Interculturality

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Examples
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Cultural identity vs. Intercultural understanding

Religion & moral…

1.2
Behaviour patterns 1 Language
0.8
0.6
Sciences 0.4 Geography
0.2
0
Politics Economy

Arts & literature History

Social structures
One gesture – different meanings

Middle East,
Australia, Brasil: Thank
Nigeria: „Sod you
you“

Japan:
associated with China: 5
beloved

Often used for

Europe: hitch-hiking,
okay exceot in
Middle East ;-)
Another guesture – different meanings

Belgium/France:
worthless

Greece/Turkey: Japan: Money

obscene gesture

Italy: What are

Germany: fine you talking
about?
Influence of cultural dimensions (Hofstede) on
webdesign

1. Power distance: the extent to which less powerful members expect and
accept unequal power distribution within a culture
Centralised political power / tall Equality is expected / lower hierarchies
hierarchies

2. Collectivism vs. individualism

3. Femininity vs. masculinity
4. Uncertainty avoidance
5. Long- vs. short-term orientation
 Interculturality in iEducate

In order to obtain feedback on the development of the outcomes, a series

of international meetings and semi-directed interviews have been held with
professionals belonging to the VET sectors in some of the countries
participating in the project.
Testing in diverse cultural settings will be used to design the project´s
outcomes. The aim is to promote interculturality
 Research

From a design point of view, Bourges-Waldegg and Scrivener argue that

“the problem for user interface designers is, primarily, how to
communicate the functionality of the system to the members of a
culturally heterogeneous user group when representations can be
culturally relative and, therefore, misunderstood” (2000: 112).

The designer of shared systems should concentrate on

the following usability issues:

1. Evaluating whether the culturally diverse users understand what

representation (R) means (M) in context (C)
2. Determining whether the culturally diverse users share the context (C) in
which the meaning of a representation is rooted;
3. Designing or redesigning representations from identified shared contexts
(what Bourges-Waldegg and Scriveners call MIMA – Meaning in Mediated
Action). This approach consists of four steps: observation, evaluation, analysis
and design (2000: 113)
 Promotion

Interculturaly shared-systems are becoming more and more

popular, however there are still very few ways of dealing effectively
with the culturally determined usability problems
(2000: 123).

iEducate will be designed to:

• promote social difference and diversity

• seek for an exchange of expertise and experiences from very

different countries within Europe
• promote the exchange of knowledge between people working in
the ALM and VET sectors and those participants in adult education
who may want to raise their level of “intercultural” literacy
• It is open to a very wide range of people, for instance minorities,
who can use the tools for self promotion and offer a positive image
of their contributions.
 Globalisation

Globalisation, in the context of iEducate refers to the limitless flow of

information and capital but also to the convergence of cultures and our
common responsibility for the future. The inclusive nature of iEducate
should allow VETPROS to promote these ideas
Example – Europeana, an European website

http://www.europeana.eu
Europeana.eu links to 6 million digital items, images, texts, sounds or videos.
Some of these are world famous, others are hidden treasures from Europe's
museums and galleries, archives, libraries and audio-visual collections.
Example: One company, different national websites

www.mcdonalds.bg (panorama)
www.mcdonalds.se

www.mcdonalds.hu
www.mcdonalds.de (slideshow)

www.mcdonalds.co.uk (slideshow)
Intercultural dimension of learning in a
multicultural society

Cultural embeddedness of eLearning environments:

– attitudes, values and beliefs of educational practices need to be
considered (teachers own culture of teaching and cultural
assumptions)
– With the use of ICT relation to knowledge and pedagogical modelling
changes, constructivist and student-centred learning (interactive
experience of culturally rooted eContent and the active knowledge
construction)
– New challenges: Plagiarism, new skills needed such as knowing how
to retrieve and synthesise information
Evaluation of eLearning therefore should take into account the socio-cultural
background of specific eLearning approaches, teaching methods, student
preferences, educational systems and societies.
(Claire Bélisle (May, 2007) – ELearning and Intercultural dimensions of
learning theories)