise them? What did they anticipate or not anticipate as an influencing factor?

Teacher Notes: Extending discussion

You can extend this discussion immediately or you can revisit this exercise later in the term and ask students to pay closer attention to some of the more alarming statistics in this video. Playing the video again from 2 minutes in, you can divide up the class into Education, Healthcare and Technology and ask them to record the statistics that accompany these topics. Then ask students to explore further about how that statistic relates to their own life and where in the world they think that might be a reality. Further scrutiny into the contributing factors that make that a reality leads to a rich ethical debate but also an opportunity to develop research skills.

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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 opportunty 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.

 

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Lesson plan: Introducing Intercultural Understanding

    Introducing Intercultural Understanding             Learning outcomes:                       

Through the introduction of Intercultural Understanding, you can introduce many of the learning outcomes.

The introduction at the start of this page with suggestions of personality and emotional intelligence tests is a great opportunity for LO1.

This lesson on empathy and intercultural understanding encourages students to articulate the value of culture in LO3.

Implicit in this exploration are opportunities to explore LO4 and LO5 with the subtext of intercultural understanding being effective communication and considering the ethical ramifications of international mindedness in today's world.

 

LO1:  Identify their own strengths and areas for growth
 

LO2: Demonstrate the ability to apply thinking processes to personal and professional situations

LO3: Recognize and be able to articulate the value of cultural understanding and appreciation for diversity

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

LO5: Recognise and consider the ethics of choices and actions 

INTERCULTURAL UNDERSTANDING ...  EMPATHY FOR WORK, LIFE AND FUTURE

Aim: Establish ways for students to understand intercultural understanding by developing their ability to show empathy

Step 1. Developing our understanding of Empathy

  What is Empathy? Empathy is the capacity to understand or feel what another person is experiencing from within their frame of reference;  that is, the capacity to place oneself in another's position. Developing empathetic skills enables us to understand different cultures.

Establish a definition of empathy with Mark Ruffalo on Sesame Street and the exercise that follows.

What is Empathy?

How do we show empathy?

E - Eye gaze. Do we seek or avoid eye contact?
M - Muscles of facial expression. Are we conscious of the facial expressions we use or how we respond to the facial expressions we use or how we respond to the facial expressions we are faced with?
P - Posture. Notice the other person's posture - is it open or closed? How do you respond to that?
A - Affect - expressed emotion. Try labeling the other person's expressed emotions - are they upset, happy, sad...?
T - Tone of voice. Listen to their tone of voice... what does this tell you?
H - Hearing the whole person; understanding the context in which others live. Do not judge and take things at face value.
Y - Your response - what you express is likely to reciprocated. How can we express empathy by reflecting their E.M.P.A.T.H...? 

Reflect on a scenario where you showed empathy to someone or someone showed empathy to you. Go through the acronym above for E.M.P.A.T.H.Y and how each element was significant.

Further notes on exercise

You may want to carry out the above exercise as a group discussion or a role play where you consider different scenarios where the ability to show empathy would be beneficial. Students also might like to consider a situation which did not go well and they did not show the empathy needed for the situation.

Step 2. Empathy and international-mindedness

 'Conversations with People who hate me' is a podcast by Dylan Marron where he explores how by having real conversations with some of the people who leave hateful comments for him on social media because of his sexuality and liberalism, a commonality of experience and sense of empathy can be established; in short, conversations have the ability to humanize. His TedTalk below 'Empathy is not Endorsement' is an interesting reminder about the most powerful message of international mindedness; it is not about changing minds and opinions but accepting that interculturally we vary hugely and we can live alongside each other accepting those differences.

Watch the video below and then discuss the passage given from the talk.

What do you make of Dylan's approach? Have you had experience of this yourself? Could you do the same? What lessons are there to be learnt here?

'Now in every one of my calls, I always ask my guests to tell me about themselves. And it's their answer to this question that allows me to empathize with them. And empathy, it turns out, is a key ingredient in getting these conversations off the ground. So I established a helpful mantra for myself. Empathy is not endorsement. Empathizing with someone you profoundly disagree with does not suddenly compromise your own deeply helf beliefs and endorse theirs. Empathizing with someone who, for example, believes that being gay is a sin doesn't mean that I'm suddenly going to drop everything, pack my bags and grab my one-way ticket to hell, right? It just means that I'm acknowledging the humanity of someone who was raised to think very differently from me. I also want to be super clear about something. This is not a prescription for activism. I understand that some people don't feel safe talking to their detractors and others feel so marginalised that they justifiably don't feel that they have any empathy to give. I totally get that. This is just I feel well-suited to do'

  Reflection: Can you think of examples from the global community where empathy might be the right course of action? Can you explore what the outcome might be?

Approaching conversations about international-mindedness

You may choose to give students the excerpt from the Ted Talk before watching the full video. The key aspect here to explore is that 'empathizing with someone you profoundly disagree with does not suddenly compromise your own deeply helf beliefs and endorse theirs'. This is the key to understanding the idea of International-mindedness.

Reflection: Can you think of examples from the global community where empathy might  be the right course of action? Can you explore what the outcome might be?
For example: explore this article about the implications of covid for regugees in 2020

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/aug/24/if-you-felt-cooped-up-in-lockdown-think-of-refugees-confined-indefinitely-in-camps

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.