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CONTINUOUS EDUCATION AS A CONDITION AND FACTOR OF PROFESSIONAL EFFICIENCY AND COMPETENCE FORMING
BIOGRAPHICAL PERSPECTIVE ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE IN THE CONTEXT OF LIFELONG LEARNING
N. Mazeikiene E. Virgailaite-Meckauskaite
As the society diversity is increasing, there appear more people who live in the multicultural environment of different religions, ethnical groups, languages and lifestyles. The gain of intercultural competence becomes an important striving of the democratic society. It acquires a great significance not only in the professional context but also in the civic activities: it becomes important to solve conflicts, integrate immigrants and national minorities as well as overcome xenophobia and various forms of intolerance. Thus, intercultural competence is both professional and civic competence. Intercultural competence is a complex, multidimensional construct which is developed during the whole life of individual and in the process of lifelong learning. It involves all factors of socialization and learning in diverse contexts and locations (family, school, peer groups, communities, etc.), covers various forms of learning - formal, non-formal and informal. The article presents results of the research the aim of which is to reveal life experience of Master’s degree students in the process of formal (school, during Bachelor degree studies and Master’s degree studies) and non-formal, self-organized learning.
Factors Determining the Development of Competence and Biographical Narrative. According to the constructivist approach, there is no universal conception of competence. The competence construct is dynamic and contextual; the definition of competence depends on the position and opinion of people who are defining it, the aim of the definition and the context of the organization, sector and environment. Competence is formed in the particular discourse, culture, situation and context of communication or work. It has been noticed that the development of competence depends on the culture, society, environment in which a person lives, family values, experience and life circumstances, forms of formal and non-formal learning. Developing competence (also intercultural competence) in the context of formal education (e.g. in the higher education institution), it is important to consider personal experience of life and self-organised and non-formal learning determined by the present culture and historical context and acquired in the previous educational settings (family, kindergarten, school, communicating with friends, communities, etc.). Competence elements (attitudes and values) which are difficult to develop, determining the further development of a person and mastering of competence elements, are formed in primary stages of socialization. That is why, analysis of biographical narrative is the most suitable strategy of the research as well as the method allowing the participant of the research, which is embedded
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into social structures, historical and social context, to reconstruct and create reflexive project of his/her life, construct meanings related to the development of intercultural competence.
The group of participants of our empirical research consisted of 24 Lithuanian and foreign Master’s degree (MA) students who are studying at Siauliai university or Vytautas Magnus university. Foreign MA students from culturally heterogeneous countries (America, Switzerland, Sweden, Spain) were chosen for the qualitative research. Foreign MA students who completed bachelor‘s degrees in the universities of their countries and during Master‘s degree studies (partial (Erasmus) or all Master‘s degree studies used to study at Siauliai university and Vytautas Magnus university were chosen to be researched. The aim was to evaluate impact of cultural and social context and biographical circumstances on development of intercultural competence.
Biographical Method in the Research on Education. Biographical and narrative research originated in educational research when hermeneutics entered into social sciences. There was a transfer from the positivist approach to the interpretative one in which meaning making of the research participants becomes a central axis of the research. Social phenomenon is understood as the text, the meanings of which are understood as the person’s interpretation of his experience by telling the life story. Biographical narrative seeks to re-create the historical sequence of a person’s experience and events. It is a glance at the narrator’s past. Biography is a narration, the expression of a person’s subjectivity, the reconstruction and interpretation of one’s past. Biographical narrative is a subjective interpretation of reality; it expresses inner world, individual’s self and the life experience and shows how everyday experience and the horizon of meanings are constructed. These individual subjective meanings are analyzed in the cultural and social context revealing one’s situation and position in the society. Biographical narrative directly and indirectly reveals social processes through the lenses of subjectivity. The processes are considered as the result of the constant interaction between a person’s consciousness and objective social reality. Consciousness, in this instance, is both the result of the interaction and the determinant of the interaction. The case analysis of separate people’s stories not only reveals meanings of subjectivity but also contributes to the understanding of broader objective structures. Reconstructing the past, research participants generally reveal collective experience related to the culture, economic and social structures. Biographical narrative is like conversation with one’s own self, discovering the self, describing one’s identity and revealing “who am I” and “what am I”. A dialogue between the self and the society, between real I and ideal I, defined by the society, takes place in biographical narrative. Every culture and society has determined particular standards of gender, profession, education, etc., in which people try “to fit”. Biographical research allows to understand how a person acquire identity. Analyzing the biography, we appeal to Anthony Gidden’s (1991) conception of identity. Identity as a reflexive project is revealed through the autobiographical narrative, an individual’s interpretative story of the self which is a trajectory of the development from the past to the anticipated future. “Reconstruction of the past goes along with anticipation of the likely life trajectory of the future” [1, p. 73]. Narration about oneself anticipates narration about one’s
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life which is a string of turning points. They are full of losses, risks and opportunities.
Thus, biographical method allows to understand the alternation of an individual’s identity, what is happening with his personality, the project of the self -how the alternation of a person’s life takes place in the context of social changes. Moreover, the method allows to reveal how the identity interacts and how it is influenced by various social structures as well as to understand the nature of social mobility. Narration involves details and the particularity of the meanings of an individual’s activities (motivations, feelings, desires or aims) which cannot be defined as concepts, factual statements or abstractions used by positivists. The aim of biographical narrative research is to reveal the alternation of a person’s intentions (wishes, purposes) and unexpected convolutions in the narration. Biographical research reveals individual’s experience, various turning points of life. The development of intercultural competence in the process of socialization and habituation is revealed in our research as a reconstruction of life experience in MA students’ biographies. The questions about the experience of intercultural communication in the context of higher education presented to the research participants encouraged informants to talk about biographical events, reveal the role of education and socialization levels which are earlier in comparison with studies of higher education. Conversations with the research participants revealed how intercultural competence is formed, developed and constructed during the whole life acquiring professional and personal experience from childhood till higher levels of professional socialization.
The reconstruction of research participants’ past appears in the form of biographical narrative. The experience of acquirement and development of intercultural competence narrated by MA students and forgotten life events raised from memory gain sense, i.e. they are able to provide new knowledge for the further development of intercultural competence. Biographical narrative research allowed to highlight dimensions of MA students’ intercultural experience, whereas formal - positivist research not always allows to do it, especially to highlight feelings, attitudes, desires, aims, objectives, etc. Biographical narrative allows to analyze an individual’s life story as a socially constructed reality which not only provides formal, and systematic education but also introduces to non-formal education, transmission of unwritten implicit value and, attitudes. The comparison of several cases (MA students from Lithuania and foreign countries) applied in our research allowed to understand social and cultural differences, reveal what factors of macro, mezzo and micro level influence the formation of a separate individual’s intercultural competence. The following factors were distinguished in micro level (person’s closest environment): parents’ professional activities and geographical mobility related to it, parents’ social and economic status, relationship in the family, style of communication and life, presence of culturally different persons in the close environment of family, school and community, relationship with classmates and teachers at school. Factors of community, organizations, institutions are attributed to mezzo environment. Here institutional and structural factors of the school environment came out - institutional policy, pupils’ mobility carried out by institutions, organization of visits to other countries and regions, interactive methods of learning, policy of foreign languages, integration of migrants and
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foreign-born people into the education system and overall learning process, etc. Our research revealed factors of macro environment as well - monocultural profile and monolingualism in Lithuania, multiculturalism and multilingualism in other countries (U.S.A, Switzeland), situation of national minorities and migrants in the society, language policy of the country, etc.
Participants of the research talking about the experience of intercultural competence acquisition since their childhood and the development of intercultural competence distinguished the role of socialization and education institutes (society / sociality, family, school, peers). That is why, developing intercultural competence in later stages of socialization - in the higher education institution - it is important to take habitus and experience acquired by a person (formal, non-formal, selforganised education, hidden curriculum), determined by social and cultural conditions and factors in the family, kindergarten, school, communicating with friends, etc. into consideration. Thus, this biographical research has showed a complex subjective-objective situation of narrative when objective elements are presented through the subjective understanding as well as significance for a person. Oral reconstruction of past events has unrolled as an interaction of three levels (macro, mezzo, macro) and a combination of various forms of socialization, habituation and education.
Literature
1. Giddens A. (1991). Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age.
Stanford University Press.
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