La traducción de expresiones idiomáticas

This study is situated in the context of the international school. In this section, the nature of the students that attend these schools is considered. Langford (1998), whilst noting the diverse nature of international schools, suggests that a pattern is emerging for defining these schools based, in part, on their school populations being characterised by:

1. their multinational composition;

2. fairly high levels of student turnover as a consequence of career paths of a

professional parent body which in turn may result in childhoods of transiency and international mobility for such students;

3. a very strong likelihood that their pupils will not complete their educations or attend

university in the country where the international school is located, but rather they will be required to face the challenge of moving on to another foreign location or alternatively repatriating to their passport countries to continue their educations; and

4. the strong probability that the cultural development of their pupils will be

influenced by the culture of the host country as well as by the various cultures that they collectively represent. (Langford 1998: 28-29)

Many of the students in international schools are international people; the Third Culture described first by Useem (1966, 1973) and, more recently, by Pollock and Van Reken (1999). Sometimes recast as ‘transcultural’ (Willis, Enloe and Minoura, 1994), ‘global nomad’ (Ender 1996, 2003; Schaetti 1998, 2003) and internationally mobile children or adolescents (Gerner, Perry, Moselle, and Archibald 1991, Gerner and Perry 2000, 2003; Ezra 2003), the Third Culture Kid is defined by Pollock and Van Reken (1999) as:

…a person who has spent a significant part of his or her developmental years outside the parents’ culture. The Third Culture Kid builds relationships to all of the cultures, while not having full ownership in any. Although elements from each culture are assimilated into the TCK’s life experiences, the sense of belonging is in relationship to others of

similar background. (Pollock and Van Reken 1999: 19)6

Two realities are described as shaping the Third Culture Kid’s life: (1) being raised in a genuinely cross-cultural world, and (2) being raised in a highly mobile world. (Pollock and Van Reken 1999:22)

Third Culture Kids are characterised by Pollock and Van Reken (1999) and others (Gerner 1993 cited in McKillop-Ostrom 1999; Finn Jordan 2003) as possessing a mix of positive and negative characteristics. They are described as typically interpersonally and interculturally skilled, flexible, adaptable, empathic and academically high achieving. At the same time they typically suffer from rootlessness, unresolved grief, insecurity and a difficulty in relating to settled individuals and communities in the ‘home’ culture. Due to the high international mobility of many expatriate families, some may spend their entire

6 _{Although there are differences in the way these various terms are used, since they all denote similar} phenomena, for the present purpose the term Third Culture Kid will be used.

childhood lives in acculturation or adaptation contexts, learning the cultures of new schools and communities before moving on to the next posting (Ezra, 2003; Allan 2003).

Their identity, it is suggested, is not primarily with their ‘home’ culture – since they may have never lived there - nor with the ‘host’ culture, but rather with a newly evolving ‘third culture’; a global transculture – an international diaspora of globally mobile expatriates (Finn Jordan 2003).

Some are the offspring of long-term expatriates, who are themselves members of a mobile international community. Unlike short-term sojourners, many are thus second, or even third, generation ‘international’ people, who are likely to spend only brief periods in their passport country, often for tertiary study before returning ‘overseas’ to take up ‘international’ careers (Gerner et al. 1991; Gerner and Perry 2000, 2003; Baker Cotrell 2003). Many families choose to live their lives indefinitely away from their passport homes or countries of origin. A significant group is cross-cultural, bilingual and/or bi- national.

A consistent picture of these students has emerged as possessing strong self esteem, advanced social skills and ability to form friendships, linguistic and cognitive flexibility, intercultural awareness and tolerance, advanced capacities for empathy, multiple perspective-taking, communication, acceptance, open and broad minded attitudes (Willis, Enloe and Minoura 1994, Langford 1998, Pollock and Van Reken 1999). These are the very characteristics that may be thought of as corresponding to intercultural literacy. In reference to young children raised abroad, Bennett (1993) makes the

important distinction between learned and ‘accidental’ pluralism, suggesting that whilst those in the second category may…

…understand and even respect the differences with which they are familiar, … they may be unable to recognise or use this sensitivity as part of a generalised skill in adapting to cultural difference. (Bennett 1993: 56)

A related concept is that of the ‘third culture’ or ‘third place’ as a meeting place between cultures that may be constructed to allow for dialogue and building shared meanings cross-culturally (Broome 1991; Casrnir 1999), conceived of as ‘…a meeting place between different forces, different cultures and worldviews. Intercultural competence is at the heart of all third places which are constantly negotiating the role and shape language education ought to take from policy to practice.’ (Crozet, Liddicoat and Biance 1999: 15). The focus here is not so much on the individual identifying with a ‘third culture’, but rather on a space between cultures in which individuals might negotiate shared meanings cross-culturally. The extent to which international schools might be construed as either ‘third cultures’ or ‘third places’, cultivating an organisational and educational culture that supports intercultural literacy learning, is open to conjecture.

In the context of this study, the 'third culture' is conceived as one more layer of cultural identity for Third Culture Kids and international people. If individual international school students identify with a third culture, but do not demonstrate the flexibility to move between other cultural frameworks, to take multiple perspectives, to effectively engage with local cultures, they are not interculturally literate. Third Culture Kids born

and raised ‘overseas’ may not experience the ‘crisis of engagement’ or transition necessary to stimulate intercultural literacy learning.

For many, the ‘crisis of engagement’, the shock that stimulates learning, is likely to occur only when they repatriate to their ‘home’ culture – often for the purpose of tertiary study (Barbara Schaetti, personal correspondence October 16th 1999; Pollock and Van Reken 1999; Sussman 2002). Sometimes termed ‘reculturation’ or ‘reverse culture shock’, at this point the individual may retreat into chauvinism (an exaggerated affirmation of their international of ‘third’ culture and rejection of the new ‘home’ culture), passing (rejecting the third culture), or marginalisation (drifting between the old third culture and the new ‘home’ culture) or may advance in intercultural literacy learning to become integrated, pluralist, balancing the old and the new. More work is required to integrate the implications of this and other models of intercultural learning with understandings generated from research into Third Culture Kids and global nomads. Such work could be of great benefit to the international school community.

Whilst little research has been conducted into the culture learning and adaptation of students in international schools, a small number of studies have addressed this area (Willis, Enloe and Minoura 1994, McKillop-Ostrom 1999, 2000, Straffon 2003, Pearce 1998, 2003, Allen 2000; Allan 2002, 2003). Each of these is discussed below.

Willis, Enloe and Minoura (1994) conducted a five-year ethnography of secondary (high-school) students in Kobe Academy, an international school in Japan. They found that the majority of the students in the school could be characterised as transcultural or

transnational and possessed the sorts of competencies and understandings required to facilitate Boulding’s (1988) global civic community (Willis 1986, 1987, 1988, 1991, 1992; Willis and Enloe 1990; Willis, Enloe and Minoura 1994).

What our study has shown us is at once more revealing and more challenging than we had expected. These people do indeed think globally and act locally, but they also show us that there is much cultural flux, especially at points of departure and arrival. Culture for transnationals or transculturals is clearly not a place or a state of mind, but an arena for conscious choice, justification and representation (Appadurai, 1990, p.18). What we are therefore trying to contribute here is a new, globally-informed theory of cultural reproduction (Willis, Enloe and Minoura 1994: 33).

This view of transculturals as able to switch between cultural frames is supported by a recent empirical study of bicultural children in the Netherlands (Verkuyten and Pouliasi 2002). Willis, Enloe and Minoura (1994) also refer to the capacity of transculturals for ‘multiple perspective-taking’. Consistent with their portrait of the transcultural as operating flexibly within a shifting and diverse cultural milieu, these individuals are described as possessing advanced capacities for empathy, able to simultaneously perceive an issue from multiple cultural viewpoints.

As Willis, Enloe and Minoura (1994) report, confidence and interpersonal skills ‘go with the territory’ of the transcultural:

Over half of transculturals / transnationals follow their parents into international jobs ... 97% are described as having great pride in themselves. And, while 69% have felt

alienated or left out at some time they feel this is the price to pay and would not trade their experience for any other. Perhaps most significantly, 80% are high achievers. The development of capacities to benefit from diversity, to have meaningful exchanges with people who have different values, to resolve conflicts and to tolerate ambiguity are all part of the ‘culture capital’ of transnational / transcultural people’ (Willis, Enloe and Minoura 1994: 35-36).

The study is significant in that it was the first major ethnographic case study of an international school, and recast the previously negative concept of ‘Third Culture Kids’ (Useem and Downie 1976), typically rootless and lacking commitment, as transculturals, individuals with the leadership skills for a newly globalising world. However, this analysis may be criticised on two grounds. Firstly, it ignores the negative dimensions to transculturalism and the Third Culture Kid experience, focussing somewhat idealistically on the positive. Secondly, and more importantly, it characterises the third culture, or ‘transculture’ of the international school as an idealised global culture. A more realistic picture emerges from the recent ethnographies of Pearce (1998, 2002) and Allan (2002, 2003), who portray the culture of the international school as typically dominated by a mainstream Anglo-American culture which, insofar as it may be characterised as a unifying ‘global’ or ‘third’ culture, is shallow and transient.

Anne McKillop-Ostrom (1999, 2000) studied the transition of global-nomad students moving into and between international schools. Students studied ranged from grades six to eleven at the United Nations International School in Hanoi. The study found that the students were typically unaware of the transition cycle, including the process of adapting to new cultures. However, from the students’ descriptions of their experiences, it was

clear that they had travelled through what McKillop-Ostrom describes as ‘a culture shock process’ (1999: 112). Students were also able to articulate their coping strategies, notably the importance of making new friends - whilst maintaining old, good relationships within the family, and communication skills.

In a study applying Bennett and Hammer’s (1998) Intercultural Development Inventory in an international school in South East Asia, David Straffon (2003) found that ‘…the assumption that students who are attending international schools have a high level of intercultural sensitivity is supported…’ (Straffon 2003: 498). However, Straffon (2003) recommends caution in interpreting the result and also found that grade nine students (ages fourteen to fifteen) scored significantly higher on every subscale of the developmental model than tenth graders; tenth graders scored higher than the eleventh, and the eleventh higher than the twelfth graders. As the students grew older, their intercultural sensitivity decreased, as measured by this inventory. That is clearly not consistent with the school’s aim to produce ‘global citizens’ (David Straffon, personal correspondence 27th November, 2003).

The studies of McKillop-Ostrom (1999, 2000) and Straffon (2003) support the earlier findings of Willis and colleagues (Willis, Enloe and Minoura 1994) in characterising international students as typically competent in a cross-cultural context; to some extent interculturally literate. Yet, the results are equivocal and the meaning of Straffon’s (2003) findings that intercultural awareness decreased with age is unclear.

In an important study of culture learning in international schools, Richard Pearce (1998, 2003) suggests that children begin culture learning at an early age and continue throughout adolescence and on into adulthood. Culture learning is characterised as essentially a life-long enterprise. In this framework, the process of adapting to a second culture during transitions is seen as part of a more general process of ongoing culture learning. Pearce characterises the mobile child and typical international school student as developing either ‘…a passive tolerance of diversity or an active ability to accept diversity’ (2003: 159).

The expatriate child, growing up exposed to more than one culture, perhaps even within one home, has a wide repertoire of experiences from which to build an identity or identities. (Pearce 2003: 156)

Pearce (2003) rejects the Third Culture Kid / Global Nomad paradigm, suggesting that the third culture or ‘global culture’ (Pollock and Van Reken 1999; Schaetti 2003) is superficial and transitory, and that the paradigm is an outcome of ‘new world’ thinking which tends towards homogeneity. Hylmo (2003) similarly rejects the notion of a unifying global third culture, describing the cultural realities of transcultural international school students, from a postmodern perspective, as multiple, fragmented, ambiguous and differentiated. Pearce’s analysis also suggests a more complex, dynamic and pluralist cultural reality. In adapting to new cultures, Pearce suggests that international school students, whilst they may be benefited by being buddied to a cultural mediator, often opt for a ‘silent phase’ while they observe and learn (Pearce 1998, 2000). Children and families who adapt with relative ease, who can

‘…accommodate to expatriate life, and not feel threatened if the community outside the front door is different’ (1998: 60), in Pearce’s analysis are likely to be either:

1. members of a stable minority within a dominant or polyvalent community; 2. children of parents who have two different cultures; or

3. those with overseas experience during childhood. (Pearce 1998: 60)

These are the individuals who live in an ambiguous, diverse and plural cultural world as opposed to those from dominant mainstream ‘new world’ cultures who expect and need a single unifying and homogenous culture. The problem for many international schools and expatriate families has been that they typically spring not from this kind of background, but, rather, from the dominant mainstream cultures of the west, notably an Anglo-American culture (Pearce 1998).

Whilst international schools increasingly offer standardised curricula (particularly the International Baccalaureate) and support the creation of encapsulated expatriate communities in order to minimise the cultural dissonance and culture shock for mobile families, Pearce argues that the relationship between school and family (the cultural constant for children) is critical, and a relationship between the school and host community offers important learning opportunities for students. This relationship might be threatening for ‘new world’ homogenists, suggests Pearce, but is less of a problem for ‘old world’ pluralists. Pearce thus supports the view that culture shock, cultural dissonance, is an opportunity for learning rather than a malady to be treated.

Michael Allan (2002, 2003) conducted an ethnographic case study in an international school in the Netherlands to explore the process of intercultural learning in eleven to eighteen year olds. The study found that ‘…intercultural learning takes place via cultural dissonance in the daily interactions which form the students’ experience of school’ (2002: 67).

‘…cross-cultural dissonance and possibly conflict at the frontiers of students’ and school cultures, the friction of frontier skirmishes of cultural dissonance, [was] the medium through which the learning takes place.’ (Allan 2002: 66).

Students from outside the dominant school culture, which was described as Anglo- American, were found to typically advance in intercultural learning whilst those from the mainstream did not progress beyond an awareness phase. Minority students experienced considerable cultural dissonance and in some cases ‘severe culture shock’ within the school culture. Students from East Asia and Japan were found to suffer the most, a finding consistent with the notion that cultural distance increases culture shock and with the suggestion that ability to communicate in the dominant language – in this case English – is a significant factor in facilitating acculturation and easing transition (Ezra 2003).

Outcomes included ethnocentricism in some and assimilation or adaptation in others. Some students were found to distance themselves from the dominant culture, ‘…remaining isolated or forming mono-cultural enclaves… [whilst others]…cross from minority to majority culture, involving acculturation and possible loss of own cultural identity’. Some were also able to ‘…achieve a bicultural or multicultural personality

through successful negotiation of cultural dissonance’ (2002: 800). Allan (2002) also refers to the concept of ‘third culture’ suggesting that it might equate with the dominant school culture, and so becomes, for those who ‘pass’ from the minority to the majority, a ‘cultural no-man’s land’ (sic) (Allan 2002: 80).

Allan (2002, 2003), with Pearce (1998, 2002), thus supports the view that culture shock, or cultural dissonance, is an opportunity and prerequisite for intercultural learning. Allan (2003) characterises intercultural learning as a movement along a four-stage continuum: awareness, understanding, acceptance and, finally, appreciation. Outcomes of cross- cultural contact reflect the findings described above, and are consistent with the earlier theories of Bochner (1982, 1986), and Berry and colleagues (Berry 1984; Berry et al. 1986, 1992), which categorised the outcomes of cross-cultural contact as either separation, passing, marginalisation or integration (in Allan’s terms, ‘multiculturalism’).

‘…progression is not automatic, there are several ‘dead ends’ or intermediate outcomes along the way. Culture shock, loss of face, or the desire for acceptance into the in-group may lead to:

ethnocentricism – remaining isolated or forming monocultural enclaves; adaptation – the development of coping strategies without any fundamental change and

assimilation – absorption into the dominant culture with accompanying abdication of original cultural characteristics’ (Allan 2003: 102)

Table 2.13: Allan’s (2003) Intercultural Learning Continuum

Stage 1 Awareness Ethnocentricism

Stage 2 Understanding Adaptation

Stage 3 Acceptance and respect Assimilation

Stage 4 Appreciation and valuing Multiculturalism

(Adapted from Allan 2003: 102) Allan (2003) characterises this learning process as a spiral of cultural dissonance, reflection and experience. In this, Allan’s model echoes Anderson’s (1994) notion of a recursive problem-solving process. In endeavouring to integrate the structure of a stage model with this notion of recursive learning it is also paralleled by Lucas’ (2003) model of structured intercultural learning. The implication for international schools is that if they wish to achieve objectives in intercultural literacy, internationalism or intercultural learning, they should recognise and actively affirm minority cultures within the school, thereby reducing the intensity of cultural dissonance for minority students and increasing it, creating learning opportunities, for majority students (Allan 2003). At the same time, international schools could consider using the learning resource of the culture outside the school gates; the host culture (Allen 2000).

In summary, in the period since the model proposed in this study was developed and trialled (Heyward 1999), a number of studies into intercultural learning in international schools have been published. Whilst the field is by nature diverse, a somewhat consistent picture is emerging of intercultural literacy learning in international schools

being driven not primarily by curriculum or formal school programs (although these too may be significant), but by cultural dissonance, culture shock, and informal interaction with individuals from other cultures (Hayden and Thompson 1995a; Pearce 1998; Ezra 2003; Allan 2002, 2003).

A key point in the model proposed in this thesis, endorsed in recent studies, is that