Page 31 - Linguistically Diverse Educational Contexts

Meyer (1992, p. 16) described intercultural competence as the ability to act in accordance with and be sensitive to the expectations of a person from another culture and the ability to be aware of cultural differences and the processes of interpenetration between our own and a foreign culture and its lived world (Meyer, 1992). Accordingly, teaching materials for intercultural education should:
• enable students to learn the differences and similarities between certain cultures and their own culture;
• prepare pupils for appropriate behaviour during encounters with representatives of foreign cultures;
• allow for awareness of one's own cultural identity (see Heller, 1992, p. 29, as cited by Chromiec, 2006, p. 70).
Goals, assumptions, and content that can be identified with intercultural education are found in the concepts of human rights education, anti-racism education, education for development, international, planetary, or global education (Grzybowski, 2008, p. 71). These relationships can be seen in German educational policy, which has moved from a narrative of education for foreigners (German: Ausländerpädagogik) revolving around the adaptation of foreigners to life in a new country, to intercultural pedagogy (German: interkulturelle Pädagogik), and later pedagogy incorporating elements of anti-racism education, to a pedagogical approach focused on diversity (pedagogy of diversity; German: Pädagogik der Vielen), which emphasises inclusive education for all, people with and without disabilities, from different social and ethnic backgrounds, representing different cultural orientations and religious beliefs (Hüpping & Büker, 2014, p. 7). In such a view, ethnic diversity is thus placed under the umbrella term "pupil heterogeneity". According to UNESCO (2009), this perception of inclusion can help us avoid excluding people on the basis of race, social status, ethnicity, language, religion, gender, and sexual orientation24.
As Hans Georg Gadamer argued: "We are all different and we are all ourselves. [...] We should learn to stop in the face of the Other. [...] We must experience what the Other is, what the Other experiences as we experience the Other in our midst"25. By recognising our otherness as the norm, we do not see the Other as alien. We gain a new perspective in which all can feel safe, and can be included rather than excluded from the educational process. Przemysław Grzybowski perfectly captures this issue in his book addressed to children aged 6 to 10, entitled Encounters with Others (2011). The book contains short readings in which the main character meets various people (disabled, ill, from different nations and cultures, practising different religions) in order to discover the world in dialogue with them.
Intercultural education is not a model that guarantees the success of every educational system or society, but it refers to all participants of education who take part in interactions that require respect for the diversity of each person (not only of culturally different persons), and in my opinion it should be one of the elements of education of all teachers, including foreign language teachers. The assumptions of intercultural education also seem to be coherent with the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) and contemporary glottodidactic thought, which treats language classes as a space for encounters not only with a foreign language, but also with another culture. The CEFR (2003) emphasises the commonality of European culture on the one hand and
24UNESCO. “Policy Guidelines on Inclusion in Education.”
http://unesdoc.unisco.org/images/0017/00177849e.pdf
25 Quote from Kuczyński, 1999, pp. 171–172.
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