I view multiculturalism as a neutral phenomenon and could be a mere peaceful co-existence, while inter-culturalism demands involvement and can breed conflict. I recall a newspaper report in India some decades ago, when forced by heavy floods a serpent and a monkey were sitting on different, but not very distant branches of the same tree. They stayed there during several days without harming each other, and went away as soon as waters receded! A wonder example of multicural co-existence?

Contemporary societies are complex and the role of education is changing as a consequence of societal Change.  Multiculturalism describes the existence, acceptanceof multiple cultural  traditions within a single jurisdiction usually considered in terms of the culture associated with an ethnic group. Many people living within multicultural and plural societies are pluricultural. Pluricultural individuals are people with the competences of knowledge, disposition and linguistic and behavioral skills required to function as a social actor within two or more cultures.. Interculturality refers to the capacity to experience and analyze cultural otherness, and to use this experience to reflect on matters that are usually taken for granted within one’s own culture and environment. Interculturality finally involvesevaluating one’s own everyday patterns of perception, thought, feeling and behaviour in order to develop greater self-knowledge and self-understanding. Interculturality thus enables people to act as mediators among people of different cultures, to explain and interpret different perspectives. Interculturality does not involve identifying with another cultural group or adopting the cultural practices of the other group. Interculturality entails a number of underlying cognitive, affective and behavioural competences. These include knowledge ( knowledge about other cultural groups and their products and practices and knowledge about the ways in which people of different cultures interact), attitudes (such as curiosity, openness, respect for otherness, and empathy), skills of interpreting and  relating (for example, interpreting a practice from another culture and relating it to practices within one’s own culture), skills of discovery (such as the ability to search out and acquire new knowledge about a culture and its practices and products), and critical cultural awareness (that is, the ability to evaluate critically the practices and products of one’s own and other cultures). An intrinsic aspect of analyzing intercultural social activity is the reflective process of relating new knowledge to one’s own self-understanding and values. Sensitivity is an important element in attempting to understand another's way of life, but part of the reflective process is to relate new understanding to one’s own values and beliefs with tolerance and respect for those of others. It involves a positive attitude towards diversity, seeing the meeting between people with different beliefs and cultural practices as enriching for all, and seeing one’s own individuality as being developed through meeting ‘otherness’. This is the process of intercultural dialogue which underpins the achievement of social cohesion.

Greetings from across the river!

Have you come across the work of Banks? I ATTACHED a little graphic organizer I use to differentiate between think and not-so-thick diversity (and some refs below).

I would also strongly recommend anything by Gloria Ladson-Billings to get a conceptual handle on the practical implications. Her work on culturally-responsive education is amazing. See overview and refs here: http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/4474

You might find (local UM-Dearborn) scholar Maureen Linker's recent book, "Intellectual Empathy" (see https://umdearborn.edu/686352/) really useful because the premise is that through a certain application of critical thinking and argumentation techniques, learners can check their biases and become more open-minded. It is very much a practical book of strategies for students. In fact, there will be a panel discussion with Maureen in Windsor next month at this conference - http://www1.uwindsor.ca/ossa/

References I mentioned:

Banks, J. A. (1995). Multicultural education: Its effects on students’ racial and gender

role attitudes. In J. A. Banks & C. A. McGee Banks (Eds.), Handbook of research

on multicultural education (pp. 617-627). New York: Simon & Schuster

Macmillan.

Banks, J. A. (2004) Multicultural education: Characteristics and goals. In J. A. Banks and

C. A. McGee Banks (Eds.). Multicultural education: Issues and perspectives (3-

30). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Banks, J. A. (2006). Series forward. In G. R. Howard. We can’t teach what we don’t

know: White teachers in multiracial schools (2nd ed.) (pp. ix – xiii). New York,

NY: Teachers College Press.

Banks, J. A. (2011). Educating citizens in diverse societies. Intercultural education 22(4),

243-251.

Hi, great to see that you are keen to create this! There are several online courses that are specifically about this. One of them is called SOLIYA http://www.soliya.net/ (but I think it is only for students but you should doublecheck and ask them about books etc.). Then I would also check The United States Institute of Peace website, they offer different courses!

Kia ora Archie

From a community view. Ask them. Whats best for community is always best obtained from that community. Social inclusion programs like finding a common theme amoungst different ethnic groups, you know like poverty, racism etc...and organizing awareness programs and campaigns around this. This is getting away from recognized programs that facilitate cultural inclusion and looking more at community development projects which are designed to get everyone involved in some capacity with or without the 'expert'. Once again community can decide this and the level of involvement be it local or adaptable to national etc..

Hope this throws some more light on how you would approach the matter Archie. Go well.

Noho ora mai

Dean 

I think that the passage from a multicultural community to an intercultural community could be facilitated through a program in collaborative ethnography (See: Lassiter Luke Eric, Collaborative Ethnography and Public Anthropology, "Current Anthropology", 46, 1, 2005, pp. 83-97).

Cultural Anthropology at work - if ethically concieved - spontaneously promotes the passage from "multicultural" to "intercultural" through curiosity, sensitivity and respect in meeting otherness, as Kiran Grover pointed out.

I am unaware if there are any models whose application would allow us to go from a multicultural to an intercultural community, however, I believe that the work needed to be done is to conceive the multicultural community in its essence as an intercultural one, since there can not be a cultural identity that doesn’t consider itself outside of a plural context of identities with which it somehow establishes a relationship. Instead you can try to work from an ethnographic standpoint in showing that the risks in terms of tensions and violence of constructing apartheid are present in a multicultural dimension. Moreover, attempting to construct a space in-between and “third” can be more beneficial for both cultural identities, precisely because it is not a space of neither one nor the other culture.

Archie,

I address the problem of social interaction and its simulation in the context of globalization in "Social interaction, globalization and computer-aided analysis" and describe, how multicultural communities can be created. You might be interested in Chapter 2 "Related Work on Social Interaction and Social Simulation", Chapter 3 "Scenarios of Social Interaction", Chapter 4 "Acquisition of Intercultural Data", Chapter 5 "Framework for Data Processing", Chapter 6 "Prototypes of Social Simulation". Please consult the library of your university to get access to the book.

Best, Alexander

Book Social Interaction, Globalization and Computer-Aided Analysi...