UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DO RIO DE JANEIROFaculdade de LetrasDepartamento de Anglo-GermnicasProfessor: Christine NicolaidesName: Ana Carolina Donato GasparGroup: LEI

Summary of the text: Cross-cultural Engagement in Higher Education Classrooms: a Critical View of Dialogueby Alison Jones and Kuni JenkinsCross-cultural Engagement in Higher Education Classrooms:a Critical View of Dialogue

In this text Alison Jones and Kuni Jenkins discuss about their experience with higher education students in New Zealand, analyze it and try to build elements that would contribute to a better cross-cultural engagement in undergraduate classrooms. Since New Zealand is a newly colonized country, the experiment Jones and Jenkins did showed us that people yet so felt there was a type of an invisible border between the ancestry of people who already lived there (Maori, indigenous) and the colonizers (Pakeha, white people). The experiment was: for one year, Pakeha and Maori students were divided into two different classrooms where in one class there would be only Maori people and in the other, only Pakeha people. The teachers analysis of the different responses they have had from each group made them deeply understand several issues involving the feelings about this segregation and how could they culturally cross classes and make the students critically think about it in the best way.The first element is a reflexive element: dialogue. Lots of teacher may think that a multicultural critical discussion is going to lead students that do not speak very often to do it and it will reduce the borders between them, but the truth is that in this specific case the dominant group is going to overcome the minority: they are only going to talk about what the biggest group values relevant. The second element is ignorance. In their journals, students keep reaffirming that they do not know anything about the others culture, and that they do not feel good about it - they do not like to seem ignorant. Jones and Jenkins interpret this as a desire of ones to know others culture, but the students have to understand that asking personally is not the only way to get to know the culture, because it may make them feel that they are not accepted, that they are not a part of the same world as the others. The researchers suggest that they find other resources. The third element is knowledge of the shared social histories. In this element the authors suggest that instead of facing each other and sharing their own stories the students would have to stand side by side - it causes a less dramatic segregation.In this chapter Jones and Jenkins makes us, as future teachers, think about situations we could pass on our daily routine in classroom and value what must be taken into consideration when it comes to critically thinking and arguing about multicultural issues in front of the class.

JONES, A. & JENKINS, K. Cross-cultural Engagement in Higher Education Classrooms: a Critical View of Dialogue (Chapter 7) In: PALFREYMAN, D. & McBRIDE, D. Learning and teaching across cultures in higher education. New York: MacMillan, 2007.