Strand 8
25th August 2021
Learning outcomes
Knowledge:
- Know about Third Culture Kids
- Know about managing change
Skills:
- Be able to evaluate EAL provision and set targets for whole-school improvements
- Be able to write your own action plan
Understanding:
- Develop international-mindedness in your school
Strand Overview
9a. Is there an EAL working party that empowers a range of staff, including school leaders and encourages all stakeholders (including parents) to work as a team?
9b. Is there a shared vision for EAL?
9c. Are there manageable short- and long-term goals set for developing provision for EAL?
9d. Will the EAL working party develop formal guidelines, e.g. an EAL development plan, EAL handbook and updated policy?
Preparation:
Use the EAL Framework (Activity 9.2) and possibly the whole-school reflection.
(Time guide: 5-10 minutes)
Slide 1 – Third cultures kids
Share the quote about Third Culture Kids.
Share an example:
A mother from Denmark, a father from Syria and a child who has grown up in England. Circumstances like these occur for many reasons, for example, when a parent has been in the army, parents moving due to another line of work or, a family of mixed nationalities moving to avoid conflict.
Ask participants to reflect on the questions (Activity 9.1).
- What might be the benefits or challenges for a TCK?
Slide 2 – Third cultures kids
Benefits versus challenges
Read out the benefits and challenges of being a TKC (Pollock & Van Reken, 2001). The slide is designed to give a comparison. It includes extracts from TCK.
Trainer to pre-read pages 77-119. Pollock & Van Reken for reference purposes and provide examples (see below for some ideas):
- Expanded world view (geographical, political and philosophical differences).
Verses: Confused loyalties (where do their values are their values lying? What aspects of their religion change, of at all? What social status do they hold as a women or man and how to they differ?)
- Three-dimensional view of the world (The experience of living in other cultures will offer more than you can ever read in books or see in films).
Verses: A painful view of reality (often the vision on TV is not a story, its a living nightmare for some who have seen or experienced such similar circumstances).
- Cross-cultural enrichment (They often have a sense of ownership or interest in other cultures, not just their own).
Verses: Ignorance of own culture (a fascinating knowledge of other places but not maybe, their sense of humour from their own culture, or language skills)
- Adaptability (They are chameleons – one person in one cultures and another person in another culture).
Verses : Lack of true cultural balance (What belongs to them? Are they always choosing what is acceptable in their current environment… Always looking at others to fit in – flip flopping between cultures).
- Blending in (looking and doing everything like the others so much so that a TCK may be hiding an identity)
Verses: Defining the differences (by defining the differences between yourself and another culture you can create an element of ‘I am not like you’ or ‘anti identity’ when you where different clothes or talk about different types of topics).
- Less prejudice (ability to communicate and fit into diverse groups)
Verses: More prejudice (those TCK who emphasise their differences in a way that it negative towards the culture they are in – maybe because they reject it for certain reasons e.g. Not wanting to be there).
- The importance of now (due to a transient lifestyle there tends to be a feeling of living life for ‘now’).
Verses: The delusion of choice (the opposite is the feeling that it’s not worth living for now because everything is just going to change again so why make the effort?)
- Appreciative of authority (for example, Living in a kind of cocoon with family e.g. Other people in the business, the family group helps to keep respect for authority).
Verses: Mistrust of authority (due to delusions of choice they may distrust people and authority).
- Arrogance: Real (TCK may, due to their wider perspectives and what’s perceived by host country nationals and an interesting background can make them arrogant or impatient).
Verses Arrogance: Perceived (An attempt to share their normal life experiences may just be seen as arrogance).
Practical Skills:
- Cross-cultural Skills – opportunity to observe a variety of practices and understand the assumption behind them
- Observational Skills – Learn to pay attention to what is going on around them in order to functions in new environments successfully
- Social Skills – Learning to live with chronic change give many TCK a great sense of inner confidence and self-reliance
- Linguistic Skills – fluency in more than one language is potentially one of the most useful life skills (especially early in life)
Slide 3 – International understanding
Consider:
What is the definition of international mindedness and how do you achieve international-mindedness in the classroom?
Participants discuss in pairs then provide some feedback.
Slide 4 – International understanding
Look at the definition on the slide and consider how to achieve an international understanding in the classroom.
Participants to choose objectives (not activities) that fit into each age group e.g. 5-7 years old, 7-11 years old, 11-14 years old.
These international education goals can be used to create whole-school objectives, by age groups, that promote international-mindedness.
This may be a one-off activity with the whole school. (Time guide: 60 minutes)
Slide 5 – Managing change
You are coming to the end of the course. However, this is just the beginning of using the new ideas learnt. If the implementation of these ideas is to be successful, some changes will need to occur.
Change is not easy. Here are some areas you’ll need to consider if you want this training to have an impact on the progress of your learners .
Kotter’s eight-step change model can be summarised as follows:
- Increase urgency – inspire people to move; make objectives real and relevant.
- Build the guiding team – get the right people in place with the right emotional commitment, and the right mix of skills and levels.
- Get the vision right – get the team to establish a simple vision and strategy; focus on the emotional and creative aspects necessary to drive service and efficiency.
- Communicate for buy-in – involve as many people as possible and communicate the essentials simply, to appeal and respond to people’s needs. Declutter communications – make technology work for you, rather than against.
- Empower action – remove obstacles to enable constructive feedback and lots of support from leaders. Reward and recognise progress and achievements.
- Create short-term wins – set aims that are easy to achieve – in bite-size chunks. Introduce manageable numbers of initiatives. Finish current stages before starting new ones.
- Don’t let up – foster and encourage determination and persistence. Promote ongoing change and encourage ongoing progress reporting, highlighting achieved and future milestones.
- Make change stick – reinforce the value of successful change via the recruitment and promotion of new change leaders. Weave change into your culture.
Adapted from Business Balls.
Slide 6 – Whole-school evaluation
Look at the EAL framework. See notes below for further explanation on the slide.
- How are we doing? (look at where you are now)
- How well should we be doing? (look at where you could be)
- What more can we aim to achieve? (look at what you need to do to get to where you could be)
- What must we do to make it happen? (look at how you can make this happen)
- What will it look like when we have succeeded and how will we know? (look at how to know when you have been successful)
Slide 7 – Whole-school reflection
Participants should complete the EAL framework reflection (Activity 9.2).
Participants should also refer to all their Reflection and Action Points notes.
Share the example on the slide.
(Time guide: 40-55 minutes)
Slide 8 – Example of an EAL development plan entry
Show how to add ideas to the EAL development plan using this slide (activity 9.3). Start looking at some possible ideas based on your Reflections (see the next slide for a further example).
(Time guide: 20 minutes, including discussion)
Slide 9 – Policy and handbook
Ask participants:
If you were to document what happens with EAL learners in your school and create a handbook of practice, what would be in that handbook?
See Strand 9 of the portal – Language policy template
See ‘Further learning – ideas for a school EAL handbook’.
See ‘Further learning – ideas for a school language policy’.
Activity 9.4
Slide 10 – Case study
Continue with the school case study. Group presentations can be held during the last session.
Slide 11 – Case study 2
Groups should now present their ideas. The trainer should feedback against the following criteria:
Strand 1: Understanding EAL learners in the mainstream
Strand 2: Enhanced admissions including community-building
Strand 3: EAL assessment
Strand 4: Induction-to-English
Strand 5: Planning differentiation for EAL learners in class
Strand 6: Differentiating for EAL learners in class
Strand 7: Focused scaffolding of language
Strand 8: Effective use of language learning strategies
Strand 9: Whole-school EAL development
Slide 12 – What are you going to do to make a difference in your school?
This is a chance for end-of-session and end-of-course reflection. Participants should use their ongoing reflections to complete their Reflection and Action Points notes.
(Time guide: 5-10 minutes)
Slide 13 – Did you achieve what you hoped to achieve?
Ask the participants:
What will you do differently as a result of what you have learnt on the course?
Ask participants to look at their pre-session activity notes ‘What do you hope to achieve’. Have they achieved their course goals?
Slide 14 – How long is this going to take?
Share the final two quotes.
Slide 15 – Thank you for participating in an Across Cultures course
Hand out the course evaluations for completion before leaving the course.