Сінельник І.П. The actualization of the potential of the cycle “a Foreign language” disciplines in prospective primary school teachers’ education for tolerance

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Сінельник Ірина Павлівна – старший викладач кафедри іноземних мов і методик їх навчання Педагогічного інституту Київського університету імені Бориса Грінченка, м. Київ.


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У статті висвітлено потенціал вищих навчальних закладів у вихованні студентів у дусі толерантності; уточнено семантичний аспект поняття «толерантність»; визначено та дискурсивно розглянуто деякі інноваційні методи навчання, що можуть бути використані в якості ефективних засобів виховання толерантності майбутніх учителів початкової школи, а також розвитку їхніх міжкультурних комунікативних умінь та формування мовної компетенції у процесі викладання дисциплін «Практичний курс англійської мови» та «Ділова іноземна мова».

Ключові слова: актуалізація, потенціал, вищі навчальні заклади, виховання толерантності, мовна компетенція, міжкультурні комунікативні вміння, дисципліни, практичний курс англійської мови, ділова іноземна мова, інноваційні методи навчання, ефективні засоби виховання, майбутні вчителі початкової школи.


В статье освещен потенциал высших учебных заведений в воспитании студентов в духе толерантности; уточнен семантический аспект понятия «толерантность»; определены и дискурсивно рассмотрены некоторые инновационные методы обучения, которые могут быть использованы в качестве эффективных средств воспитания толерантности будущих учителей начальной школы, а также развития их межкультурных коммуникативных умений и формирования языковой компетенции в процессе преподавания дисциплин «Практический курс английского языка» и «Деловой иностранный язык».

Ключевые слова: актуализация, потенциал, высшие учебные заведения, воспитание толерантности, языковая компетенция, межкультурные коммуникативные умения, дисциплины, практический курс английского языка, деловой иностранный язык, инновационные методы обучения, эффективные средства воспитания, будущие учителя начальной школы.


The article highlights the potential of higher educational institutions in students’ education for tolerance; the semantic aspect of the concept “tolerance” is clarified; some innovative methods of training which may be used as effective means of prospective primary school teachers’ education for tolerance as well as their linguistic competence and intercultural communication skills development in the process of teaching the disciplines “Practical Course of English” and “Business Foreign Language” are determined and discursively overviewed."'

Key words: actualization, potential, higher educational institutions, education for tolerance, linguistic competence, intercultural communication skills, disciplines, Practical Course of English, Business Foreign Language, innovative methods of training, effective means of education, prospective primary school teachers.


Зміст

Problem setting

Ukraine has become an increasingly diverse country ethnically in recent years. It has also become more religiously diverse, with an increase in the number of followers of Islam and other religions, which had few adherents in earlier periods of Ukrainian history. Moreover, the practice of alternative lifestyles, which had earlier been hidden, is more visible and accepted in today’s society. Public affirmation of gay, lesbian, and bisexual identities is now common. Sure enough, there are numbers of individuals and organizations, particularly those of youth, involved in conservative movements, which oppose non-Christian religions, different lifestyles, cultures, ideas and inclusion of those who identify with all those.


Meanwhile, it should be recognized that a substantial part of the Ukrainians look positively upon such changes in ideas and the increasing diversity in Ukraine. Those who favour diversity and tolerance argue that a society that is more accepting to all individuals regardless of their ethnicity, religion, sexual identity, or gender, will make the country a better home for all of its inhabitants. Intolerance both leads to misery for the people of the affected groups and, at the same time, denies to everyone opportunities to learn about others’ cultures, languages, and ideas. Therefore, to benefit everyone, the question of what increases tolerance becomes important.


Some studies have shown that one of the major creators of tolerance is higher education. Apropos, investigators Lawrence Bobo and Frederick C. Licari have found a strong correlation between years of education and tolerance. The more years of education an individual experienced, the more tolerant the individual became. Their analysis showed “that the highly educated are more tolerant than the less well educated even when the analysis is restricted to respondents who are likely to have negative attitudes toward the target group.” Their study also found that cognitive sophistication contributes significantly to tolerance [1, p. 300].


Thus, we may claim that modern Ukrainian society’s multiethnicity, multiculturalism, multireligionalism, and multilingualism force higher educational institutions, namely those which nurture prospective primary school teachers, to direct their forces not only to the formation of individuals which have deep professional knowledge and skills, but also the formation of humanistic personalities for which the moral and spiritual values are the basis of constructive cooperation with all participants of educational process; individuals which are ready for peaceful coexistence and intercultural communication with people different in race, nationality, language, social status, religion, and cultural identity on the basis of mutual understanding, mutual respect, and tolerance.


The analysis of research

Analysis of a significant amount of sources suggests that various aspects of such a complex problem as education for tolerance of the younger generation have been the subjects of substantial works of domestic and foreign scholars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as M. Berdiaiev, M. Bakhtin, M. Buber, P. Florenskyi, V. Sukhomlynskyi, K. Ushynskyi, V. Soloviov, K. Jaspers, S. Frunk, J.-P. Sartre, J. Dewey, J.S. Mill, J. Rawls, C.R. Rogers, A. Schweitzer and others.


At the present time, the abovementioned problem is being investigated by V. Lektorskyi, V. Zolotukhin, A. Asmolov, I. Ziaziun, I. Bekh, D. Leontieva, I. Hrinshpun, O. Klieptsova, S. Bondyrieva, D. Koliesov, V. Maralov, V. Sitarov, R. Valitova, O. Hryva, O. Todorovtseva, S. Ter-Minasova, B. Hershunskyi, O. Shvachko, T. Bilous, M. Waltzer, O. Hoffe, S. Mendus, M.F. Gülen and others.


Despite the facts that the problem of tolerance has been investigated since ancient times and that it has been theoretically recognized as the ethical doctrine of here and now little significant progress has been made in developing teaching practices and curriculum that meet the needs of culturally, racially, and socially diverse groups of students. Some studies and personal observations have shown that most educators display traditional teaching practices that fail to educate students for tolerance and develop their intercultural communication skills.


The objective of the article

The purpose of our study is to highlight the potential of higher education in tolerance education, to clarify the semantic aspect of the concept “tolerance”, to provide an organizational discourse and case study of some innovative methods of training which may be used as effective means of prospective primary school teachers’ education for tolerance and their linguistic competence and intercultural communication skills development while teaching the cycle “A Foreign Language” disciplines.


The statement of the fundamental material

To begin, it may be helpful to understand what we now mean by tolerance. Simply stated, tolerance is “willingness to accept or allow behaviour, beliefs, customs etc, which one does not like or agree with, without opposition” [5, p. 1418].


A well-known definition of tolerance comes from the Article 1 of the Declaration of Principles on Tolerance that was proclaimed and signed by the Member States of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Paris in 1995. Among other things, the Declaration affirms that tolerance is neither indulgence nor indifference. It is respect, acceptance and appreciation of the rich variety of our world’s cultures, our forms of expression and ways of being human. It is fostered by knowledge, openness, communication, and freedom of thought, conscience, and belief. Tolerance recognizes the universal human rights and fundamental freedoms of others. Tolerance means accepting the fact that human beings, naturally diverse in their appearance, situation, speech, behaviour and values, have the right to live in peace and to be as they are. It also means that one’s views are not to be imposed on others. Tolerance is harmony in difference [2]. The rich diversity of our world’s religions, languages, cultures, and ethnicities is not a pretext for conflict, but a treasure that enriches us all.


Accordingly, we may summarize that tolerance means a valuable attitude to people, regardless of gender, race, nationality, language, social status, religion, political views, cultural identity and education is exactly the social institution within which tolerant consciousness and behaviour of learners can be formed through the humanities that is pedagogy, philosophy, psychology, history, cultural studies, religion studies, ethics, arts and others. At the same time, we believe that foreign languages obtain the greatest potential in prospective primary school teachers’ education for tolerance alongside with developing their linguistic competence and improving intercultural communication skills.


In our opinion, prospective primary school teachers’ education for tolerance can be successfully accomplished by the means and through educational content of different disciplines of the cycle “A Foreign Language”, in particular “Practical Course of English” and “Business Foreign Language”.


In an investigation of procedural norms and tolerance, David G. Lawrence divided the responses to questions related to tolerance into two categories: soft issues and hard issues. The scholar defined soft issues as those that did not arouse strong feelings, while hard issues were those in which strong emotions were involved. He found education was a small factor in the tolerance of an individual on soft issues, such as pollution. However, on harder issues, such as legalization of marijuana or racial discrimination, he found a strong correlation between tolerance and higher education [4, p. 86-89].


Therefore, through the curriculum content and learning materials of the above mentioned disciplines students are introduced to the history, religion, culture, customs, traditions, conventions, social stereotypes of different nationalities and cultures as well as to a wide range of urgent issues of the modern world: social inequality, human rights, juvenile delinquency, domestic violence, religious problems, slavery, substance addiction, child suicide, prejudice and discrimination, racism, terrorism, immigration and globalization and a great many of other topics related to tolerance and diversity.


Here it must be noted that it is equally important to assess the curriculum and materials to gauge what their long-term effect on attitudes are. Ijaz and Ijaz found in their study of changing racial attitudes, that students had highly negative attitudes towards blacks and East Indians, despite the fact that multiculturalism was promoted both in the curriculum and in extracurricular activities, and that the teaching staff and administration were dedicated to the implementing of the cultural programme. Ijaz and Ijaz concluded that this failure was due to the methodology and content of the programme, which emphasized cultural differences and was taught in the standard course approach. Later they revised the programme by incorporating activities and role playing methods, and by emphasizing cultural similarities and the sources of cultural diversity [3, p. 17-20].


Bearing in mind Ijaz and Ijaz’s approach to multicultural education, we teach “Practical Course of English” and “Business Foreign Language” through a variety of innovative forms, methods, and techniques to engage learners cognitively, behaviourally, and affectively in culture learning and education for tolerance. Some of them are debates, cultural dilemmas, symposia, cultural capsules, colloquia, round tables, talk shows, cultural simulations, projects, virtual tours, research activities, etc. In our article we will discursively overview only some of them, namely cultural dilemmas and cultural simulations.


Cultural dilemmas which can increase learners’ awareness and sensitivity to cultural differences and encourage them to participate in discussions about the potential outcomes of their suggested solutions are often used in the process of teaching both “Practical Course of English” and “Business Foreign Language”.


For example, students can discuss dilemmas about inclusive education in Ukraine and abroad (“Practical Course of English”) or business etiquette (“Business Foreign Language”). In the latter situation, a lecturer may divide students into small groups, offer imagine themselves primary school teachers, which gather in the lounge during a break, where share with each other the problems of a professional nature and ask for help in solving them. Suggested problem situations may be as the following.


Dilemma 1. You are a primary school teacher who wants to write a quick note home to a Korean student’s family. You pick up the red pen that you use to mark papers and write the note. When you hand the note to the student, she looks upset. What’s the matter?


Dilemma 2. You are a primary school teacher who has a new student Fatima from Pakistan. Now she is out of her seat fooling around and you’ve just beckoned with your finger to her to come over to you to talk. She glares at you and seems to become very angry. What’s the matter?


In such situations, groups of learners can take turns to perform their role plays in front of the class. Other groups then discuss what kinds of misunderstanding that may have occurred between people of different cultures and propose their own solutions to the problems involved.


And now we will note the cultural differences which have helped us create the above mentioned problem situations.


Dilemma 1. A primary school teacher has used a red pen and written a note to the parents. This is very upsetting in many cultures where red is the colour of death. A teacher should pay attention to this especially with Korean students.


Dilemma 2. A primary school teacher should know that beckoning with one finger is rude in many cultures. It can be a gesture reserved for animals.


These cultural dilemmas encourage learners to mediate between their home and the different culture to reach an intercultural position, or a “third place”, where their points of view can be recognized, mediated, and accepted. From such problem situations, learners can establish an understanding of cultural differences between their home and the different culture, develop an ability to look at themselves from the other’s perspective, and adapt their own behaviours to the specific context. Consequently, learners can develop their tolerance and empathy towards the behaviours of people from other cultures and intercultural misunderstanding can be solved [6, p. 71-72].


Cultural simulations is another very efficient way for exploring the target culture in the classroom and education for tolerance as well. In recent years, groups of students are becoming more and more culturally, racially, religiously, and socially diverse. There are comers from different regions of Ukraine beside ones from various countries of the world. Taking this good opportunity, a lecturer can let his/her students from different ethnic backgrounds share their culture through food by inviting them to talk about and share dishes typical in their countries.


For instance, when teaching the topic “Food around the World” (“Practical Course of English”) or the topic “Business Dinner Etiquette” (“Business Foreign Language”) a lecturer may organize a culture feast dinner using a simple and fun project called Cultural Pot Luck to explore differences and similarities in cultures and educate for tolerance without getting too preachy. The idea of this activity is to have every student bring in one of their family’s traditional food items and make a presentation of it and of eating and drinking habits in their culture. Your Georgian student may bring in chickens tabaka, khachapuri, sweet churchkela or gozinaki which are nuts and honey bars while a Japanese student brings in their mom’s trademark homemade sushi. What may surprise students involved in this activity is that some of their favourite foods come from other countries, while there are people of the same skin colour, right in the same classroom, whose families make food that they’ve never seen in their lives. It should be noted that culture is a wide and varied thing, it goes well beyond white/non-white, and this is a great way to teach students to relish that difference. Into the bargain, when students are able to identify their own culture and recognize the right of other ethnic groups to be different, they begin to think more critically about the need for cultural tolerance.


Thе interactive activities overviewed above undoubtedly will strengthen the linguistic competence of students as well as develop their intercultural communication skills and form tolerant consciousness.


It must be added that the effectiveness of cultural dilemmas and cultural simulations usage while teaching the disciplines “Practical Course of English” and “Business Foreign Language” depends on adherence to certain principles, namely, providing each student’s activity; feedback that must be argumentative, informative, personalized, and imaginative; trustful and open communication based on humanism, goodwill, and willingness to interact. It also greatly depends on whether a lecturer recognizes his/her own biases and tries not to relay them to his/her students.


Conclusion

Living in today’s multicultural world, language learners need to develop not only their linguistic competence but also their intercultural communication skills that are inseparable from tolerant consciousness and behaviour. It might help them overcome both linguistic and cultural barriers they may encounter in interaction with people different in race, nationality, language, social status, religion, and cultural identity.


The study confirms that education is exactly the social institution within which tolerant consciousness and behaviour of prospective primary school teachers can be formed through the humanities, in particular the disciplines “Practical Course of English” and “Business Foreign Language”. The multicultural curriculum content and learning materials as well as use of a variety of innovative forms, methods, and techniques like debates, cultural dilemmas, symposia, cultural capsules, colloquia, round tables, talk shows, cultural simulations, projects, virtual tours, research activities, etc. are expected to provide much benefit to students as it can help them become both linguistically and interculturally competent learners which are ready for constructive cooperation with representatives of cultures different from theirs on the basis of mutual understanding, mutual respect, and tolerance.


Another study that could be useful to conduct would be one that investigated high school students’ education for tolerance in different countries of the world. The approaches to education for tolerance in Ukraine and abroad could be compared.


References

  1. Bobo, Lawrence and Frederick C. Licari. Education and Political Tolerance: Testing the Effects of Cognitive Sophistication and Target Group Affect. – Public Opinion Quarterly 53, 1989. – Pp. 285-308.
  2. Declaration of Principles on Tolerance. – Paris, France: UNESCO. Adopted by the General Conference of UNESCO on 16 November, 1995. – Accessed: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0015/001518/151830eo.pdf
  3. Ijaz, M. A., and Ijaz, I. H. A Cultural Program for Changing Racial Attitudes. – The History and Social Science Teacher, 17, 1981. – Pp. 17-20.
  4. Lawrence, David G. Procedural Norms and Tolerance: A Reassessment. – American Political Science Review 70, 1976. – Pp. 80-100.
  5. Longman Dictionary of English Language and Culture. – Longman; 2 edition, 1998. – 1592 p.
  6. Si Thang Kiet Ho. Addressing Culture in EFL Classrooms: The Challenge of Shifting from a Traditional to an Intercultural Stance. – Electronic Journal of Foreign Language Teaching 2009, Vol. 6, No. 1. – Pp. 63-76.


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