Infusing Intercultural competence

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the classroom (leRoux,2001; Mushi, 2004; Perry, 2011); and d) Intercultural Education and training program (Bennett, 2004; Cusher, 2009; Stephan &Stephan 2013).

The provision of the inclusion of the society through education will combat intolerance, hatred, and discrimination. Sondhi (2009) suggests that interculturalism “implies a different way of reading situations, signs, symbols, and of communicating which we would describe as intercultural literacy” (p. 2). In other words, through intercultural education students will acquire intercultural competence. The acquisition of this competency in a diverse society will become as important as basic numeracy and literacy according to Sondhi(2009).Portera (2014) further defines Intercultural Competence as „a set of abilities, knowledge, attitudes and skills, that allow one to appropriately and effectively manage relations with persons of different linguistic and cultural backgrounds‟(p159).

Worldwide, some countries like UK, Italy, Spain, and Greece have responded to problems concerning migration, ethnic nationalism, and minority rights by favoring laws that recognize the existence of minority groups and their contributions to national development.

Such steps are reflected in the national education curricula by integrating intercultural education with the aim of ensuring greater social inclusion. Intercultural education is part of the Italian Educational systems. In many schools, scholastic subjects promote intercultural competences.

For examples, in order to overcome ethnocentrism approaches during history teaching, the theme of racism and issues of living together among people and analyzing the moments of meeting and collision among people and civilization are taught. Teaching Italian language, the local artistic and musical education gives an occasion to reflect upon the relations between European and extra-European cultures. Across the curriculum, through these subjects, intercultural

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competences like understanding, respect and sharing are being infused among the students from diverse cultural backgrounds (Contini&Naturo, 2011).

Intercultural Education will enable the development and implementation of inclusive practice in the education system among students from different cultures. Such practices will favor the promotion and growth of intercultural competence between local and immigrant students. The inclusion of all students will eventually strengthen the social fabrics in the long run. That is why it is believed that intercultural education will eventually reduce tension and latent ethnic conflicts. In intercultural pedagogy, concepts such as identity and culture are considered dynamic where the “otherness” is not considered only a risk but also as a possibility of enrichment ora means to reflect on values, rules, and behavioral standards. Hence intercultural education within a multicultural society intends to foster the social cohesion in the long term.

That is why some researchers like Gundara (2000) have regarded multicultural education as harmful to social inclusion because it is associated with fragmentation of cultures.

Intercultural education is proposed as a middle path, a model of interaction and exchange. There is a growing concern to adopt intercultural education in the curriculum in order to develop cultural navigation skills and competencies in students in order to relate to those who are different to themselves and to see `others` as an opportunity rather than a threat. A cohesive society will depend on a model of education that will deconstruct the barriers between cultures to ensure a sense of belonging to be established. Therefore, intercultural education has drawn upon some of the positive elements of multicultural education but is moving a step ahead by promoting interaction at the cultural borderline. Hammer (2012) presented the progression from

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the monocultural mindset to the intercultural mindset through the Intercultural Development Continuum (IDC) through the diagram found in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Intercultural Developement Continuum

The IDC identifies five stages of denial, polarization, minimization, acceptance, and adaptation as the primary stages of intercultural development. Denial and polarization are the main aspects of the monoculture mindset where one culture is viewed to be dominant to the other cultures. Minimization is considered to be the transitional orientation between monocultural and intercultural mindsets. Through the acceptance and adaptation stages, students will move forward from a monoculture mindset to the intercultural mindset. Thus contributing to social cohesion in societies by preventing marginalization, stigmatization, racism, and discriminating attitudes in the society. To address the mounting social exclusion towards the minority culture, there were a few policies which were implemented by the education systems. Among the initiatives developed have been steps to make teacher training more inclusive and incorporate intercultural methods to develop the professional intercultural competences of the teacher. The

Denial

Polarization

Minimization

Acceptance

Adaptation

Monoculture mindset

Intercultural mindset

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teacher was to act as intercultural catalysts in the classroom in order to eradicate social marginalisation in the educational system. However, Gundara (2008) said “much of the work on intercultural education relies on „hunches‟ and attempts to „do good” (p. 465). In other words, there was no well-established pedagogy for Intercultural education. Nevertheless, research that has been done in European countries and by international bodies such as the European Union, the Council of Europe, OCED, and UNESCO can be used as a starting point in the Intercultural Educational field.

UNESCO and the Council of Europe have been the main pioneers and promoters of the diffusion and the promotion of the intercultural approach in education when it comes to hosting migrant children in the schools. These organizations have published and distributed many reports and studies to promote the integration of children from the minority cultures into the educational system. This organization has been among the leading advocators for the education of the migrants and the training of teachers to cultural diversity. It is pertinent to note that the emergence of the Intercultural approach in Europe finds its origin in some international organisations to valorise diversity at school while the advent of the same approach in the United States came from civil rights advocacy of the black community and other ethnic minorities. This difference in the emergence is reflected in a deeper legitimacy of Multicultural Education in Nord America. However, in most European countries, Intercultural Education originally was initiated to accommodate the migrant students.