Transformative Training to Develop the Intercultural Competence of School Principals

• In Event: 43.051 - Democratizing Education Through Transformative Leadership to Meet the Needs of Minoritized Students

Abstract

With the migrant flow in occidental countries, schools are necessarily more diverse (UNESCO, 2017). This ethnocultural, linguistic and religious diversity among students, their parents and staff members requires that school principals demonstrate intercultural competence (IC) to ensure inclusion, social justice and equity (Bouchamma, 2016; Fry, 2015). Nevertheless, researchers argue that competency indicators aren’t well developed (Bustamante, Nelson, & Onwuegbuzie, 2009; Gélinas Proulx, IsaBelle, & Meunier, 2014) and that the current training in North America does not always prepare leaders to create inclusive schools (Borri-Anadon et al., 2018; Young, Madsen, & Young, 2010).
Purpose: How can IC be developed by principals and future principals of schools in a linguistic minority context? This paper describes the development of school principals’ IC through a cultural immersion experience (Gélinas Proulx, 2014).
Theoretical perspectives: Dinnan (2009) showed that a cultural immersion program in Mexico with United States school principals was a way to increase their cultural awareness, which is the foundation of the IC. It helped to increase their linguistic competence in Spanish, their understanding of the culture, the families and Mexican students. Consequently, their empathy for Mexican students in their own school increased. However, she concluded that more research is needed on how cultural immersion can develop the school principals’ IC.
Based on many authors as Deardorff (2009), Gélinas Proulx (2014) defined IC as the capability to define oneself, to be clear about one’s identity and to build dynamic and positive relationships with people from other cultures. Adaptation, transformation and mutual understanding are the results of those relations that also have to be characterised by inclusiveness, equity, social justice and social cohesion. This “know-how” requires that they mobilize their own resources (attitudes, knowledge and skills) to accomplish intercultural tasks.
Methods: We undertook a pragmatic-interpretative study and a developmental research methodology (Van der Maren, 2003) divided into three phases. Following the needs analysis phase, we established the relevance of a cultural immersion in Morocco. At the conception phase, we developed 13 activities that relied on consulted experts and scientific literature. For the testing and evaluation phase, we collected data regarding the perceptions of seven participants of the cultural immersion through interviews and exercises completed during the immersion. Data were analysed with content analysis (L’Écuyer, 1990) and using Nvivo 8 software.
Data sources: The participants of the last phase were six school principals and one future school principal coming from four Canadian provinces and working in French linguistic minority context.
Results: The cultural immersion helped the participants to develop many IC indicators: openness, knowledge about cultures and school system, adaptation and strategies to learn about cultures. In addition, a cultural immersion training model is proposed.
Scholarly significance: Cultural immersion seems to be a transformative training program for principals and could be a way to insure inclusion, social justice and equity in schools. Thus, it informs educational leadership program managers who might profitably develop this kind of preparation for transformative leaders for democratic school environments.

Author

• Andreanne Gelinas-Proulx, Universite du Quebec en Outaouais