An intercultural research assignment we did in our teaching practices

The last day of teaching practice, my classmates and me did a research about culture,so we asked some questions to a teacher and some of his pupils as well. Here you can see the final draft:

An intercultural research assignment

During our questionnaire we went to ask a few pupils with different background in sixth class. We also included questions for the teacher. 

We pointed out three children, a Danish one, an African one and Danish with African parents´ background.

First, we asked the teacher these questions:

• Can you see a huge difference among different cultures?

Teacher: Yes, there are differences . Sometimes there is a problem with male pupils with different background who don´t respect female teacher.

• Do you need to use another kind of methods when you speak to pupils with diff. backgrounds?

Teacher: Yes, sure. It is necessary me to use different kind of behaviour. I have to treat everybody individually each of them to get equal possibility of interaction.

• Do you find inclusion as a problem?

Teacher: Yes, I find it as a problem. Especially, because there is not much money in education and to have different kinds of pupils integrated in one class you need more teachers and special tools.

Do you think that all your pupils are integrated enough?

Teacher: Yes, I hope so.

• In your opinion, what is the biggest difficulty according to different cultures in one class ?

Teacher:  No reading which makes difficulties among the pupils. They are not used to reading from their home and it´s hard for me to make them improving their reading skills.

• How do you teach culture? Do you have some special subject?

Teacher:  I try to include it in music, English and Danish lesson in a natural way.

Questions for students:

• Do you feel different from the other because you are not Danish?

African girl:  Sometimes I feel different but I have never had difficulties because people treat me well.

Danish girl with African backg. : When I was a child schoolmates sometimes put me out of the social group because I look different.

• Do you think that your life would be better if you lived in your home country?

African girl:  No, I like both countries. However, I feel more comfortable if I speak my own language with natives.

• Do you think you have classmates who are not integrated enough?

Danish girl : No, in my class we try to integrate everybody when we play. In other classes I have seen different treatment. We respect each of us.

Conclusions

As we can see in the above answers, in this 6th grade class there are not any inclusion difficulties because of the difference between cultures. All the pupils are treated the same regardless their background.

However, in general, the only problem I see is the lack of economical as well as personell resources they have in order to be able to make the process of integration easier to a foreign pupil. Since when they have a new student who is not Danish and the only language he/she can talk is his/her mother tongue, the teacher does not receive any extra help such as a translator in order to manage to communicate with that child. Thus, the complete inclusion of every single foreing pupil in the class is a very difficult and hard work.

By using theory from the chapters in Third Culture Kids (read for December 6th and 10th) why do you think this teacher is successful in integrating the foreign students?

According to the book “Third Culture Kids ” (2009): “A Third Culture Kid (TCK) is a person who has spent a significant part of his or her developmental years outside the parents´culture. The TCK frequently builds relationships to all of the cultures, while not having full ownership in any. Although elements from each culture may be assimilated into the TCK´s life experience, the sense of belonging is in relationship to others of similar background”. I am not sure if the foreign students this teacher has in class are TCK or whether they just know about their own culture and the Danish one. Anyway, this teacher´s foreign students feel more comfortable when talking in their own language with people with the same background, as they have the same sense of belonging. So, probably this kind of students will never feel that they belong to Danish culture even if they live in Denmark for their all life. For this reason, I think that we should not encourage them a different culture but respect their own one. Exactly, that is what this teacher does when treating all his students differently and individually. He tries to know all his pupils backgrounds as well as their personalities in order to adapt his teaching methods to them so they will have equal possibilities of interaction. 

Apart from that, basing again on the “Third Culture Kids” book, foreign pupils are many times used to a different school system. For instance, as the teacher of my interview said, sometimes he has problems in order to develop reading skills in his students due to the fact that they do not read at home with their parents. Probably, these children´s previous teachers did not ask them to read at home because they had different methods of teaching. How can we cope with this? From my point of view, in this particular case, the teacher should supply the lack of reading of his pupils by giving them extra help in lessons so they can finally manage to read. However, there can be cases in which it is impossible for the teacher to adapt his/her methods to a pupil and need to talk with his/her parents and ask them for help in order to find a way that this pupil develop school aims. Because even if we want to respect everybody´s culture, there are some school aims which came from the society and the state that must be develop if you want to success in a certain society.

In summary, we as teachers should respect our pupils´ cultures and try to not to encourage them to be what they are not. Nevertheless, there are some school aims according to each society that should be got even if you are used to another school system from your birth country. So we have to do our best in order that our pupils get inclusive in our society without losing their own identity.