Intercultural Experience in Narrative


Book Description

This book systematically investigates intercultural experiences of Polish managers and specialists delegated by their multinational company (MNC) on an international assignment to China. The book employs narrative inquiry to explore language, intercultural communication, collaboration, learning, and expatriate adjustment in the MNC. This approach offers new insights into intercultural experiences, communication, and cultural challenges faced by an under-researched group of professionals exposed to intensive collaborations with the local managers and employees. The findings also illustrate how the expatriates learned to better navigate the multicultural and multilingual business context and what factors facilitated and inhibited their learning and adjustment. Encouraging the qualitative, context-sensitive examination of expatriate-local personnel interactions, the book will be an invaluable source for scholars and practitioners interested in, among others, novel approaches to investigating language and intercultural communication in international business, cross-cultural management, qualitative cross-cultural research, as well as for lecturers and students interested in Central Europe and China.




Narratives of Storytelling Across Cultures


Book Description

This book digs deeply into the meanings systems that make up social groups, addressing contemporary and historical cases both in the U.S. and internationally. Drawing from traditional and social media along with interpersonal communication situations, contributors provide an e...




Intercultural Experience and Identity


Book Description

This book examines the identity formation and negotiation of Chinese doctoral students in the UK, and the opportunity for self-transformation this experience offers. As the largest group of international students in the English-speaking world, Mainland Chinese students encounter a range of difficulties and prospects that may be relevant to the wider international student community. Using extensive qualitative and empirical data, the author explores the narratives of eleven Chinese doctoral students at two British universities through a sociological perspective. Balancing analysis with solid theoretical framework and the voices of the students themselves, the author moves away from essentialism and ‘othering’, instead shining a light on the effects of globalisation, internationalisation and recent policy strategies. This volume will be of interest and value to students and scholars of comparative and international education, identity formation, intercultural communication, the sociology of education and study abroad.




Manual for Developing Intercultural Competencies (Open Access)


Book Description

This book presents a structured yet flexible methodology for developing intercultural competence in a variety of contexts, both formal and informal. Piloted around the world by UNESCO, this methodology has proven to be effective in a range of different contexts and focused on a variety of different issues. It, therefore can be considered an important resource for anyone concerned with effectively managing the growing cultural diversity within our societies to ensure inclusive and sustainable development. Intercultural competence refers to the skills, attitudes, and behaviours needed to improve interactions across difference, whether within a society (differences due to age, gender, religion, socio-economic status, political affiliation, ethnicity, and so on) or across borders. The book serves as a tool to develop those competences, presenting an innovative adaptation of what could be considered an ancient tradition of storytelling found in many cultures. Through engaging in the methodology, participants develop key elements of intercultural competence, including greater self-awareness, openness, respect, reflexivity, empathy, increased awareness of others, and in the end, greater cultural humility. This book will be of great interest to intercultural trainers, policy makers, development practitioners, educators, community organizers, civil society leaders, university lecturers and students – all who are interested in developing intercultural competence as a means to understand and appreciate difference, develop relationships with those across difference, engage in intercultural dialogue, and bridge societal divides.




Contesting Grand Narratives of the Intercultural


Book Description

Contesting Grand Narratives of the Intercultural uses an autoethnographic account of the author’s experience of living in Iran in the 1970s to demonstrate the constant struggle to prevent the intercultural from being dominated by essentialist grand narratives that falsely define us within separate, bounded national or civilisational cultures. This book provides critical insight that: DeCentres how we encounter and research the intercultural by means of a third-space methodology Recovers the figurative, creative, flowing, and boundary-dissolving power of culture Recognises hybrid integration which enables us the choice and agency to be ourselves with others in intercultural settings Demonstrates how early native-speakerism pulls us back to essentialist large-culture blocks. Aimed at students and researchers in applied linguistics, intercultural studies, sociology, and education, this volume shows how cultural difference in stories, personal space, language, practices, and values generates unexpected and transcendent threads of experience to which we can all relate within small culture formation on the go.




Intercultural Experience and Education


Book Description

This edited volume explores the educational significance of intercultural experience. It offers a broader conception of interculturality than commonly found in the area of foreign language teaching. Contributors represent a diverse range of academic and professional interests. The aim of the book is to encourage dialogue and interchange across this range, and beyond, to stimulate thinking about the educational value of intercultural experience.




Intercultural Mirrors


Book Description

Intercultural Mirrors: Dynamic Reconstruction of Identity contains (auto)ethnographic chapters and research-based explorations that uncover the ways our intercultural experiences influence our process of self-discovery and self-construction. The idea of intercultural mirrors is applied throughout all chapters as an instrument of analysis, an heuristic tool, drawn from philosophy, to provide a focus for the analysis of real life experiences. Plato noted that one could see one’s own reflection in the pupil of another’s eye, and suggested that the mirror image provided in the eye of the other person was an essential contributor to self-knowledge. Taking this as a cue, the contributors of this book have structured their writings around the idea that the view of us held by other people provides an essential key to one’s own self-understanding. Contributors are: James Arvanitakis, Damian Cox, Mark Dinnen, James Ferguson, Tom Frengos, Dennis Harmon, Donna Henson, Alexandra Hoyt, William Kelly, Lucyann Kerry, Julia Kraven, Taryn Mathis, Tony McHugh, Raoul Mortley, Kristin Newton, Marie-Claire Patron, Darren Swanson, and Peter Mbago Wakholi.




Cross-Cultural Narratives


Book Description

Living and studying away from home can turn out to be an enriching and rewarding experience for many international students. Yet, many of them struggle to cope with their new university life due to distinct challenges such as cultural differences, language and communication barriers, and a lack of social support. Through a diverse collection of personal essays, this book captures some of the stories of international students as they reflect on their intercultural encounters, expectations, and experiences in their new surroundings and local communities. Essay themes range from culture shock to resilience, and they cover a variety of topics including the ways students change and gain new perspectives by being away from their comfort zone, the feeling of isolation and being an outsider, and the uncertainties of making new friends. This book provides readers with a unique opportunity to walk a mile in the shoes of an international student. It also highlights the importance of a strong support system for students in both the curricular and co-curricular settings and offers insights to international educators and university administrators into creating a welcoming environment that fosters international understanding and cross-cultural awareness on campus.




Global Collaboration: Intercultural Experiences and Learning


Book Description

Offers qualitative studies of collaboration processes conducted in globalising companies based in Denmark and with subsidiaries in Asia. It addresses the specific contexts of collaboration and studies how people with different cultural backgrounds work together, both face-to-face and in the virtual workplace.




A Reader of Narrative and Critical Lenses on Intercultural Teaching and Learning


Book Description

It has become increasingly critical for both novice and experienced educators to bring to their diverse classrooms a set of dispositions, skills, and experiences that will enhance learning for all students, especially pupils from diverse cultural and language backgrounds. Intercultural teaching experiences offer opportunities for teachers and student teachers to learn about cultures and cultures of schooling via first?hand interactions. In this way, intercultural teaching enables educators to intertwine the personal, political, cultural, social, theoretical, and practical as a means of making important changes in school and classroom life. A Reader on Narrative and Critical Lenses of Intercultural Teaching and Learning offers readers a set of chapters that highlights the work of researchers, educators, and teacher educators that displays new possibilities for ongoing teacher development and positive social and educational changes. This book engages in critical and narrative exploration of intercultural teaching, intercultural competence, and the relationship between the work of educators in different countries and teaching for diversity. This text also accounts for international, intra?cultural, and intercultural teaching beyond early field experiences and student teaching programs by including the viewpoints of educators with these experiences. Significantly, this book enhances the current dialogue on intercultural teaching and on intercultural competence with first?hand narrative accounts of life, teaching, and research in intercultural professional settings in order to bring to light intricate understandings of this form of educator professional development. In addition, this text critically unpacks aspects of intercultural teacher development and programs supporting such endeavors as they explicitly enhance educators’ capacities for personal, passionate, and participatory teaching and inquiry.