Reflection´s
on the Session´s
Reflection 1. Session 18.04.2016
I really enjoyed the Card game "Bangara" and discovering of the difficulties inwith the game. We didn't know that the rules are different on each table, the winner of one group was supposed to go to the next group. The experience to play without speaking was really impressive in the end. I really had a culture clash experience in with a card game.
2. Session 25.04.2016
It is a mindset that should be trained every day, it is to request one self all the time, never feel superior. Always speak about reflections on Situations with different people. It's also about finding the right people to life with, who are also interested in getting to know other cultures. One has to discover the right balance between holding back and stepping in to a conversation, by beeing sensible and observant.
Sometimes it helps to read or watch documentaries about cultural groups to inform yourself in advance but never let other people's Observations stand above your own.
Thinking about the pyramid Model, where, on the bottom everybody's basic is the same, then comes culture and on top of that is the individual behaviour. It makes clear that everybody has the same needs and by observing yourself you can get a good idea about other people's rights and wrongs.
3. Session / missed
Session 1: What can you personally contribute to our seminar and what are the learning objectives you would like to achieve?
- Since I am dealing with different Cultures all my live and until know I have learned a lot, other people ask me for my opinions especially in intercultural relationships, I will be very happy to have a certificate in the end of the peer tutoring training. With this I could use my skills more easily in a professional way.
Beginning with my great grand parents, we have the intercultural aspect in our family, my great-grandfather came from Kamerun and my great-grandmother from Germany. Their youngest sun is my grandfather and the father of my mother. My two daughters are from african Fathers as well and I am living together with my boyfriend who is a Moslem from Gambia. My life experience makes me confident to advise other people if they want me to.
I believe my two years abroad in an international boarding school in England had a big impact on my behaviour towards people from different countries. My self reflecting skills and motivation towards meeting new people and situations is very high. I would like to bring my personal experience in to a professional level.
Session 2: What culture(s) do you belong to and what values do you share with them?
I do not believe I belong to an existing Culture. I am very individual and try to cut all my boundaries to my German socialisation.
Session 3: What is the impact of the statement: "One cannot NOT communicate" on intercultural communication?
- I am not sure what this statement is about. But I personally believe that every situation and every person is so individual, that it is hard to find a conclusion, a very specific set of instruments on intercultural communication. So the most important thing while interacting with somebody, whether from your country or not is to communicate/reflect on the communication.
This is a must in order to avoid misunderstandings.
4. Session 09.05.2016
In the End everybody answered the same questions and the results where fascinatingly different, also because the commercial was about a boss screaming to his "lazy" employee that he is doing a great job ect. I was only watching and had the impression the boss is quite angry and unsatisfied. I am not sure what is the result of this exercise.
After the break it was me and Elisabeth going through the text of the "Linguistic Awareness of Culture" putting headlines on the Bord and finding examples for each statement. We had to present our results to the class.
Last but not least we had four different groups each with one sentence where we should think of two direct ways and two indirect ways of saying it - ours was "you talk too much".
5. Session
In the last 30 Minutes of this Session we watched a Ted Talk:
"The Danger of a single story" by Chimamanda Adichie.
The Talk was very well done and for me it is a super interesting Topic. I didn´t know before that there is a special Term for this kind of Ignorance. Further more than Ethnocentrism, the "Single Story" is routed deeper in the Media. While every Ethnicity is socialised by their specific Kulture, Chimamanda explains in detail how the "Single Story" is promoted all over the World in the same way.
In order of missing more than half of the time in this Session, due to personal Reasons, I created this Mahara-Page to show how much time I spent already in the Groupwork.
I really liked this Seminar and I find the Topics very Interessting, although I think, if we discuss Ethnocentrism, Stereotypes, and the Single Story, there is missing one part about Racism in everyday life.
Session 6
The 6th Session was our last one, therefore we were reflectiing all sessions, this was good to summarize and remember what we have learned. After that, we introduced our seminar to Katja Kraft (Teacher of the follow-up Course IK), some of us continued with the Peer-Tutoring-Training with the 3. Modul. At the end, we gave feedback for the whole Seminar, so we were thinking about things that we liked or things we didn´t like.
This Seminar was one of the most interesting ones this Summer Term. I have learned many theory´s and private experiences abou intercultural interaction. After all it was more time intensive than i had thought before but it helped me to understand more about group dynamics and myself in them.
Content
about the Session´s
5. Session Danger of a single story
Personal Experiments on critical Incidents in personal Relationships
Of corse it is not easy to define a "Critical Incident" ment by the Term discribed in the text "GlobalPADConcepts - Critical Incidents - A Compilation of Quotations for the Intercultural Field - by Spencer-Oatey 2013" because first of all, one has to analyse the Situation. If two People from diffrent Cultures interact, do they speak both in a foreign Language or is one speaking in his mother thoung and the other still learning the Language, or are there other aspects which could lead to misunderstandings?
In my case it took a while to understand what happend and i had to speak with different People from the same Country to first being able to Identify this further discribed critical Incident:
People frome the Sene-Gambia Region on the West-Coast of Afrika speak mostly the Language Mandinka. In thier Culture it is not usual to call the person in the next Room by Name in order to ask them something.
While I am, growing up in Germany, used to call my Family and Friend´s by thier Name if I want something from them. Like: "Freddy, can I have your Icecream?" It is not usual to do it like that in Gambia. They would rather say: "Hallo!" then waiting for the other Person to come and then ask them what they want: "Can I have your Icecream?"
This is a very critical Moment, because "Hallo!" said in a certain way in Germany means somehow: "Hallo! Now you are in Trouble.." freely translated a strong "Hallo" in Germany could i mean: "Geht´s noch?"
The feelings accociated by Germans with a strong "Hallo!" already lead to a defensive attitude and can lead further more to misunderstanding.
Reflexion on Groupwork
Reflecting on my Group-Work, I have to admit, that I had a heigh expactation towards the endproduct (the theoretical part) which were not fullfilled but I learnd more about myself.
Fortunatly my Group-Work was at the same time with the first Tutoring-Training-Course (Wissen schaffen im Team). Since I had two different Groups with thier Group-Dynamic and all the influences considered by the TZI Tryangle (Themenzentrierte Interaktion mit Ich, Wir und Sache), I had the possibility to compare. This was especially interresting because I had two completly different roles, in one group about sustainability I would be considered as a „Teamplayer“ holding myself back and in the smaller group about Stereotypes I was the „Visionaire“ giveing most of the Ideas and Motivation.
This two Courses together gave me the biggest learning effect that I would never have expected because I learnd theoretically and personally about Group-Work.
Reflection´s
on the Reading´s
Text Intercultural Competence - The key competence in the 21. century?
Bertelsmann Stiftung and Fondazione Cariplo
The Text makes clar what cultural competence means, how it can be practiced and why it is incresingly important.
The definition given in the Text is bound to very personal aspects, like attitude, knowledge, skills and so on, in order to describe competence. The defenition for Culture is the well known "groupe of people in a specific time and place" explanaition, which is described in the text as an determinant factor.
Since cultural deversity is a relevant topic, especially in big city´s, the competence to deal with your Neighbors, Colleges and Social community is of growing importance.
In order to sum up the factors of intercultural competence you can find a Grafik attached to the Text. It devides 4 Stages of learning which build on each other. Starting with positive Attitudes, leading to more knowledge and skills, finding an internal reflection and adjusting the external Outcome is a Spiral upwards shown in the Grafik.
In an ideale case a intercultural ceompetent Person recognizes conficts at an early stage and deals with them before they find an unpleasant outcome. Since the aspect of competence is a rather individual one it is not easy for everyone to learn intercultural competence.
My personal view on the Text is constantly positive, I agree in all Aspects to the Author and liked the clear Grafik and Writingstyle.
Linguistic Awareness of Culture
Linguistic Awareness of Culture. Priciples os a Training Module
Bernd-Dietrich Müller (Bayreuth University; Intercultural German Studies)
Paper published in "Linguistic Awareness of Cultures. Principles of training module. In: Kistler, Peter, Konivuori, Sini (eds). From International exchanges to intercultural communication: combining theory and practice Jyväsklä: Univ. of Jyväsklä 2003, 50-90.
The Text brings up an interessting Factor for intercultural communiaction. The linguistic awareness is one aspect next to the psychological explanation for intercultural misunderstandings.
The Author implements grammatical, lexical and non-verbal expressions into the communication of individuals. It means that groups of the same cultural background learned a specific way of using Words, Gestures and Expressions that are different from other cultures. Therefore, intercultural communication is sometimes difficult, misunderstandings can interrupt the relationships and disturb further on.
To get aware of these Elemts and avoid them, the Linguistic Awareness of Cultures (LAC) Training includes a long List of Examples of conversations between individuals of different cultures. Always related to a business setting, the text gives a good overwiev of german Steriotypes and shows some Traps that germans might reflect in them self.
I found it hard to concentrate on rather long text and would have preferred to read the consence of the 39 Pages in a summary without this number of Examples, since there would be so much more Situation and Cultures to reflect on, that it gives just a small view on what could happen in interaction with People of different cultures.
4. Session 09.05.2016 text
ETHNOCENTRISM
What is it? Why are people ethnocentric? What is the problem? What can we do about it?
Recognition and control of Ethnocentrism as a basic methodology for understanding ethnic behavior... both our own and others.
This Text is about Ethnocentric and describes what it is, why everyone has it and how to possibly avoid it.
I liked the clear writingstyle and consent of the text. It is important to be aware of judgemental behaviour and train to free ourself from boundaries of socialisation in order to have a peaceful life on this planet.
Critical Incidents Text
GlobalPADConcepts
Critical Incidents
A Compilation of Quotations for the Intercultural Field
by Spencer-Oatey 2013
A first the text gives an Introduction showing how widely spread the Term is used in different disciplines. Connecting on this, there is an Overview on on Flanagan´s original Concept of Critical Incidents. After this there is a change in the Paradigmatic Perspective discribed and in the following there is an explanation of the term "Critical". It is associated with extreme behavior, with high emotional content and it is self interpretated. By the term "Critical Incident" is ment a complex phenomenon, which is not indipendently occuring.
In the next Chapter is the term "Incident" described, by Flanagan, the definition is an "observable human activity that is sufficiently complete ... ". Further more thy are described as " .. not discrete, isolated event ... " by Cope and Watts.
Following on that, there is a perspective given in the Text on how to improve selfawareness and make use of a portfolio in order to reflect and record "critical Incidents".
The last two parts of the text are on, how to use "Critical Incidents" in Intercultural Trainings, and on collecting and Researching "Critical Incident" data. The Methodology is between observation, to interviewing and analysing the records.
It is a very detailed explanation with helpfull Grafics to understand the process of researching and reporting.
All together I find it a good summary, although I liked the first part more than the second part because it was easier to read about the term itself rather then the Researchmethods behind it.
Text 5
ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS FOR INTERCULTURAL TRAINERS
Juliana Roth
The Text is very well researched and adresses some very important issues in cultural trainings. The Author is questioning the methods of Western (European or American) training models in a reasonable context. Also mostly the Trainer is influenced by his/her employment situation and has to choose a position in which they keep thier integrity without loosing thier Job. Also cultural differences and intercultural misunderstandings are often not „black or white“ but have a plurality of sources and solutions or sometimes even there is no solution. A good trainer has to admit to both, the problem and the solution, both or more cultures serving at the same time.
The author devides five chapters to describe her considerations for intercultural trainers:
1. Be mindful of the notions of culture and cultural difference they employ in their trainings
2. Avoid cultural comparisons based on black-and-white contrasts
3. Be critical about passing out “recipe- knowledge” to clients
4. Be aware of manipulative power of intercultural knowledge and competence
5. Be aware of the Western nature of intercultural trainings
I liked the clear writing style and theoretical point of view, the author describes the problem in a accurate distance but gives you somehow a personal experience at once.