Review of Student Writing and Genre

Book Revie

Rezension: Intercultural Competence: Concepts, Challenges, Evaluations

The book Intercultural Competence: Concepts, Challenges, Evaluations, edited by Witte and Harden, is a selection of twenty-seven papers that were presented at an international conference of same name, held at the National Uni- versity of Ireland in Maynooth, in September 2010. The collection contains a diverse range of contributions that share a common concern with the nature and acquisition of intercultural competence from a range of different theo- retical perspectives and, in the case of reports on empirically based investigations, diverse contexts of application. Edited collections, however, particularly those which are based on conference presentations, constitute a rather difficult genre as the contributions might be quite disparate. This is not the case for Witte and Harden’s publication who identify in the introduction a central message that the book conveys, and four common themes - ‘theoretical perspectives’, ‘institutional contexts’, ‘target cultures’ and the ‘role of literature’ - that tie the chapters together. To them, intercultural competence is a very important educational concept, but at the same time diffuse, ambiguous and often used without conceptual clarification. The editors make their position clear: they refute, in the first instance, the structuralist and essentialist idea of a set of national cultural traits and values bound up with a specific, allegedly unchanging, language. Instead, they emphasize the performative character of meaning-making processes: culture is defined here not in terms of what it supposedly is but by what it does (see Street 1993: 23), a view that runs through the entire volume. Intercultural competence is broadly envisaged as the ability to negotiate a third space for oneself, a spatial metaphor that draws attention to the ongoing processes of negotiation, translation, reflection and enuncia- tion that characterize the engagement with different languages, discourses, social practices and values. This view goes beyond pragmatic and rather narrow definitions of intercultural competence as the ability to get things done in highly diverse contexts, and involves the whole person, including one's habits and habitus, biographical background, and experiences, values and attitudes. Intercultural competence can therefore not be described in a universally valid manner but is highly dependent on the contexts and participants involved. As a result, Witte and Harden stress the need for empirical investigations on the actual performance of real-world speakers in real-world contexts and situa- tions. Many of the empirical studies in this collection reflect this commitment

Rezension: Feng, Anwei; Byram, Mike & Fleming, Mike (eds.), Becoming Interculturally Competent through Education and Training

The book edited by Feng, Byram and Fleming is the fourth in the renowned series on interculturality from Durham University. Whereas the first focused on the relation between foreign language learning and intercultural competence, the second on the diverse locations where intercultural learning can and does take place and the third introduced and explored the concept of intercultural citizenship, this volume concentrates on the development of intercultural competence through education and training

Analysis of the consultative interviews. Project report 2 (2)

The present investigation had three purposes related to the current and potential characteristics of the Upper Secondary Education system in Nayarit: i. To collect data about preferred curriculum principles for the upper secondary curriculum age-group in Nayarit;ii. To collect data about curriculum models and teaching approaches used currently in the various subsystems in Nayarit at the three levels (1st to 3rd year);iii. To begin the process of dialogue and reaching an agreement about the curriculum and its associated pedagogy at these three levels with all relevant stakeholders. Initial analysis was conducted by identifying the accounts and evaluations that respondents provided in relation to the concrete questions they were asked (first order themes). In a second step relevant and salient second order themes that emerged from the interviews were identified and their relationship to the first order themes established. In this way, differences and similarities between the views of different individuals and groups of stakeholders could be brought into perspective and thereafter be interpreted and analysed from a variety of theoretical perspectives. Rather than expressing opinions or ideological stances that contradicted each other participants seemed to differ in terms of their respective position, knowledge and interests and thus illuminated the same complex phenomenon from different angles. Entrepreneurs, for instance, focused on the vocational component of this educational level and the relation to the productive sector while educational leaders and academics tended to emphasize more social objectives. Those directly involved in schooling, i.e. students and their parents, discussed teaching and learning at the level of the individual. The range of factors that impact upon educational quality included pedagogical topics (for instance the lack of time to cover the whole programme, the heterogeneity of the student population, the work of the academies, the necessity for continuous professional development of teachers, the aspirations, hopes and attitudes of students), institutional and inter-institutional aspects (the relation between administration and academia, the control of educational quality, the financing of schools including the necessity for and forms of fundraising, the resistance of administrators towards change etc.) and the socio-economic situation (the real opportunities that different schools and subsystems offer young people, the situation of the labour market and its effects on the future expectations of students, etc.). A set of recommendations has emerged from the analysis of the interviews (see pages 47-53) and these are structured in a similar fashion to the presentation and analysis of the interviews. It begins with the curricular and academic level, including the current and desired curricular models and pedagogic approaches (micro or curricular level), the institutional and inter-institutional practices and relations that shape the actual teaching and learning and possible future ones (meso level) and the socio-economic context the upper secondary education system is embedded within (macro level). The ambivalent objectives of the system – to prepare students as technicians for the labour market on one side and on the other for university – seem to be reflected in a division between institutions. Entering a technological school is in many cases terminal while access to a general bachelor with its strong focus on the propaedeutic component opens up possibilities to continue at the university level. In this context it is important to note a general geographical advantage for those students who attend schools in the political and economic centre of Nayarit where schools seem to count with a better infrastructure and families on average have a better financial background, factors which in turn are reflected in a higher level of academic achievements. In the schools which are further away from the political and economic centre, students are educated through more traditional methods in institutions with a poorer infrastructure and less qualified teachers. The student population in these areas seems to be more culturally heterogeneous but also more homogeneous in terms of socio-economic class. Given that those who have more resources also have a better educational offer, this could therefore lead to the conclusion that the education system in Mexico still reproduces a socio-economic stratification and hinders upward social mobility. Social inclusion and equitable access to educational opportunities are therefore still on the agenda and have to be addressed by any curricular reform.<br/

Educating for the future:a critical discourse analysis of the field of intercultural business communication

The investigation analyzes critically the discursive and generic make-up, the conceptual base and educational goals of a new interdisciplinary academic field of enquiry called Intercultural Business Communication as it is pursued in the context of the Germany higher education system. Its purpose is twofold: Firstly, it attempts to bring to light and debate the actual validity claims made by these authors in respect to socio-economic changes and the educational promise of intercultural understanding through intercultural training. Secondly, it shows how aspects of context (e.g. interdisciplinary relations, disciplinary intricacies, hegemonic discourses, changes in the higher educational system and its relation to other social spheres) can impact upon the discourse and genre of social science in general and this particular field in particular. By drawing upon Critical Discourse Analysis as a theoretical stance and a methodological path, a corpus of 24 academic articles published in this area is analyzed in relation to the recontextualization of socio-economic changes (presences and absences of social actors, processes and evaluation), the legitimation of educational goals through reference to these changes, the conceptualization of key terms (like culture, the other etc.), the implications of these theoretical decisions for the possibility of increased, mutual understanding and the form of academic writing (argumentation, debate, genre change). While the thesis aims to identify specific discursive and generic patterns, open them to contestation, and to explain their presence in these texts, it is also strongly normative and discusses questions related to the changing understanding of the nature, form and function of academic knowledge production in society