Cultural encounters
in teaching and hosting
- from a practice theoretical perspective
Iben Jensen
Plan
• What is a practice theoretical perspective?
• Problembased project work as a practice
• Positioning as part of practice an relations
• Hosting as a practice
• Focusing on practices …
Iben Jensen
A practice theoretical perspective
• A perspective which foregrounds practice
focusing on doings and sayings - seeing
practices as social organising in society.
• The social is in the practice.
• Bourdieu, Giddens, Butler, Garfinkel,
Foucault, Latour
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Practice theories
• Philosophical: Theodore Schatzki (Doings and
sayings)
• Cultural theoretical: Andreas Reckwitz (The
social is in practice)
• Sociological: Ann Swidler (Anchoring of practice:
Gay parades)
• Consumption: Allan Warde, Elisabeth Shove
(Old cars and Nordic walking)
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3 core assumptions
• Practices are routinized bodily activities. A
social practice is the product of training the
body in a certain way.
• Every agent carries out a multitude of
different social practices.
• Appropriate performance: Practice is
negotiated with the categories represented
by the actors.
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Analysis of practice
• Understanding (preunderstanding, knowledge):
Teachers and students expectations
• Procedures (formal and informal rules): How do
you act in class? Which relations are legal?
• Engagements (performances): How does
teacher and students show their interest?
Iben Jensen
Data: International education
• 3 interviews with ’foreign’ students (2002) 1
interview with a supervisor (2002)
• 10 interviews with ’foreign’ students (2004)
• 5 interviews with groups of ’foreign’ students
• 3 interviews with adminstrators and supervisors
(2008)
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Problembased groupwork
“– I don’t know what is normal, but at first it is
very difficult to get something solid from them.
So I just shooting questions. And they said:
”year you have to find out for yourself – you
have to take your own decision”
I said: Is this good – or is this better? and they
said: “You have to find out for yourselves”. It is a
little confusing and I think it slows down the
process.”
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As a practice
• Understandings: The teachers does not
give a solid answer
• Procedures: ”You have to find out for your
self”. ”You have to take your own
decision”
• Engagement: Hidden agenda: Be
independent and solve the puzzle: our
practice
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Positioning (and relations)
• A superior position (might be expected
from the teacher)
• An equal position (often an ideal in
problembased education)
• A inferiour position (often taken by
students)
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”Very little Chinese students will tell the teacher
to slow down with overheads, If I can not follow,
I will work harder, work harder …
Because in China, if you can not get the things it
is your problem, not the teacher’s problem, so
we can not complain to the teacher, but we must
change ourselves
I: Is it not possible to change the teacher?
I don’t think so – I have never thought about it …
no that’s true (2002)
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Hosting
“I mean you can not, you have at nine
o’ clock at the morning and in the
beginning of the semester everybody goes
partying every day, because everybody
does it you have free of everything no
parents no nothing, go out and party every
day.”
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Accomodation
•
“No I went to say, I pay a lot of money for me for this
accommodation and something appeared in my room
and it’s not healthy for me to live in such an environment,
it´s always wet. He just gave me a paper in which it was
stated that the climate in Denmark is very difficult and
things like that could appear, I still have the paper, so the
climate is that I should open the window more and I said
it´s February for me it´s very cold here in Denmark, I
can not sleep with the door open. Then he came and
inspected the room, and he asked me again: “You have
just showered and you don´t open the window?”,
because it was very very wet, and I said: “No I showered
last night, this is morning”, if I left the window something
would ….
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Focusing on practice
• Avoids cultural expectation of national
differences – focuses on teaching in ’an
unknown project based method’
• Contributes to teaching in own practice,
our own expectations and gives us an
opportunity to let the foreign students ask
about our local teaching practice.
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• Focusing on hosting as a practice is an
opportunity to discuss
• Understanidng (eg. of accomodations)
• Procedures (formal and informal rules)
• Engagements (How do you perform, when
you are frustrated and far from home?)
Iben Jensen
References
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Bourdieu P (1990). The Logic of Practice. Cambridge, Polity.
Butler J (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity.
New York.
Foucault, M (1978). The History of Sexuality. Vol.1. Harmondsworth,
Penguin.
Garfinkel H (1967). Studies in Ethnomethodology. New Jersey, Prentice
Hall Inc.
Giddens A (1984). The Constitution of Society. Cambridge, Polity Press.
Harré R and Langenhove Lv (1999). Positioning theory. Oxford, Blackwell.
Jensen I (2007). “The Aspect of Power in Intercultural Communication
Practice", in Dahl, Jensen and Nynäs (eds.): Bridges of Understanding Perspectives on Intercultural Communication, A Reader. Oslo, Academic
Press.
Latour B (1993). We have Never been Modern. Cambridge Mass., Harvard
University Press.
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Referencer
– Reckwitz A (2002). Toward a Theory of Social Practices. A
Development in Culturalist Theorizing. European Journal of Social
Theory, 5 (2).
– Schatzki T (1996). Social Practices. A Wittgensteinian Approach to
Human Activity and the Social. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
– Schatzki T K Knorr-Cetina and E von Savigny (eds): The Practice Turn
in Contemporary Theory. London, Routledge.
– Schatzki T (2002). The site of the social – a philosophical account of the
constitution of social life and change. The Pennsylvania state university
press.
– Warde A (2005). Consumption and Theories of Practice. Journal of
Consumer Culture, 5 (2).
– West C and Zimmerman D H (1987). Doing Gender. Gender and
Society, 1 (2).
Iben Jensen