Intercultural ethics: questions of methods in language and intercultural communication

This paper explores how questions of ethics and questions of method are intertwined and unavoidable in any serious study of language and intercultural communication. It argues that the focus on difference and solution orientations to intercultural conflict has been a fundamental driver for theory, data collection and methods in the field. These approaches, the paper argues, have created a considerable consciousness raising industry, with methods, trainings and ‘critical incidents’, which ultimately focus intellectual energy in areas which may be productive in terms of courses and publications but which have a problematic basis in their ethical terrain. Dieser Artikel untersucht wie ethische und methodische Fragen nicht nur ineinander greifen, sondern in keiner ernstzunehmenden Studie ueber Sprache und interkulturelle Kommunikation ausgelassen werden duerfen. Es wird hier argumentiert, dass der Schwerpunkt auf Verschiedenheit und Problemorientierung im interkulturellen Konflikt einen wesentlichen Einfluss auf theoretische Entwicklungen, Datenerhebung und Methoden in diesem Bereich hatte. Dieser Artikel legt auch dar, wie diese Ansaetze eine betraechtliche ‘Bewusstseinsbildungs – Branche' erzeugt haben, mit Methoden, Trainings, und ‘kritischen Interaktionssituationen’, welche letztendlich allen intellektuellen Arbeitseifer auf Bereiche konzentriert hat, die zwar ertragreich sind in Bezug auf Kurse und Publikationen, jedoch eine problematische Grundlage im ethischen Bereich aufweisen

Discovering OIL: the role of online international learning and international field trips in enhancing student engagement and performance

Online International Learning (OIL) is an innovative teaching paradigm that facilitates intercultural competence via meaningful online discussions between higher education practitioners and students in distant locations (de Wit 2013). OIL has been elucidated as a collaborative form of pedagogy that enhances ‘virtual mobility’, collaborative learning and the student experience (ibid). Similarly, international field trips allow students the opportunity to enhance their cultural awareness by active learning and immersion in new, dynamic and exciting learning environments (Jakubowski 2003). Piggott (2012) argues higher education students revel in experiencing real situations that can often bring what is taught in the classroom ‘to life’. The case study integrated OIL and international field trips as a combined pedagogical strategy with the intention to deliver a best practice policy in assessment. This platform provided the opportunity to share ideas and views, discuss good business practices, explore cultural differences and encourage debate on current global affairs. It is contended that this practice not only fills a ‘gap’ but is in fact a unique strategy that has not been identifiable in any literature to date and is much deeper than the OIL-only strategy conducted by Villar-Onrubia and Rajpal (2015)

Cultural relativism and the discourse of intercultural communication: aporias of praxis in the intercultural public sphere

The premise of much intercultural communication pedagogy and research is to educate people from different cultures towards open and transformative positions of mutual understanding and respect. This discourse in the instance of its articulation realises and sustains Intercultural Communication epistemologically – as an academic field of social enquiry, and judgementally – as one which locates itself on a moral terrain. By adopting an ethical stance towards difference, the discourse of intercultural communication finds itself caught in a series of aporias, or performative contradictions, where interculturalists are projected simultaneously into positions of cultural relativism on the one hand and ideological totalism on the other. Such aporias arise because the theoretical premises upon which the discourse relies are problematic. We trace these thematics to a politics of presence operating within the discourse of intercultural communication and links this to questions of judgement and truth in the intercultural public sphere. We propose that the politics of presence be set aside in favour of an intercultural praxis which is oriented to responsibility rather than to truth

The Role of the Hidden Curriculum: Institutional Messages of Inclusivity

Significant attention is rightly given in literature concerning institutional curricular change to the design and delivery of the formal curriculum. Particularly influential in this area has been Biggs’ work on constructive alignment (Biggs, 1999, and subsequent editions) and the learning taxonomies which higher education has sought to utilise in the alignment process (Biggs & Collins, 1982; Bloom, 1956). However, the role of the hidden curriculum (Giroux & Purpel, 1983), much discussed in the context of school education for many years, has barely featured in the discourse around learning and teaching in higher education. In this reflective analysis, I consider the question, ‘To what extent do the learning communities we create and the hidden curriculum which frames them foster or fight the development of capabilities needed by our global students?’ and propose the hidden curriculum to be an area we can no longer neglect