Understanding Culture – Multidimensional Perspectives on Interculturality

Culture is more than origin, language, or tradition – it is a dynamic system of relationships made up of meanings, expectations, and social practices. This unit supports you in analysing different concepts of culture, interpreting case studies, and dealing constructively with diversity and misunderstandings in your own pedagogical context. The goal is a dialogical, respectful, and analytical understanding of culture.

Warm up

What does culture mean for you?

Note down spontaneously 5 terms or images that you associate with culture.

Exchange with your buddy team: Are there similarities? Surprises?

Put your terms aside – we will come back to them at the end.

Goal: introduction via personal images, making implicit definitions of culture visible

Learn

Culture is not a neutral term.

In research, there are roughly two approaches:

  • Culture as a container (closed definition):
    Culture = origin, ethnicity, nationality → leads to stereotypes, “us and them” thinking

  • Culture as a dynamic process (open definition):
    Culture = shared practices, meanings, values that change contextually → emphasises relationships, learning processes, and diversity

Find out more here:

Understanding Culture – Multidimensional Perspectives on Interculturality

 

Case study: "On the way to the cafeteria"

Tom spontaneously gives his German roommate Christian 3 euros for the canteen. When Christian pays the money back immediately, Tom is disappointed – for him, the help meant a sign of friendship, not a transaction.

Reflect together with your buddy:

  • Which concepts of culture are at play here?

  • How can the behaviour be interpreted through the dynamic concept of culture?

  • What role do communication, relationship, and interpretation play?

 

 

Dive in 1

Culture in transition – From misunderstanding to taking another’s perspective

Dynamic understanding of culture means: people don’t just “have” culture – they actively shape it. That requires mindfulness, observation, and the willingness to question one’s own interpretative patterns.

For more Input click here:

Developing Intercultural Attitude and Action Competence

Done?

Case study: “Where do you really come from?”

Beibei answers the question “Where are you from?” with “Leer” – the place of her birth. The lecturer insists: “Where are you really from?” Here, understandings of culture clash.

Questions for analysis:

  • What is problematic about the lecturer’s question?

  • How does the open concept of culture help to untangle the misunderstanding?

  • Which power structures become visible through language?

Additional impulse:

  • What do these insights mean for your pedagogical everyday life?

  • How can children be encouraged to experience origin not as a stigma, but as a resource?

Transfer 1

Discovering culture within the team

Goal: Making collegial diversity of perspectives visible

Task:

  • Form small groups within your team.

  • Each person brings a personal object that symbolises “culture” (e.g., ritual, language, clothing, song).

  • Share the story behind it.

  • Take note: What connects you? Where is there diversity?

  • What does that say about your respective concept of culture?

Transfer 2

Experiencing culture with children

Goal: Making the dynamic understanding of culture accessible to children

Activity:

  • Children bring an everyday object that is important in their family.

  • They tell: Where does it come from? What does it mean? When is it used?

  • Afterwards, they create a collage together: “Culture is when …”

Goal: Strengthening awareness of diversity, language sensitivity, and expression

Reflect

Reflect

Read through your 5 culture terms from the Warm-up again.

  • Have your images changed? Which terms would you add?

  • Where have you experienced a “culture problem” in pedagogical daily life?

  • How could you have reacted with more perspective-taking?

Write down your thoughts in your reflection journal or for a buddy conversation.

Or

Imagine you will teach tomorrow in a completely new context – e.g., in a different country, with a team from five cultures, with multilingual children, and without a common curriculum.

Continuation questions:

  1. What do you take with you?
    – Which attitude, which understanding of culture do you bring into this new situation?
    – What could be in your way?

  2. What would be your first question to the new team?
    – Where would you connect, without appropriating?
    – How can “not knowing” be used as a resource?

  3. Which power structures would you critically examine?
    – Who decides what is “normal”?
    – Which languages, perspectives, and biographies are visible in everyday life – and which are not?

  4. How can a collective learning space emerge from cultural diversity?
    – Which routines would you have to break in order to truly enable participation?

Note your answers in bullet points or as a mini-letter to your future self in a global, culturally diverse educational system.

Optionally exchange with your buddy: Which vision of school emerges?

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