Navigating the maze of Intercultural Competence (ICC) development and leadership in a bilingual school, China

• In Event: Reimagining Education for a Better Globalized World

Proposal

Background

With the initiative of opening up and national reform policy in the 1970s, Chinese-English bilingual education has become prevalent in mainland China. Initially starting at the university level, the Chinese-English bilingual education has also extended to K-12 education, resulting in two forms of schooling, bilingual private schools and experimental division of public schools (Hu, 2018) in selective capital cities like Nanjing, Chengdu, and Shenyang and first-tier cities like Beijing and Shanghai. As part of the globalization of EMI(English-Medium Instruction) education, the rapid growth of bilingual education is seen in the challenges of teachers trying to adapt to the changing demographics of increasingly diverse cultural classrooms. As societies struggle to prepare for an increasingly connected life, educators need to strengthen their understanding of how culture emerges in teaching and learning and how culture mediates and addresses the growing challenges of education globalization.

Research Purpose

Intercultural refers to a community that allows co-existing cultures, mutual understanding, and respect for all cultures, which adequately describes the cultural diversity of the bilingual schooling environment. To better understand culture's increasingly important role in education, bilingual education in China has been accounted for in the long-term goals and caused significant challenges for educators, mainly through intercultural communication and intercultural competence development. Intercultural communication emphasizes the exchange of reciprocal ideas and encourages people to learn different cultural norms and maintain decent relationships (Dietz, 2018). Intercultural competence (IC), on the other hand, is a valuable asset, defines an individual's ability to interact with people from different cultural backgrounds domestically and internationally in organizations, mutual thinking, and function effectively between diverse values, beliefs, and cross-cultural encounters (Leung, Ang & Tan, 2014).

By utilizing a mix of qualitative semi-structured interviewing and observation methods, this paper seeks to address the following interrelated research questions,

RQ1-How have Chinese bilingual school principals promoted teaching staff (domestic & foreign) and students' intercultural competence through curriculum leadership and management?
RQ2-To what extent(s) have teachers' intercultural competence (IC) developed academically and generally?
RQ3-How have students' intercultural communicative competence (ICC) developed through in-class and informal extra-curriculum activities?

Moreover, the paper embodies a two-faceted research significance. From the theoretical perspective, the research would fill in the gap of a contemporary Confucius inherited interculturalism connoting 'universality, values integration and respects differences (Wang, 2017),' aligning with the CIES 2023 motif of 'education with no discrimination' through the intercultural competence cultivation in the Chinese context of bilingual education. Besides, to fulfill a practical perspective, this research would also develop some practical measures and policy implications to tackle any cultural or intercultural dilemmas, enhancing Chinese bilingual school principals' overall intercultural competence as a profession.

Theoretical Framework

During the pilot study, we interviewed the Chinese and foreign principals in the cased bilingual school. We have learned about the school's organizational structure and the principals' leadership style, founding some match with Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions Theory (2002). The cased school is a K-12 bilingual school with primary, junior high, and senior higher, covering academic, administrative, and general affairs departments. With a transformational leadership style, the school highlights the principal's ability to stimulate the high-level needs or expand the needs and aspirations of subordinates (teaching and administrative employees) to surpass personal interests for the school organization and greater collective interests and optimize the interaction among members of the school by caring for the needs of diverse stakeholders. (Leithwood & Jantzi, 2003). Three stakeholders were involved in the research, namely, domestic and foreign teachers, student agencies, and bilingual school principals.

To adequately fit the Chinese context of cultural characteristics, we have derived the most matching five cultural dimensions by Bhagat & Hofstede (2002) that related to the leadership and management of our cased school, qualifying the further exploration of intercultural competence analysis as well. To fulfill RQ1, we have examined our cased school as characterized as 'high power distance(PD) between school principals and teachers, high uncertainty avoidance, value collectivism over individualism, a more masculinity-driven which prioritize the grades and ranking, and long-term orientation of focusing on the long-run goals.'

Besides, to support the conclusion of RQ1 and fulfill RQ2 and RQ3, we have also approached Byram's Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) Model (1997). Based on the idea that language learning is a communicative, interactive, and meaningful process, the ICC model describes the factors involved in successful intercultural communication, including knowledge, skills, and attitudes considering language teaching and learning (Nelson, 2009). Byram's ICC model fits well in bilingual school education in China as it has significantly reflected in English-taught parallels with Mandarin-taught. Byram (1997) argues that a person who develops an ICC can build relationships while speaking a foreign language, communicate effectively, care about the views and needs of oneself and others, tackle cultural disruption and uncertainty between different people, and become constantly dedicated to developing lifelong ICC skills.

Research design, methodology, data collection, and analysis process

We have accessed the school's primary division (G1-G6) and interviewed the school management board, including Chinese and foreign principals, an English subject lead, and a randomly selected group of 12 grade4 students for one-on-one interviews by using the interview outlines based on the research framework. Besides, we have observed and note-taking the English subject lead's classes for over three months; he was mainly teaching grade 4 English. Lastly, we have thematically coded the qualitative data by clusters derived from Byram's model of Intercultural Communicative Competence (Waliński, pg. 6, 2012).


Findings and policy implications

Findings have shown that in the cross-cultural context, although the cultural backgrounds of the principals of bilingual schools are different, they strive to cultivate their own and teachers' cultural leadership, attempting to provide students with multicultural learning content. After years of practice and exploration, principals have better understood the cultural dimensions in management, enlightening domestic and foreign teachers' importance of acknowledging the Chinese culture while learning about other cultures, forming an intercultural competence as a profession. Students’ cognitive, behavioural, and motivational aspects have also proven the existence of such leadership, cultivating the students' Confucian inherited Chinese characteristic of 'education for all' lifelong intercultural competence.

Authors

• XIYUAN ZHANG, Beijing Normal University

• Yiming Qin, Shanghai Open University, SACTAB