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2010 61: 271 originally published online 29 December 2009Journal of Teacher EducationSeonaigh MacPhersonTeaching

Teachers' Collaborative Conversations About Culture: Negotiating Decision Making in Intercultu

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Teachers Collaborative ConversationsAbout Culture: Negotiating DecisionMaking in Intercultural Teaching

Seonaigh MacPherson1

Abstract

This article presents findings from a study that investigated intercultural teaching through teachers collaborative conversationsabout critical intercultural incidents in schools. The data were generated through Web-CT and face-to-face dialogues between

preservice, inservice, and university teachers about critical intercultural incidents identified by the preservice candidatesduring practicum experiences. Findings focus on teachers intercultural decision making within two broad categories: minding

(making choices, enabling cultures, respecting and sharing power, and arbitrating and agonizing what is just) and responding(fostering intercultural communities, opening safe spaces, protecting students and surroundings, and stepping up to address

it). Implications include the role of social and emotional learning and power dynamics in intercultural teaching and the potentialfor a case-study approach to intercultural teacher education.

Keywords

intercultural teaching, collaborative inquiry, decision making, teacher education, field experience

As cultural and linguistic diversity increases through migra-tion, so do expectations that teachers will develop interculturalskills to assist all learners to realize well-being through edu-cation. Yet, to date, the teaching profession in North Americacontinues to attract disproportionate numbers of native-born,

White females of Christian, European backgrounds whoteach in proximity to the neighborhoods in which they wereraised (Canadian Teachers Federation, 2004; Sleeter, 2001;Solomon, Portelli, Daniel, & Campbell, 2005). This impliesnot only that the teaching force does not reflect the familiesit serves but that teachers have less intercultural, cross-regional,international, and multilingual experiences than other NorthAmericans. Furthermore, research indicates that White teach-ers underestimate their racial, cultural, linguistic, and classprivileges, powers, and prejudices (Carr & Lund, 2007).

Although the recruitment of underrepresented groups intothe teaching profession is a key strategy for promoting intercul-

tural education, the instructional styles of teachers can be moreimportant than their ethnic membership (Kleinfeld, 1995).Sleeter (2001), Friesen and Friesen (2002), Kanu (2007), andHogan (2008) all concluded that regardless of their ethnicity,teachers who are knowledgeable about and responsive to thecultural and linguistic diversity of learners can significantlyaffect their academic performance, retention rates, and sense ofbelonging.Teacher education programs face the challenge ofpreparing new teachers with these intercultural abilities to servediverse learners, schools, families, and communities.

This research article offers an empirically grounded frame-work to understand decision making in intercultural teaching inK-12 educational contexts. The researchers investigated inter-cultural teaching through Web-based collaborative conversationsabout critical intercultural incidents encountered by preservice

teachers during school-based field experiences. One questionguided our initial research: What can we learn about interculturalteaching through online conversations between preservice,inservice, and university teachers about critical interculturalincidents in schools? Consistent with constructivist groundedtheory, after the primary data were collected and initial axialcodes and coding paradigms were completed, we revised our ini-tial research question for the final interpretive sequence aroundthe more focused question: What can we learn about teachersdecision making in intercultural teaching through online con-versations about critical intercultural incidents in schools?

Intercultural TeachingIntercultural education offers a robust concept to ground

a framework for teaching culturally and linguistically diverse

1British Columbia Institute of Technology, Burnaby, BC, Canada

Corresponding Author:

Seonaigh MacPherson, University of British Columbia, 5128 Watling Street,

Burnaby, BC V5J 1W7, Canada

Email: [email protected]

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272 Journal of Teacher Education 61(3)

learners. Meaning to move between cultures, interculturalteaching captures what it is to teach effectively in multicul-tural contexts. Intercultural education is used in scholarshipand policy documents on diversity education in Europe andQuebec, where multilingual and multicultural encounters andnorms are woven into the fabric of everyday life (Gouverne-

ment du Qubec, 1998; Gundara & Portera, 2008). Furthermore,it is a term applied increasingly to international and global citi-zenship education (Heyward, 2002). As Portera (2008) explains,Today, intercultural education and intercultural pedagogyare regarded as a more appropriate response to the newcontext of globalisation and the increasing convergence ofdifferent languages, religions, cultural behaviors and waysof thinking (p. 484).

One explanation is that interculturalism is less mired thanmulticulturalism in historical assumptions of cultural andlinguistic hierarchies because it emerged in the postcolonialperiod when essentialist assumptions were vigorously cri-tiqued (Portera, 2008). This is evident in the European Councils

use of the term intercultural education to imply culturalreciprocity (Rey, 2006). As Portera points out,

An intercultural perspective has an educational and apolitical dimension: interactions contribute to the dev-elopment of co-operation and solidarity rather than torelations of domination, conflict, rejection, and exclu-sion. . . . Concepts such as identity and culture are notinterpreted any more as static but as dynamic. . . . Oth-erness or strangeness is not seen just as a danger orrisk, . . . but as a possibility for enrichment and for per-sonal and social growth. (pp. 483-485)

In North America, intercultural theories emerged in develop-mental psychology and learning theory (McAllister & Irvine,2000). These theories began with Obergs (1958, cited inAdler, 1986) and Adlers (1986) culture shock theory,which was criticized for pathologizing cross-cultural contactand bicultural identity development within an illness metaphor(Heyward, 2002). Christensen (1989) later proposed a five-stage intercultural development model progressing fromunawareness to transcendent awareness, whereas Meyer(1991) described the process in foreign language learning inthree stages: monocultural, intercultural, and transcultural.Parallel models emerged to explain racial and interracial

identity development (McAllister & Irvine, 2000), notablyHelmss (1990) two-stage White identity theory.Banks (1984, 1994) conceived of ethnic identity change

within a six-stage acquisition process moving from ethnicpsychological captivity through multiethnicity to globalismand global competency. There are three significant problemswith this theory: (a) It is unrealistic to expect large numbersof White teachers to develop biethnic, multiethnic, and globalidentities; (b) globalism is an inadequate term to describefully developed intercultural teaching abilities; and (c) the

continuum moves from ethnic captivity to globalism, therebysuggesting that culture is a pathology to be replaced by cos-mopolitan, global perspectives free of culture.

Bennetts (1993) developmental theory of interculturalsensitivity derived from his work with sojourners abroad,notably Peace Corps volunteers from the United States. He

described a six-stage continuum, moving from ethnocentri-cism to ethnorelativism, to explain how cross-culturalimmersion affects the identity development of these pred-ominantly native-born, White Americans; however, thecross-cultural experiences facing Peace Corps volunteers arefar deeper and more extensive than those experienced bymost teachers in North America, making it difficult to gener-alize across these two very different populations.

That said, to date, research and theories on interculturalteaching continue to derive from either Bennetts or Bankssdevelopmental models: Bennetts in adult and internationaleducation and Bankss in K-12, at least in the United States.Stiers (2003) used Bankss model to propose a framework

to support international student exchanges in higher edu-cation, and Heyward (2002) developed a framework forintercultural literacy (pp. 15-16) for international schoolsthat targeted six stages from monocultural to cross-culturalto intercultural (bicultural/transcultural) literacies. These frame-works focus on learners rather than teachers, on internationaleducation, and on the development of theoretical models withlimited empirical support.

Gays (2002) culturally responsive teaching frame-work identifies four cultural competencies: (a) aknowledge base, (b) relevant curricula, (c) cultural caringand a learning community, and (d) classroom instruction.With the exception of Ladson-Billings (1995), most of

this U.S.-based scholarship is not evidence based. Like-wise, this scholarship lacks sufficient critical commentaryabout culture and cultural inequities. Curriculum is, afterall, never culturally neutral (Kanu, 2006); cultural normspervade explicit and hidden curricula that teacherscannot easily address within hierarchical school systems(Beckett & MacPherson, 2005; MacPherson, 2006). AsKanu (2007) concluded in her study of Canadian Aborigi-nal students, It is one thing to integrate Aboriginalperspectives into the school curriculum but quite anotherto ensure that all Aboriginal students, particularly thosewho are socio-economically disadvantaged, are actually

in the classroom to benefit from such integration (p. 38).

Intercultural Teaching Competencies

In other scholarship, researchers have identified intercul-tural teaching competencies in the absence of a framework tounderstand how the various competencies interact and inter-relate. These competencies include teachers attitudes, culturalresponsiveness, curriculum and instruction, interculturalcommunication, and critical orientations.



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MacPherson 273

Attitudes

Teachers empathy was found to increase sensitivity to othercultures (Germain, 1998), to enhance intercultural teachingabilities (Darling-Hammond, 2000; Gordon, 1999), and tocreate supportive, student-centered classrooms with positive

interactions (McAllister & Irvine, 2002). Yet, Tellez (2008)found that empathy could interfere with another attitude: theability to maintain high expectations and standards for all stu-dents, including minority learners (Hodges, 1996). Also, Brock,Moore, and Parks (2007) found that the most effective teach-ers attributed ineffective lessons to their own teaching, whereasthe less effective teachers blamed the students.

Cultural Responsiveness

Kanus (2007) study found that the academic performanceof Canadian Aboriginal students improved when Aboriginalcultural knowledge and perspectives were integrated into the

curriculum. The interventions resulted in improved test scores,conceptual understanding, thinking, self-confidence, and atten-dance rates for students from stable home environments. Yet,the key factor explaining the change was the teachers knowl-edge, attitude, expectations, and personal and instructionalstyles (p. 38), which suggests that the findings arose becauseof the teachers disposition and efforts rather than the curricu-lar innovations per se.

Curriculum and Instruction

Mushi (2004) arranged the cultural classroom activitiesused by preservice teachers into eight levels, from no cross-

cultural content to culture-to-culture to global activities.The highest identified individual to global perspectiveactivity involved examining and discussing characteristicsof the different plants of the world, weather, people, [and]uses of the plants. In contrast, a beginner awareness activ-ity involved inviting an important visitor from anotherculture to class to ask questions of interest (p. 191). Thisranking, based on the researchers interpretation of Banksstheory, contradicts a key, compelling tenet of interculturaldevelopment theory: that intercultural development transpiresmost effectively through direct and supported cross-culturalcontacts, rather than through mere information (MacPherson,

2005; Wihak & Merali, 2007). For example, according toBennetts theory, activities involving direct cross-culturalcontacts (e.g., the important visitor) would be superior tomore abstract activities involving mere information likecomparisons of plants around the globe. There is a question-able assumption that global competencies necessarily existon the same continuum as intercultural competencies; whereasit is possible that a geophysicist, for example, who qualifiesas a global citizen, might lack any effective interculturalabilities or awareness.

Communication and Language

Intercultural communicative competencies that affect teach-ing include intercultural instructional conversations (Tellez,2008), cross-cultural listening (Schultz, 2003), and powerdynamics (Boler, 2004). Likewise for learners, Kim, Lujan,

and Dixon (1998a, 1998b) found correlations between intercul-tural communication and objective and subjective indicators ofwell-being among Aboriginal adults in Oklahoma, therebysuggesting that learners stand to benefit significantly fromintercultural classrooms and teachers. Some of the specificcommunicative abilities required to work with diverse learnersinclude bilingual, dual-language, and content-based teaching(Cummins, 2008; Thomas & Collier, 2001). Second-languageteachers need to recognize World Englishes and nonnativespeakers as normative (Alptekin, 2002; Corbett, 2003; LoBi-anco, Liddicoat, & Crozet, 1999; MacPherson, 2006;MacPherson et al., 2004). Heritage language teachers needaccess to locally developed intercultural resources (Naqvi,

2008), just as mainstream teachers need access to dual lan-guage books in early literacy programs, which have been foundto enhance multilingual awareness for all learners (Naqvi,Coburn, Goddard, & Mayer, 2007).

Critical Perspectives

Mueller and OConnor (2007) found little evidence thatmiddle-class, mostly White preservice teachers were awareof their power and privilege; instead, the teachers creditedtheir accomplishments to their own ability and personaleffort (p. 844). They explained discrepancies between theirachievement and the achievement of minority interviewees

by the value that the minority culture placed on education.This implies that cultural deficit assumptions persist in newteachers. Mujawamariya and Mahrouse (2004) found thatpreservice teachers were ostensibly void of any awarenessof systemic barriers, power, or issues of social justice(p. 346). The candidates voiced liberal notions of egalitarian-ism to dismiss cultural differences: Lets not make culturaldiversity our main concern rather than the similaritiesbetween all (p. 346). As Gatimu (2009) argues, This kind ofinterpretation subverts the original goals of multiculturaleducation as a transformative movement (p. 47). On theother hand, critical multicultural education discourse tends

to ignore culture altogether or reduce it to race or ethnicity(Davis, 2001), thereby ignoring less visible dimensions ofculture like religion, lifestyle, and epistemology.

Intercultural Teaching as Decision Making

Intercultural development theories call for attitudinal trans-formations beyond the scope or possibility of most preserviceteacher education programs. So, as Sleeter (2001) suggests,Working to improve white attitudes should not become a

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diversion from selecting and preparing the excellent, cultur-ally responsive teachers that historically underserved schoolsneed (p. 102). In this respect, there is a need to shift from afocus on teacher identity and attitudes to decision making inintercultural teacher preparation. To do so would enable tea-chers to participate in professional induction into intercultural

teaching practices without having to achieve the relativelyrare intercultural developmental stage described in intercul-tural development theories.

Although there are no prior studies to date on teachersintercultural decision making, there is a related study onteacher inductees decision making in early literacy educa-tion. Maloch et al. (2003) compared the decision making of73 newly graduated reading specialists from programs rec-ognized for excellence with a control of 28 generalist teachersfrom other programs. The specialist graduates showed sig-nificantly more responsive and mindful teaching in threeareas. They (77%) demonstrated more attention to context-and content-oriented decisions than controls (21%), who

focused on materials-oriented decisions. They (66%) negoti-ated professional identities within, and often against, schoolcultures, in contrast to controls (21%), who were more acce-pting of school norms and cultures. Finally, they (76%)belonged to professional learning communities that extendedoutside the school and included ongoing contact with preser-vice programs, in contrast to controls (37%), whose supportstended to be school based.

Intercultural teaching scholarship is in need of a frame-work to integrate the various competencies, orientations, andcritical consciousness associated with effective interculturalteaching. Such a framework needs to be grounded in teacherdecision making rather than in deep teacher identity dynamics

that require radical transformative educational interventionsbeyond the scope or means of most preservice teacher educa-tion programs. This research was undertaken to contribute tothe development of just such an empirically grounded inter-cultural teaching framework by investigating onlinecollaborative conversations between teachers about criticalintercultural incidents encountered by preservice teachersduring school experiences. Findings focus on the critical inter-cultural incidents and how the participating teachers(preservice, inservice, and university) negotiated, recounted,and interpreted decision making in the process of respondingto these incidents.

Method

In a pilot diversity/antiracist teacher education program inToronto, Volante and Earl (2002) reported that all participat-ing preservice teachers identified an unsupportive sponsorteacher as a major obstacle to implementing the progressiveteaching philosophies they had learned at the university. Like-wise, Haberman and Post (1992) and Reed (1993) found thatfield experiences reinforced, rather than reduced, stereotypicattitudes. So, it is not surprising that Wiggins, Follo, and

Eberly (2007) found that combining intercultural universitycoursework with supported field placements in diverseclassrooms generated more culturally responsive teachers.Accordingly, we selected a collaborative action research des-ign to enhance communication across the divide between theuniversity and practicum experiences.

Derived from participatory action research (Wadsworth,1998), collaborative action research links researchers acrossinstitutions (schools, universities, government) to improveeducation. This design has been identified as an effectiveprofessional development strategy in both diverse urban schools(Hodges, 1996) and professional development schools(Darling-Hammond, 2005). The success of this method liesin its ability to negotiate educational change through theprocess of research while inviting multiple stakeholders andperspectives into the research process. We used an induc-tive, constructivist grounded theory approach (Charmaz,2006; Clarke, 2005) to generate, collect, and interpret datato enable us to begin to develop a theoretical framework in

the field. We focused on unearthing teachers experience[s]within embedded, hidden networks, situations, and relation-ships, making visible hierarchies of power, communication,and opportunity (Creswell, 2007, p. 65).

To conduct the ensuing inductive, collaborative researchconversations, we partnered university teacher educators withpreservice teachers and collaborating teachers deemed exp-erts in intercultural teaching. Each unit of three teachersdialogued together in weekly, confidential, Web-based con-versations about critical intercultural incidents identified bythe teacher candidate during their practicum experiences. Weused open-ended, naturalistic conversations rather than struc-tured interviews or dialogues to offer participants more inductive,

flexible forums to remember, document, and analyze theirintercultural decision-making processes. The online conver-sations became both think alouds about past interculturaldecision making and discursive artifacts of the negotiateddecision-making processes involved in interpreting criticalintercultural incidents together, including identifying key cri-teria and principles of effective intercultural teaching.

Research Site(s)

The research was conducted in Winnipeg, Manitoba, inCanada. The Province of Manitoba (2008) has a small popu-

lation (slightly more than 1 million), a strong economy, anda low cost of living. Federal and provincial immigration pol-icies have led to a dramatic increase in immigration to theprovince in the past decade, from about 3,700 in 1998 to11,000 by 2007, making it the fastest rate of immigration inthe country for this period. Manitoba is also home to Indig-enous and Aboriginal communities (e.g., Ojibwa, Cree, Metis),which are experiencing dramatic urban migration and risingbirth rates (Norris & Clatworthy, 2003). The combined influxof immigrants and Aboriginals into Winnipeg has createdunique diversity challenges. Nowhere are these challenges



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MacPherson 275

more evident than in schools, where many immigrant andAboriginal children find themselves submerged in main-stream classes that lack the resources for them to participatefully in the curriculum.

The participating university teacher education programoffers a 2-year, postdegree program with 24 weeks of school

experiences. There are two practicum blocks a year. The pre-service teachers in this study were all in their 2nd year andhad completed a required School and Society course with across-cultural focus in Year 1. All early years candidates tooka required Multilanguage Development course at the end ofthe first term of Year 2 and some across streams took electivecourses in Cross-Cultural Education or Teaching English asan Additional Language/Teaching English as a Second Lan-guage. Three schools in the Winnipeg area served as sites forthe study, with one school from each of three school districts,each at a different level (early, middle, senior years). Theschools were selected from the pool of practicum schoolsbecause of their diverse student populations. All participat-

ing expert teachers were employed at the schools.

Research Participants

All participants were also researchers who participated inthe design and interpretive stages of the study. Three criteriawere used to identify expert intercultural collaborating teach-ers: (a) teacher leadership in diversity education, (b) provensuccess teaching diverse learners, and/or (c) minority studentadvocacy. Convenience sampling was used to select the pre-service teachers, who were preassigned to the collaboratingschools or expert teachers. We chose two preservice and twoexpert teachers per school to enhance collaboration (Sorensen,

2004; Woodin, 2001). The six preservice teachers were White,native English speakers, which reflects the majority of stu-dents in the program and in the teaching force. All collaboratingteachers were White: one male and five female.

Five education professors and one graduate research assis-tant (GRA) participated as university teachers in the Web-basedconversations. Of the six, five were men and one was a woman;four were White, one Metis, and one a Filipino Canadian.They were partnered with students outside the streams in whichthey taughtearly years (K-4), middle years (5-8), and senioryears (9-12)to reduce their power relationship. Each preser-vice teacher was partnered with an expert collaborating teacher

and teacher educator to form a research unit. The two researchunits at each school were partnered with a graduate researchassistant to form a research pod. The three research pods andtwo additional investigators constituted the research team.

Data Collection and Interpretation

Preservice teachers described at least one critical intercul-tural incident they encountered during their practicum thatweek on the Web-CT discussion board. A critical intercul-tural incident was defined as (a) a positive aha! moment,

(b) a negative conflicting event, or (c) a seemingly neutralevent that might otherwise have gone unnoticed. They enteredeach incident as a thread that included a description of thecritical intercultural incident; why they considered it critical;and what it suggested to them about intercultural teaching.All three members of the research unit and the GRA then

discussed the incident in a distinctive thread. No guidelinesfor comments were provided. Each research unit met face toface at the end of each practicum to identify key focusedcodes, and the research pod met at the end of each term toidentify common categories and codes across units. TheGRAs taped, transcribed, and took notes at the face to face.Participation levels varied, producing between 15 and 25distinct threads and hundreds of entries. There were no gapsin the weekly entries.

To analyze the findings, participant researchers focusedon two questions: (a) What did we learn about interculturalteaching through the incidents and ensuing online conversa-tions? (b) What did we learn about how teachers learn to teach

diverse learners more effectively? Early in the second termand at the end of the final term, the research team was invitedto a meeting to develop specific codes and categories acrossthe data for a coding paradigm. In this meeting, we printed,separated, and regrouped entries under overarching themes,codes, and topics. These culminated in five categories: inter-cultural classrooms, curriculum, teachers, learners, and teachereducation. We revisited these categories again later and iden-tified the organizing concept negotiating intercultural decisionmaking as the integrating concept. Following Charmaz (2006),the data were recoded to use active gerunds as mindingandrespondingdecision making (see Figure 1).

Findings

As Figure 1 indicates, the findings were integrated underthe overarching category of negotiating intercultural deci-sion making to reflect how the teachers negotiated diversecultures in schools and conducted collaborative decisionmaking when facing critical intercultural incidents. The datafell into two distinctive subgroups: (a) minding processesthrough attention, reflection, awareness, and critical think-ing; and (b) responding processes as empathy, compassion,action, and the willingness and ability to respond and toassume responsibility. Note that E.Y., M.Y., and S.Y. stand

for early, middle, and senior years streams, respectively.

Minding Decision Making

The gerund mindingrefers to mindfulness, thinking, tomind (to object), and to mind (to watch over). It involvesthe act of paying attention and learning through inquiry andreflection. As Figure 2 shows, four acts of interculturalminding in teaching were identified: making choices, enablinglanguages and cultures, respecting and sharing power, and arbi-trating and agonizing what is just. Overall, the findings suggest



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that minding decision-making activities in diverse schoolswere more apparent in early years (elementary) and middle

years schools. There were far fewer instances of such deci-sion making in the secondary level pod.

Making choices. Findings suggest that intercultural teach-ing involves being aware and making choices about materials,curriculum, interactions, and other aspects of school life thatmight otherwise be ignored. It involves content- and context-oriented choices that are not reducible to a formulaic set ofguidelines, rules, or methodologies, just as Maloch et al.(2003) found in the decision making of early literacy special-ists. Although there were incidents and/or discussions aboutcontent- and context-oriented choices in all six units, the pre-ponderance of these incidents and discussions was in the two

early years (elementary) groups.Reassessing past choices in materials, resources, and activ-ities on the basis of changing student demographics and shiftingsensibilities emerged as a theme in the data. The followingincident and the teachers response indicate how she madecontent-oriented choices to respond to and skillfully redirectclassroom interactions:

E.Y. preservice:The teacher . . . read the students achapter from a class novel The Cricket in Times

Square. . . . The text is written to articulate themans Chinese accent. When the teacher read this

piece, one student in the class raised their hand andasked, Why does he talk so weird? The teacherasked, Does anyone have any idea why Sai Fongswords sound different? Conversation was aroundaccents, and how people from around the worldhave different accents.

E.Y. teacher response:It has been years since I readthe book, and I had known it was a wonderful storybut had forgotten about the part we are referringto. I will put the novel away permanently after thisreading. I dont feel that comfortable with it.

This teacher was able to respond to evolving standards ofequity and respect by deciding to change the materials andresources she used in the classroom. The outdated picturebooks and textbooks used in many schools pressure tea-chers to use resources that depict other people, cultures,and histories in problematic ways. One alternative is toturn outdated or inappropriate representations into a criticalteaching opportunity, as this teacher did. An alternativeis to stop using the resource altogether, as she also deci-ded to do.

MakingChoices

EnablingLanguages& Cultures

Respecting& Sharing

Power

Abritrating& AgonizingWhat is Just

MindingDecision-Making

FosteringIntercultural

Communities

OpeningSafe

Spaces

ProtectingStudents &

Surroundings

Stepping Upto

Address It

RespondingDecision-Making

NegotiatingDecision-Making

in Intercultural Teaching

Figure 1. A framework for intercultural teaching

I wil put the

novel away

permanently

MakingContent

Decisions

Painting a

turban on his

self-portrait

MakingContext

Decisions

Making

Choices

Teacher as

anthro-

pologist

EnablingNew Teacher

Identities

Teaching as

sharing

circle

EnablingCulture

Sharing

Enabling

Languages& Cultures

Aboriginal

Seven

Teachings

Respecting

The song

is not

African

SharingPower

Respecting

& SharingPower

After recess

one day...

ArbitratingRestitutions

We do not

treat people

like this

AgonizingInterventions

& Sanctions

Arbitrating

& AgonizingWhat is Just

Minding

Decision-Making

Figure 2. Minding decision making in intercultural teaching



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MacPherson 277

Intercultural teachers also made context-oriented choicesbased on interpreting the curriculum uniquely to accommo-date particular learners and their cultural and linguisticpreferences or needs. In the following incident, for example,the preservice teacher supports a Sikh boy when he reinter-preted the rules of an art lesson:

E.Y. preservice: Students were told not to paint theirhair or anything like that, just to paint the outlineof their head and the facial features. I think it wasimportant for the boy to paint the turban on hisself-portrait. Clearly this is an important, signifi-cant part of his culture if he felt that he should paintit on his portrait.

Enabling languages and cultures. The teachers enabled mul-tiple expressions of culture in their classrooms by exploringnew professional identities in themselves to diffuse the cul-tural center or norms of the classroom, thereby facilitating

cultural sharing. This type of decision-making activity wasmore common in the early and middle years incidents anddiscussions. The teachers showed a willingness to developalternative professional identities and teaching styles fromtraditional teacher-centered approaches, thereby shiftingfrom a teacher-as-expert to teacher-as-facilitator. In doingso, they relinquished proprietary rights over the culture ofthe classroom, recognizing that the classroom culture bel-onged to everyone in the class as an intersection of theirvarious cultures, values, and interests. These teachers becameethnographers entering classrooms and schools as unfamil-iar cultures or fields, thereby allowing the cultures andintercultural dynamics of the class to emerge.

In the following incident, an early years teacher madeefforts to learn hello in Tagalog and so opened a multilin-gual space for students to exchange knowledge of diverselanguages:

E.Y. teacher: J and A responded in Tagalog duringmorning call-back one day. . . . I tried to repeatthe word back to them, and they corrected my pro-nunciation (smiling respectfully, they seemed toreally like that I was trying). The next day, otherchildren said hello in different languages dur-ing call-back. It was delightful! We heard Cree,

German, Punjabi, and more over the next week. Thechildren were going home and asking their familiesto help them respond in different languages.

For some of the participating teachers, this ethnographicperspective was reinforced through an explicit treatment ofthe topic in an elective course on cross-cultural education:

E.Y. GRA: Your reflection brings to mind an approach Iencountered in a course on cross-cultural education:

the teacher as anthropologist. A teacher/anthro-pologist approaches students with curiosity and in anon-judgmental way, trying to gain an understandingof how the students make sense of their worlds. Sucha teacher is working from the assumption that cultureis important and that students may be living in cul-

tural realities that are very different from our own.

By relinquishing professional identities based on authorityand control, the intercultural teachers actively sought outtheir students languages and cultures as learning resourcesand acquired materials, resources, strategies, and skills toreflect this:

E.Y. teacher:One of the most important things I cando as a classroom teacher is to make all childrenfeel welcome in our classroom. . . . I want the manydifferent cultures of the world and especially thecultures of the children in my classroom represent-

ed in the books we share and read together and thatsit on the shelves decorating the classroom.

The teachers didnt position themselves as experts in thecultures of their students; instead, they turned to alternativeresourcesstudents, community, books, multimediato enrichthe cultural knowledge and life of schools. They showed awillingness to use alternative pedagogies from other cultures,as in the following incident in which the teacher appliedan adaptation of an Aboriginal sharing circle to encourageher students to share, thereby becoming actively involved inreshaping the classroom as an intercultural space:

M.Y. preservice teacher: This week my class had asharing circle. It was interesting to look around thecircle and see all of the different cultures and racescoming together to share ideas and personal in-formation with each other. The students were notafraid to share with each other, and the atmospherewas very welcoming and safe.

Respecting and sharing power.There was a preponderance ofincidents and discussions in the middle years pod on respectingand sharing power in intercultural teaching through invitingalternative curriculum or community experts into the class-

room or school. Shifting cultural frames or experts can enablenew forms of knowledge and epistemologies, which are eitherneglected or minimized within conventional secular Westernpedagogical norms. In the following example, the schoolsattempts to respect the first (Aboriginal) peoples inspired theadolescent students interest in respect:

M.Y. preservice:This past week there was a schoolwide assembly held. It was based on one of the Ab-original Seven Teachingsthe teaching of respect.



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Looking around the assembly one would see a vastvariety of color, culture, ethnicity, and race. It wasan amazing experience to watch the students learnabout respecting each other and actually listen towhat they were being taught.

The intercultural teachers showed respect for students,their communities, and other cultures. By relinquishing theirstatus as cultural experts, they showed a willingness toshare their power as cultural and knowledge experts and soempowered students and their communities. This invited theuse of more inquiry-based approaches in which cultures andcultural knowledge became open to question through researchrather than mere information or an answer. The ensuinguncertainty or debates over what was true or what was nottrue invited further inquiry:

M.Y. preservice: In music class, the students werelearning an African song, according to the teacher,

who later informed me that it was Ugandan. Onestudent is from Sierra Leone. She was adamant thatthe song is not African. When I asked how sheknew, she just shrugged and said the words were notAfrican. I showed her a map of Africa and pointedout how big it was with many different cultures, butshe still wasnt convinced.

Arbitrating and Agonizing What Is Just

We found evidence in incidents across units of teachersassuming the role of social justice workers arbitrating andagonizing over the harassing and prejudicial behavior of

children and youth toward their ethnic minority peers andpromoting the use of restitutions, interventions, and sanc-tions. They persevered in ensuring that the wrongdoing wasaddressed and corrected and that the victim participated inthe restitution process. This is not to say that what consti-tutes restitution is obvious; it is often subtle and uncertain,as in the following example:

E.Y. teacher:After recess one day, a child came inupset and he told me that another child told him thathe would not be his friend because he wears a tur-ban. I tried my best to validate his hurt feelings. . . .

I asked the hurt child if he would come with me totalk with the other boy about what happened. Heagreed. We went to the other child, and I asked thehurt child to talk about what had happened and howhe felt. I offered the other child a chance to talkabout what happened. He did not deny what he hadsaid, but he basically said that is what he said andnot much else. With both boys present, I expressedmy concern about such comments, and how any-thing hurtful, words or actions, have no place at our

school. . . . I talked with the offenders teacher andadministration to see if this was a pattern, . . . andalso to alert them in case of further incidents.

The cruelty of youths can be vicious, even fatal, comparedwith that of young children, and yet, secondary teachers

seemed more reluctant to arbitrate or sanction racist, bigoted,or exclusionary behavior. In the following incident, the teacheracted immediately to rectify the injustice; however, the remedymay well have been bitter medicine for the victim insofar asshe then faced sharing a room with her anonymous persecutor:

S.Y. preservice:The band is planning to take a tripto a camp in two weeks, and students have beenbusy signing up for their rooms. One student whois an ethnic minority in the classroom realized thather name had been erased from the room that shehad signed up for. She immediately let the teacherknow. . . . The teacher immediately put her name

back on the list and explained to the class that atthe school, we do not treat other people like this. Shefurther explained that in the band room, we need tobe kind to everyone and not exclude anyone fromanything.

The teacher described in this incident was not a participantin the study. Although she intervened to redress the unjustact, she did not negatively sanction the offenders and so leftthe victim vulnerable to future repercussions. A more justresolution is uncertain and open to interpretation; if nothingelse, this teacher needed to agonize over her decision, toseek out a more just resolution through negotiations, which

may have taken time and led her beyond the perpetrator. Toagonize over the decision would involve acknowledging thepain, suffering, isolation, and potential scars that such anincident could have inflicted on this victim.

Responding Decision Making

Responding decisions are responses to events in the envi-ronment, in contrast to minding decisions that arise throughintrospection. Minding decisions require awareness and inten-tion, but responding decisions do not; as a consequence,responding decisions demand even more of a teachers

attention to alter or change. The data are organized under foursubcategories: fostering intercultural communities; openingsafe spaces; protecting students and surroundings; and step-ping up to address it, which are depicted with their cases inFigure 3. The responses in this category were more evenly dis-tributed across the units and pods (i.e., school levels).

Fostering intercultural communities. A teachers resp-onsibility for transforming a classroom into an interculturalcommunity can be described as fostering, fostering bothcommunities and relations. Some incidents conveyed the



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MacPherson 279

unique learning communities in these diverse schools. Theteachers role in generating and sustaining such a communitywas unclear:

M.Y. student: During one event where each teammember had to blow a bubble with bubblegum . . .someone noticed that a boy hadnt gone yet, buthis friend spoke up and said, Hes fasting so Imgoing to blow the bubble instead. No one on theteam was fazed. They all seemed to know what fast-ing was. No one teased him. It was just a fact andnot one that anyone seemed to see as different. Thestudents on the team . . . came from First Nationsbackground, Eastern European, Central or SouthAmerican, [East] Indian, etc.

Yet, peer relations alone dont make a classroom or school

a learning community; interactions between adults and stu-dents play an important role in such communities. So, questionsof which adults and communities are, or feel, included becomeimportant challenges for intercultural teachers and schools.In the following example, a GRA who is also a principalshares the strategies developed in the GRAs rural school toreach out to diverse communities:

M.Y. GRA:At the school where I work, we have hireda full time person called a home-school liaison whospeaks the two predominant languages of our area.She visits homes personally and when there are

events . . . she personally invites them to the eventand if transportation is a barrier, then she offers topick them up.

Intercultural communities are formed through good relationsbetween members of different cultures. In incidents that des-cribed positive cross-cultural relationships, again the teachersroles were indirect or unclear; however, they did encourage aclassroom culture in which students felt free to move outsidetheir circle so relationships could take root and grow:

S.Y. teacher:Two girls who graduated last year toldme that if they had not been in my class, they wouldhave always hated the people of each others coun-try. Why? Their countries were historical enemies

but they had never actually met someone fromthe other country. Their friendship became so deepthat they went through considerable trouble and ex-pense to go visit the other one at home in the sum-mer. They wouldnt have had this opportunity ifthey had stayed in their circle.

Opening safe spaces.Significantly, intercultural teachersacross units and levels created nonjudgmental and safespaces in classrooms and schools for all students to negotiateintercultural learning. The following Grade 2 interculturalexpert teacher, for example, had a policy that no studentwould get into trouble for bad behavior if he or she was

willing to discuss the problem. She adopted this policy sothat students had permission to make mistakes, to learn fromthose mistakes, and to practice how to interact or to respondmore effectively:

E.Y. GRA (from analysis meeting):A grade two stu-dent reported that another was calling him a moronat recess. The second student was asked to comeand discuss his behaviour. At first he denied anymisbehaviour, but then the first student said to him,Its okay to talk about it. You know you cant getin trouble in this class.

Intercultural learning is a developmental process that req-uires time, structured support, and a safe environment inwhich to make mistakes and learn. If intercultural values aretreated as a set of politically correct rules or views with overlyvigilant interventions and sanctions, then children may eitherretreat or resist. Instead, these intercultural teachers recognizedthe value of allowing safe discussion and curricular spaces inwhich students could negotiate their perspectives with thoseadvocated by the teacher and curriculum. This points to the

Hes fasting &a home/school

liaison

Fostering

Communities

Unlikelyfriends

Fostering

Relationships

FosteringInterculturalCommunities

You cant getinto troublein this class

Permission

to MakeMistakes

Avoiding ahyper-sensitive

environment

Opening

Discussions

OpeningSafeSpaces

Restoring afallen turban

Protecting

Students

Ages & stagesto talk about

culture

Protecting

Surroundings

ProtectingStudents &

Surroundings

He kind ofwalked likea homey

Challenging

Colleagues

Are youcalling the

school racist?

Challenging

Superiors orthe System

Stepping Upto

Address It

RespondingDecision-Making

Figure 3. Responding decision making in intercultural teaching



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power of intercultural teaching to address the needs of alllearners in diversity education, not just minority ormarginalized learners. This senior years preservice teacherhad a related insight during his practicum teaching:

S.Y. preservice:I have noticed that students have ad-

justed to my social policy. I have created a hyper-sensitive environment for discussion. My originalintention was to create an open, respectful, and safeenvironment for expressing ideas. What I have ob-served in the last week is that students are very wor-ried they are going to say something offensive. Atleast once a day, students would call another studentout for being racist, even if the student was onlymentioning a racial issue or asking a question.

Protecting students and surroundings. When a teacher protectsstudents in an intercultural context, it isnt physical protectionthat is required as much as protecting values, identities and

identifications, and a sense of belonging. There wereinstances of protective decision making in all streams, butparticularly in the early years. For younger children, thistype of decision making often involved protecting them atthe same time from sharp and traumatic schisms betweentheir home and school lives, which can be mitigated whenteachers depend on other students as culture insiders:

E.Y. GRA (from analysis meeting): One teacherrecounted how a Sikh child became upset in thechanging room following gym class when his patka(turban) fell off. He was crying uncontrollably, butshe didnt know if it was appropriate to touch his

hair to help him put the patka back on his head.Hesitant to further distress the child by inappropri-ate actions, she sought the advice of an older Sikhgirl student in the school who told her it was fine.So, she helped the boy put his patka on, and hecalmed down.

Intercultural teachers were protective of the ambient cultureand class surroundings in which students learn and form com-munities. In the following entry, for example, an early yearsteacher reflects on how to deal with culture-related bullyingin a Grade 2 class and whether or not the students are at an

age yet when they can understand it:E.Y. teacher: I wonder if P thinks that the bullying is

focused on his differences (he wears a patka), or justthat another child is being mean to him? . . . I amjust curious about Ps perception. Young childrenare still quite egocentric, even at seven. At seven,many children have not had many years out of theprotective surroundings of their families. It has alsobeen my experience as a teacher of young children,

most children, seven years of age and younger, donot focus on cultural differences or have negativeviews about them (there are exceptions, of course).I wonder when children really start to feel the stingof being singled out or treated badly because of cul-tural differences.

Stepping up to address it. The critical incidents includedinstances of teachers making decisions to correct systemicracism and discriminatory practices, attitudes, or structuresin schools. In contrast to the previous findings, most of theseincidents and discussions transpired in the senior years pods.The early years teachers and school strongly emphasizedcooperation, which may have made it difficult for the preser-vice teachers to challenge, or even to recognize, racist orcultural problems. Indeed, when the study was being orga-nized, this pod asked to have a meeting with a researcherbecause they didnt think that they had culture or culturalissues in their school, despite having a large proportion of

Filipino and South Asian students. In the middle years pod,in contrast, one preservice teacher said shed encounteredmore problematic practices but was reluctant to discuss themonline given her relative vulnerability as a teacher candidateon practicum. The senior years pod, in contrast, was the onlysite in which the two participating teachers were not theimmediate supervising collaborating teachers of the preser-vice teachers. So, the practicum was disbursed across variousclassrooms and teachers, which may have made at least oneof the preservice teachers feel safer to critique colleaguesand to raise power issues.

One power issue is the challenge that teachers face inresponding to the systemic, covert, or overt discrimination

of students by colleagues. So, although teachers seemed tointervene without hesitation in student conflicts and inap-propriate behaviors, they seemed more restrained and hesitantto respond to inappropriate conduct by colleagues or superi-ors. In the following incident, the dilemma was intensifiedbecause the observer was a preservice teacher, and so morevulnerable, and the teacher was Metis (Aboriginal French):

S.Y. preservice:A student who happened to be blackwalked up to the teacher [in the middle of class]and waited for his attention. What can I do for youhomey? exclaimed the teacher. The student didnt

respond. The teacher repeated, How can I help youhomey? At this point the student requested a bath-room break. No one else in the class took any noticeof this incident. Once the student had left the room,the teacher turned to the class. Then he commentedon how the student had a funny walk, and how hekind of walked like a homey. The teacher thenproceeded to imitate the students walk.

S.Y. professor: Do these Grade 10s feel as if theydont have the power to talk back to a teacher



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MacPherson 281

who conducts him or herself inappropriately? Wouldthey talk back if a fellow student had engaged insuch mockery of a classmate? . . . From a powerperspective, it sounds as if you were not in a posi-tion to take action as a teacher candidate. . . . Ifyou had witnessed this kind of interaction between

two students in the school hallway . . . you wouldhave felt much more comfortable stepping in andaddressing it.

A teacher may accept his or her professional responsibilityand power to intervene in students discriminatory misconduct,but it is more complicated when it comes to correcting peers,superiors, and the system. Even in contexts with a clear andexplicit diversity policy and professional ethic (e.g.,MacPherson et al., 2004), to correct a colleague or superiormay be seen as a breach of collegiality and potential threat toones career. Hence, we call this competency stepping uptoaddress it to convey that the decision and action involve

confronting both power and discrimination. A more technicalword might be advocacy, but when teachers advocate forminority students or against discrimination in schools, it caninvolve considerable risk and hence courage, which is lost inthe word advocacy:

S.Y. teacher:[Once I] commented . . . that some teach-ers needed to adjust to the changing neighborhoodand become more sensitive to the ethnic diversityin their classrooms. The principal called me into hisoffice and asked sternly, was I calling the schoolracist? Not consciously, I replied, but theres lots ofwork to be done.

Discussion

Through the critical intercultural incidents and the tea-chers collaborative conversations, eight decision-makingorientations in effective intercultural teaching were identi-fied: making choices, enabling cultures, respecting andsharing power, arbitrating and agonizing what is just, fos-tering intercultural communities, opening safe spaces,protecting students and surroundings, and stepping up toaddress it. Because the findings are derived from only oneNorth American city, it would be premature to call them a

theory; instead, they offer a developing model or frame-work with the capacity to form a more robust theory throughfurther research. The model is unique in that it emergedinductively through intercultural teachers collaborativeconversations.

Intercultural Teaching as Integrative Ability

The findings suggest that intercultural teaching is an inte-grative ability that brings into proximity paradoxical, if not

contradictory, elements of teaching in diverse contexts, suchas the following:

Achievement/social cohesion. The findings support manycompetencies identified in the literature review with onenotable exception: expecting high achievement for all learn-ers. It is not that the teachers voiced lower expectations for

minority learners but that they focused disproportionately onsocial and emotional learning and avoided achievementissues altogether. This could indicate a blind spot in the pre-service teachers who determined the incidents under discussion,thereby reinforcing Tellezs (2008) findings that new teach-ers feel challenged in reconciling empathy with high academicexpectations.

There is another possible explanation. Scholarship empha-sizing high achievement expectations in a multiculturalcontext tend to come from the United States; as a conse-quence, our results may be skewed by the sociopoliticalcontext of Canada and Manitoba with their strong socialdemocratic orientations. Unlike the United States, Canadas

human rights laws recognize communitarian (language,culture) rights and boast higher social and educational mobil-ity indicators for second-generation immigrants than manyScandinavian countries (Corak, 2009). Accordingly, it maybe that Canadas macro-level political culture reflects micro-level tendencies in teachers to attend to social cohesion overindividual achievement. Yet, Aboriginal and visible minority(Jamaican, Haitian) learners do not participate equally insocial mobility in Canada, and so intercultural teachers wouldserve social justice outcomes more effectively by holding highachievement expectations for all learners.

Knowledge/social-emotional learning. Most incidents trans-pired in informal and nonformal contexts, suggesting that

intercultural teaching may be related to the social and emo-tional learning (SEL) of teachers rather than their knowledge,attitudes, or methodologies. The target of SEL is emotionalintelligence, which Daniel Goleman (1998) proposed is devel-oped through five emotional competencies: self-awareness,self-regulation, self-motivation, empathy, and peer relations.How much SEL competencies overlap with intercultural andintercultural teaching competencies is a question for furtherresearch; however, these and other findings make it clear thatSEL competencies are insufficient to explain the full scopeof effective intercultural teaching.

Sustainability/equity. The findings indicate that cultural sus-

tainability and equity issues overlap in intercultural teaching.The teachers efforts to protect cultures and cultural identi-ties enabled students to participate more fully in the learningcommunity, curriculum, and ultimately, society. SEL theorymight help explain this overlap. If learners cultures arereflected and protected in schools, then they feel includedand enjoy enhanced social and emotional well-being; in turn,research suggests that a significant relationship exists betweensocial-emotional well-being and academic achievement (Zins,Weissberg, Wang, & Walberg, 2004), thereby implying that



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intercultural teaching indirectly promotes academic achieve-ment. That said, cultural sustainability is an intrinsic goodthat directly affects well-being (Kim et al., 1998a, 1998b).

Collaboration/autonomy. Finally, the findings indicate thatintercultural teachers, at least at early and middle years levels,show an increased willingness to collaborate with students,

community members, and colleagues as cultural resources orexperts, while also asserting their autonomy in making choi-ces and responding to the particular demands of unforeseencritical intercultural incidents. What reconciles this seemingparadox is the evident benefit that these teachers derivedfrom negotiating intercultural decisions within a collabora-tive learning community.

Curriculum as Intercultural Practice

The findings suggest that when learners from diversebackgrounds come together, the curriculum becomes anintercultural practice regardless of the intention of the teacher,

school, district, or system. If the curriculum of diverse schoolsis de facto intercultural, it begs the question whether or notthe conscious intention of teachers and the formal curricu-lum affect learners.

Explicit or implicit curriculum. The intercultural issues areimplicit within the curriculum of any diverse classroom orschool; yet, the intercultural teachers in this study demon-strated how important it was to make intercultural objectivesexplicit. If left as implicit objectives, the conflicts and bully-ing recounted in some critical intercultural incidents suggestthat forms of social, cultural, and religious exclusion or mar-ginalization may become the hidden intercultural curriculum,rather than sustainability, equity, and/or social cohesion.

Formal, informal, and nonformal curricula. Most of the inci-dents transpired in the informal (classroom conversations andactivities) and nonformal (extracurricular, extra-classroomconversations), rather than formal, curricula. Although pre-service teachers were asked explicitly to attend to bothcurricular and noncurricular incidents, most of the incidentstranspired outside the formal curriculum. This suggests thatintercultural teaching involves responsibilities well beyondthe narrow confines of curricular objectives and formal inst-ruction. Also, there may have been more critical interculturalincidents in the formal curricular context, but the preserviceteachers may have excluded or censored them in case they

implied a veiled or explicit criticism of the collaboratingteacher.Ages and stages. Distinctive patterns in the incidents and

in the teachers responses to the incidents suggest that bothcultural and intercultural learning may be associated withcertain ages and stages, perhaps even critical periods, in chil-drens development. This pattern suggests that distinctiveapproaches to intercultural decision making may be calledfor at different developmental ages and stages. At the sametime, findings suggest that there may be cultural or institutional

structures that inhibit or promote certain types of intercul-tural decision making that can affect learners positively oradversely. The tendency of early and middle years intercul-tural teachers to make decisions to share power with studentsand communities could be effectively applied at the seniorlevel; likewise, early and middle years teachers might bene-

fit from increased willingness to be critical of colleagues andto critique systemic and institutional discrimination as foundin the senior years discussions.

Intercultural Teaching as Pedagogy

Within incidents dealing with intercultural teaching in theformal curriculum, there were three primary implicationsraised in the findings:

Expanding cultural experts. One trend across the findingsmarked the emergence of new professional identities inintercultural teachers. They sacrificed teacher-centered rolesas experts to enable a more collaborative style to emerge in

which they depended on students and communities for cul-tural expertise. Furthermore, classes emerged as functionalintercultural learning communities where peers began toassume what had been a teachers responsibility to under-stand and protect the cultural practices and identities ofminority students.

Inquiry based. In relying on students and community mem-bers as cultural resources, intercultural teachers opened thedoor to uncertainty and debate over issues of cultural authen-ticity. In one incident, we saw the intercultural expert middleyear preservice teacher using this uncertainty and apparentchallenge of the teachers cultural authority to inspire aninquiry-based approach to the learning of culture.

Negotiating Power in Intercultural Teaching

The intercultural teachers had an awareness of their powerto intervene positively in the interpersonal lives and relation-ships of students. They also recognized the need to share thispower to develop more just and relational learning commu-nities and to open safe spaces for intercultural dialogues andlearning among students. They showed the willingness tostep up to challenge power when addressing systemic orlocal issues of discrimination with colleagues or superiors.In this respect, intercultural teachers are power brokers adv-

ocating on behalf of potentially marginalized students amongtheir peers, teachers, and the school administration and system.Indeed, intercultural teachers advocate for learners beyondthe school, with boards, ministries, higher education institu-tions, and teachers associations. Challenging school-basedpersonnel is a risky business for new teachers, yet, if theylearn to overlook problems of discrimination by colleaguesand superiors in the short term, it is difficult to imagine howthey will relearn and find the courage to step up in the longterm.



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MacPherson 283

Intercultural Teacher Education

The findings have direct implications for intercultural tea-cher education.

Case studies. The framework identified eight categoriesderived from salient critical intercultural incidents. These

categories make it easy to adapt into a curriculum with cor-responding case studies on intercultural teaching. The casestudies and framework could easily be translated into a uni-versity-based course, either Web based or face to face, priorto field experiences. Once on practicum, preservice teacherswould be familiar with the process to engage in their ownresearch and conversations about the critical interculturalincidents that they encounter.

Collaborative inquiry. Most of the researcher participantsexpressed surprise at the synergy created through this Web-based collaborative inquiry. By bringing university educatorstogether with collaborating and preservice teachers in schools,a bridge was forged across the often-troubled waters between

schools and universities in teacher preparation. The onlinenature of the exchanges overcame the obstacle of space andtime, but the face-to-face meetings helped to forge relation-ships and further motivate participation.

Limitations

There are a number of limitations to this study worth ide-ntifying or reiterating. The first is the fact that the researchwas conducted in a very specific sociocultural context:Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. With its strong, social-democratic ambient sociopolitical culture, this context mayhave skewed the preservice teachers identification of critical

intercultural incidents and the ensuing conversations aboutintercultural decision making in teaching toward activitiesaffecting social integration and social cohesion rather thanindividual achievement. This potential bias could explain thenoticeable lack of attention to expectations for learnerachievement or to formal curricular contents, both of whichtend to be emphasized in U.S. studies, for example, where theambient sociopolitical culture tends to be more liberal andindividualistic.

Alternatively, the lack of achievement and formal curric-ular incidents might stem from a methodological problem:first, from the use of novice teachers (i.e., cultural outsiders

struggling for acceptance) and/or inservice teachers (i.e.,cultural insiders) as researchers, and second, from the use ofa collaborative, grounded theory approach that circum-scribed findings to those issues identified by these teachers.The study may have reinforced preexisting blind spots thatmay have been further rationalized and reinforced throughthe conversations and analysis. We did anticipate this limita-tion and attempted to address it through planning sessionswith all research participants. Although collaborative con-versations in professional learning communities can offer ameans to enhance teacher awareness, the deceptive power of

identity, class, and professional investments to ignoresystemic injustices in education should not be underesti-mated. How critical can such conversations be if theinterlocutors are heavily invested in the system? University-based teachers and teacher educators may be in a position tooffer more critical and disinterested critiques given their

relative distance from the cultures of schools.Several preservice participants suggested that there wereincidents and dynamics occurring in classrooms and schoolsthat they felt reticent and unsafe in identifying and discuss-ing with collaborating teachers from the school during thisstudy. So, although the preservice teachers brought an ethno-graphic eye through their status as relative culture outsiders,their strong motivation to be accepted into the professionalcommunities of practice may have made them susceptible toWhite-washing or ignoring some of the more disturbing ortroubling incidents or activities. In this respect, the findingsmight be richer if the preservice, inservice, and universityteachers intentionally alternate roles as cultural strangers

and cultural (professional) experts.

Conclusion

This study began with the ambitious objective to developan empirically grounded model for effective interculturalteaching. Using an inductive approach for data collectionand analysis, we arrived at a set of eight gerunds or action-oriented codes or categories that intercultural teachersuse to guide their decision making in teaching diverselearners. Prior research and models focused on one side ofa teachers attitudepractice binary. Some targeted teach-ers introspective attitudes: expectations, identity, empathy,

or critical capacity; others targeted their methods, activities, orperformance. This research offers a framework, constructedout of the experiences and conversations of intercultural teach-ers, that embeds and integrates these various attitudes andpractices under the overarching idea of teachers negotiatingintercultural decision making. The findings were organizedinto two groups: decisions that tend to involve reflecting(minding) and decisions that involve responding.

The result is the beginning of an integrated model or frame-work for intercultural teaching with strong efficacy or bases inthe lived experiences of intercultural teachers and schools. Bynaming the competencies as gerunds or actsmaking,

enabling, respecting/sharing, arbitrating/agonizing, fostering,opening, protecting, and stepping upthe model offers teach-ers a set of intercultural teaching orientations, rather thanprescriptive or proscriptive rules, to guide their decisionmaking. In this respect, the model recognizes that teaching isat heart an art, not a science, and that effective teachinginvolves creativity and the ability to respond to the lived expe-rience and context of distinctive learners, classrooms, andcommunities. Furthermore, the model and critical interculturalincidents together offer an effective framework for designingan integrated intercultural course with a parallel and integrated



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intercultural field experience component aimed at scaffoldingnew teachers into the art of intercultural teaching.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Dr. Barbara McMillan of the Univer-sity of Manitoba who contributed substantially to all stages of this

article. In addition, the author would like to thank the research teamat the University of Manitoba and Dr. Anna Kirova of the Universityof Alberta, who initiated the larger prairiewide intercultural teachingresearch project of which this was a part, and the Metropolis PrairieCentre, which funded the research.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect tothe authorship and/or publication of this article.

Financial Disclosure/Funding

The Metropolis Project (Prairie Region-Canada) funded theresearch; however, the investigator did not receive any personal

compensation in the form of salary or consulting fees.

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