Cross-Cultural Orientation Of Professional Teacher Training

Abstract

The paper focuses on the expediency of cross-cultural orientation of the entire professional training of a teacher as an adequate response to modern civilizational processes. It was shown that it is this approach that becomes a psychological and pedagogical imperative as an actively oriented concept directed at social adaptation of a personality of a teacher and through him of students in the multicultural world. It was noted that the cross-cultural orientation of education of a future teacher in the era of post-modernity and globalization contributes to the development of such qualities as openness, pluralism of tastes and opinions, tolerance; at the cognitive level this is a significant expansion of the cognitive space, a more complete understanding of both its culture and other cultures, at the activity level – attitude to each culture with interest and understanding. It was established that the cross-cultural nature of teacher’s professional training is formed in the process of interaction of three components that make up a single psychological and pedagogical system: cultural experience of an ethnic group in its historical development and modern state (socialization of a personality), organized educational and nurturing process (education and nurturing) and independent intellectual, cognitive and practical activity (self-development and self-education). The efficiency of cross-cultural orientation of teacher training is determined at cognitive, behavioral and affective levels, which are expressed by worldview, activity, behavior and speech communication.

Keywords: cross-cultural orientation, globalization, ethnos, traditions, ethnocultural environment, value-based orientation

Introduction

The cross-cultural training of modern teachers is a condition for their effective professional activity in the multicultural educational system, because they are called upon to educate students in a spirit of genuine interest to other cultures, understanding and acceptance of the entire world cultural palette. We believe that this approach should be recognized legitimate as a condition for maintaining the uniqueness of its culture in the era of globalism and a transitional society, because the development of any culture desperately needs the interaction with other cultures, and this cultural diversity acts a fertile ground for the cross-cultural worldview of the personality of a future teacher.

However, this process cannot be considered smooth, unproblematic, since the extent of the spread of globalization is directly proportional to the desire of peoples for their identity: universalization actualizes and intensifies internal rejection of the expansion by the representatives of a particular ethnic group that is observed within intercultural contacts. It is this that brings to the fore the desire not to lose its historical face, national character, ethnic culture, religion, i.e. all that creates the mentality of the people and the spiritual appearance of a personality – a representative of this people (Takhokhov, 2019).

Problem Statement

The intellectual motive to find ways to resolve this contradiction determined the problem of research: what are the theoretical and methodological foundations of the cross-cultural orientation of teacher training at the university.

Research Questions

The cross-cultural orientation of teacher training process is considered as a characteristic of the system of teaching and educating the personality of a future pedagogical worker, enriched with knowledge of the spiritual values and material benefits of his and other peoples in their synchronization and diachrony, adhering to the multicultural code in everyday life and capable of using this knowledge and experience in his professional activities.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of the study is to propose the concept of cross-cultural orientation of teacher training based on the study and analysis of modern trends in society development.

Research Methods

The methodology of the study included the modern paradigm of social development and education; post-modernity and information society theories; psychological and pedagogical approaches: competent, axiological, personodidactic and comparativistic; methods: analysis, synthesis, generalization, comparison and modeling.

Findings

The socio-psychological and pedagogical conditions for the cross-cultural training of a modern teacher are as follows: a) educational space characterized on the basis of a multidimensional practical approach, the opinions of focus groups consisting of parents, public observers and students themselves, in addition, issues raised on the Internet blogs and on the forum taking into account the Internet survey; b) teachers with cross-cultural competence, prepared both theoretically and practically for this activity, representing the practical embodiment of a multicultural personality; c) modern educational and methodological support of the educational process with the possibility of e-learning and active use of distance learning technologies.

The educational environment, in which the cross-cultural competence of a future teacher is being formed, should first of all be culture-congruent with the focus on super-task – education of a person of culture (Artsishevskaya, 2016; Martsinkovskaya, 2018). The achievement of this attitude is connected with the presentation of the image of a person who understands and accepts the cultural images of his people, who is involved in their historical and cultural traditions and is capable of perceiving other cultures, world cultural values, striving for moral purity, spiritual beauty, and higher aesthetic ideals. Such person spiritually feels himself in the cultural space, dwells him, transfers his wealth into his consciousness, looks at the surrounding reality through the eyes of a person of culture – his and other peoples and represents himself as a member of his people and the entire world community.

Culture is a self-portrait of an ethnic group, a reflection of its historical, social and ethnic essence, but at the same time it is a connection with other cultures. It is in culture that the mentality of the people is reproduced in multifaceted wholeness as a synthesis of their spiritual and moral searches, ideals, understanding of the beautiful and ugly, human actions, thoughts, feelings. It is thought that on a planetary scale culture can be represented in the form of a metatext, which both peoples as a whole and their individual creators constantly complete, expand and deepen, and in this cultural space there is a systematic dialogue of cultures of different generations, eras, various ethnic groups, as a result of which a sacred text of culture is created. In this universum of culture there is a place for national traditions and customs that create a unique face of the people, their past, present and future, and the preservation of this uniqueness is possible against the background of other cultures, when interacting with them, enriching, adopting and giving (Sobkin, 2018).

The principle of dialogic interaction of cultures introduces not so much topical messages or current information into the cross-cultural competence of a person as new codes – precedents, therefore the content of education is re-encoded, acquiring the character of new content, and the subjects of this process, teachers and students, create a single field of meaning, playing up to each other, forming dialogic knowledge, becoming subjects of a single creatively cognitive space. At the same time, the perception and analysis of the text of culture both for the donor (teacher) and for the recipient (student) is always a fact of discovery, surprise, a feeling of one’s separate being, leading to self-knowledge. Being a kind of self-consciousness, a quasi-entity, culture represents society in its reflected form, but at the same time explains, reveals the meanings, semantic expression of multicultural consciousness in the palette of individual self-consciousness. In the multicultural field, education acquires its wholeness, synergistic essence, becomes a matrix of culture, and specific educational disciplines from a set of subjects, models of the world of nature and society in general, to be assimilated – remembered, turn into a strictly logical system formed in a given cultural context and creating a “person of culture”, “person in culture” (Grigoryev, 2018; Brown, 2012).

The cross-cultural educational environment, in which a modern teacher is formed, is, on the one hand, the culture of participants in the educational process, teachers and students, their education, cultural and moral values, spirituality, an ethical and aesthetic component, and on the other hand – the immersion of education in universal cultural values, the harmonious unity of education and culture, the humanitarian completeness of educational activities reflecting a cultural universum. Education with its content and forms of implementation belongs to a specific historical, socio-economic, political, national type and in this capacity reveals culture as a material, spiritual and figurative model of life, performs the functions of cultural consciousness (Peng, 2016; Verkuyten, 2016).

Convergence, semantic-emotional intersection, mutual addition of education and culture occurs naturally, objectively, but the effective use of their relationship in the educational process always depends specifically, subjectively, on the ideology of the educational system, the content of education, the pedagogical skill of teachers and all those involved in this matter, the level of their professional competence.

Each historical and cultural stratum has its highest achievements, dialogues, prototypes and precedents and the expansion of the facets of one culture at the expense of another, their internal interaction in practical educational and educational activities bear fruit through systematic and systematic work based on the points of intersection, the context of their development (Krasikova, 2018). The consideration of mutual influence, mutual enrichment of cultures at different levels allows significantly intensifying the receptive and cognitive-aesthetic activities of teachers and students, understanding the leading ways of organizing the cultural space. Inside and intercultural observations make it possible to gain an understanding of such important axiological units as the chronotope of ethnos and the value of cultural traditions, which allows introducing new technologies and forms of interpretation of texts and images of culture into the educational process of teacher training. Historical precedents and images of one culture intersect with others, one cultural layer finds its expression in another and different phenomena filled with national content appear brighter in a polylog with other cultures.

Cross-cultural interaction is a unity, convergence of fathers and children, different generations and individualities, due to which ancestral and cultural traditions are transferred from the older to the younger generation, the continuation of the “life of infinite” – this idea of the connection of generations should be the basis for building the content of education and educational work in various forms (Soldatova, 2015).

The cultural and semantic component of education determines the dialogue of cultures: it is a comparison, a correlation of languages, literature, folklore, a demonstration of the ideal of beauty, the endless search for the harmony of personality and life, the transmission of the spiritual and moral life of a person in folk traditions and customs, art and creations made by individual authors, artists, musicians. The reference to various types of cultures, the demonstration of artistic strength and visual skill, the implementation of the synthesis of cultures, their dialogue – exchange in the space of human life is methodically justified because only the totality of cultures, their polyphonicity create the entire complex palette of human being (Takhokhov, 2019).

The comparative analysis of stylistic systems of depicting the world and man in adjoining cultures implies the understanding that each culture has specific, national characteristics, therefore synchronous comparison is not always possible; in such cases, it is advisable to address the diachronic method, since in some cases the images, forms of one culture are ahead of another culture and vice versa. Therefore, the dialogue of cultures must be built in such a way as to reveal the spiritual and material interaction of peoples – creators of cultures, show how cultures enrich each other, push their borders, demonstrate the polyfunctional role of culture in the spiritual exaltation and moral development of people.

The idea of cross-cultural orientation of the teacher training process is most effectively revealed when studying humanities by interpreting cultural and semantic signs and models that hermeneutically interpret, explain the worldview and artistic-taste grounds of individual and social consciousness and behavior. Special courses of an integrated plan are important and expedient – immersion in cultural eras of different time and meaning periods built on the principle of educational dialogues on different sides of cultures with their characteristic cultural-historical meanings and spiritual exchange of ethnic groups and their individual representatives.

The education based on the principles of the cross-cultural paradigm reveals the understanding of the professional competence of a teacher, the basis of which is laid in the process of introducing the student’s personality to cultural diversity. From these positions, the model of a person with cross-cultural competence is understood not only as the desired image of an individual with certain knowledge, skills and abilities, but as a person capable of creative professional activity, having high level of relevant knowledge and skills for their implementation in a real pedagogical situation.

An effective form of implementing the cross-cultural paradigm of education in ethnocultural space can be the educational and nurturing component, which, as a variant of the standard, is intended to create conditions for the representatives of indigenous peoples to meet their needs and interests in obtaining such education, which corresponds to the current state of theory and practice of the studied sciences, their fundamental foundations and recent achievements, while the educational component, a cultural and moral, spiritual component of the educational process is derived from that culture, those traditions and religious beliefs that feed the people living in this territory with the life blood. We believe that those leaders of education in the regions who at the level of secondary and higher schools, methodologically, meaningfully and organizationally supplement the curricula with disciplines related to the study of culture, folklore, literature, the language of indigenous peoples are right, because such universal patterns have proved their need for a combined matrix of national traditions and customs, religious beliefs and family style. The uniqueness of these national traits and characters lies in their centuries-old determinability, and many of these ethnic characteristics are multicultural, universal, going back to different cultures, therefore they are called “universal values” and cannot be recognized as a fruitful idea to put the Chinese wall between the cultures of different ethnic groups, which, of course, does not preclude concern for the preservation of its uniqueness in the same way, like a single person that tries to be original, and not an analogue of another, his copy (Arsaliev, 2017; Wang, 2016).

The need for a cross-cultural orientation of the entire educational and nurturing process of teacher training is confirmed by the psycholinguistic analysis of the language code, which, by its nature, has a national-cultural and international specificity reflecting differences and coincidences in verbal and kinetic behavior of speakers of certain languages. The analysis of speech behavior can be given only with the understanding of the phenomenon of culture as an adapting mechanism that interacts with ethnic and multicultural (bio-psycho-social) features.

We can say that the description of various expressions of verbal and non-verbal behavior of an individual is fruitful within the framework of the triunicity “ethnos – language – culture”, which allows judging not only superficial expressions, but also deep structures that control the mental behavior of the representatives of certain cultural communities and form a certain worldview.

The absence of a complete coincidence of national worldviews is smoothed out if we take into account a certain conceptual model of the world, due to which people understand each other, although they can live in different social and geographical conditions and communicate in different languages. The probability of success of verbal contact is determined by the fact that thinking as a sign of Homo Sapiens is universal, but in the vocabulary of the language we will always find something ethnically special. Most psycholinguists adhere to the point of view, according to which the linguistic content of semantic structures is not associated with the dominance of language over thinking, but with the significance of phenomena formed in the process of labor, cognitive and communicative activities of people (Dagbaeva, 2018; Shields, 2016).

In the outdoors of different cultures and traditions, there is a social adaptation of an individual and the ability to relate with interest and understanding to any culture. Educational organizations, educational systems, both traditional, family and public, and especially state, are designed to help a person to master a range of special and cultural knowledge that manifests the personality as a representative of a multicultural space. Knowledge acquired in one way or another only then becomes personal, when the consciousness accepts it as reference information and in the future, fitting into the system of other knowledge, expanding and strengthening in the process of practical application, it can become part of the human worldview (Jules, 2017).

However, the formation of a personality’s worldview cannot be called smooth, positively progressive, since this process has a “ragged pace” in which ups and downs constantly alternate, and the number of events and different types of life experience certainly shifts into the quality of a person developing him as a person with a stable civic position, especially in upholding socially significant values.

Family upbringing, home environment is the primary outdoors giving a child initial, mainly not systematized, knowledge and habits, which are fixed for life; that is why the unison between family education and the reality that a child sees in the environment is so important: any bifurcation in visible and audible by a child, dissonance in the surrounding at the initial stage of life negatively affects human consciousness (Brown, 2012). However, already in adolescence, different opinions, forms of behavior of people can become the origin of hypocrisy and khanzhenism, which in the future will be strengthened or eroded under the influence of other more authoritative examples, which each teenager imitates to one degree or another. It is important to emphasize that already at this age a conformist, conjuncturist or nonconformist, critically thinking personality is formed, so purposeful education sets the task to develop such a person who consciously chooses the values of his ethnic group, his country and, if necessary, adjusts his worldview according to the “Hamburg reckoning” in accordance with the understanding of his place in the culture and civilization of peoples. The above correlates with humanistically oriented education and upbringing, the development of spiritual, moral and creative qualities of a person, who is able to be a creative maker in modern innovative society, who cares not only about his material wealth and success, but is ready to bring as much creative, positive, progressive as possible, in other words, something that the value of a citizen of the country, a patriot is measured.

As a rule, teachers of languages and literature, history, geography, the surrounding world and art are active carriers of cross-cultural competence, which is natural, since it is they who, in accordance with subject programs, teach students, including on material of different cultures. However, the disciplines of the natural mathematical cycle also have the same pedagogical and cross-cultural potential, for example, using information and communication technologies, you can refer to the names of national scientists – mathematicians or physicists, famous teachers in either disciplines, their work experience, biographies, and contributions to science. Besides, in all lessons (and naturally mathematics is not an exception), it is advisable to focus students on such personality qualities as patriotism, pride in their fellow countrymen when addressing the role of native culture, regional science and technology in the development of a particular science; the hard work, creativity, perseverance in achieving the goal necessary both in solving complex mathematical problems and in the process of performing socially significant activities by a statesman whose contribution to national progress is obvious and undeniable shall also be highlighted. It is very fruitful to use such a methodical reception as an educational journey during lessons. The application of this technology implies a historical excursion into the culture of different peoples, their spiritual wealth, a heroic past recorded in oral folk art, myths and legends, remote from today by significant time, but nevertheless preserving its cross-cultural educational potential.

Conceptually, the cross-cultural orientation of the educational process should be considered in the context of peculiarities of the influence on the personality of culture in its synchrony and diachrony, which activates the spiritual forces and abilities of young students, affecting their consciousness and emotional sphere. The level of perception of cultural values recorded in literature, art, and the vocabulary of the studied languages is significantly increased due to the fact that due to the historical proximity of the mentality and cultures of peoples living in the multicultural space, there is the introduction to the spiritual values of different peoples of the Fatherland.

In addition to its direct duties – education and training of students – a modern national school is called upon to fulfill a very important mission – immersion of its students in a cross-cultural environment, formation of their value-based orientations, arming with the ideas of nationality and patriotism, cognitive and emotional development on the material of native and Russian languages and literature, folklore and mythology, as a result of which the younger generation becomes an indifferent viewer and an active figure in the cultural and historical process, thus implementing a practice-oriented paradigm, a competent approach (Arsaliev, 2017; Takhokhov, 2019).

At the same time, it should be emphasized that methodically and organizationally this process takes place naturally in the form of coordination and integration of subjects provided for by federal standards and curricula, with ethno-oriented courses and subjects covering both the current situation of culture, religion, economics and other spheres of life of the region, as well as the historical prerequisites of these achievements. It is the unity, interconnection, convergence of general scientific provisions that form a natural-scientific and humanitarian worldview among schoolchildren, with the material of the region, examples from real life that confirm theoretical positions, which is that “zest”, a necessary addition that effectively “works” on spiritual-moral developement of the student’s personality. From the practice of many peoples it is known that the moral and psychological satisfaction of the cognitive needs of people is recognized as one of the most important indicators to prevent anxiety and discomfort. The practice of active cooperation with creators in the field of art, science, literature, sports, charity, protection of the Motherland and protection of order is recognized as a good feed for the established system of educational work of any educational organization; their participation in advisory and teaching activities, in the work of scientific-practical and research forums, in youth actions and other events related to the life of the region, educates a civil nature of a future teacher, actualizes patriotic feelings and the desire to contribute as much as possible to the common good cause.

The effectiveness of the cross-cultural competence of future teachers is also associated with the efforts of creative figures and scientific workers in the psychological-pedagogical provision of technologies for the implementation of the cultural component in the educational process of the university; first and foremost this concerns the rationale for meaningful and methodological mechanisms for the use of the cultural-producing potential of the regional component. This includes the identification of ways to adapt young people to the real field of the cultural space of the region, scientific and methodological support of the educational process taking into account the experimental verification of the effectiveness of the offered subject courses and specific recommendations for their introduction into education and upbringing.

The concept of cross-cultural orientation of the educational process of teachers is not selective in the sense that it covers all students in a given university, since the incorporation of all young people, regardless of their ethnicity, into cultural, social and educational environment gives them the opportunity to realize themselves professionally and personally. The target setting of educational subjects and all out-of-class educational work is the maximum adaptation of young people to the social environment on the basis of mastering all the abundance of national and world culture.

The formation of a cross-cultural orientation within the teacher training system as a leading component of their spiritual and moral education and professional competence can be considered a cornerstone in the formation and development of a person, a citizen of the country, connected by inextricable threads with the culture and traditions of his people and open to the cultural influences of other peoples. The modern school is designed to take care not only of the knowledge of students, but also to develop their desire to comprehend cross-cultural and patriotic ideals and guidelines, to affirm fundamental values and concepts in their worldview, taking into account experience recorded in the traditions of the people in their interaction with other peoples for centuries, and in this regard the society represented by social and religious institutions, and the state can actively engage with the pedagogical community.

Conclusion

Thus, the study proved that the ambiguity of modern civilizational processes makes it necessary to give the educational process of teacher training a cross-cultural orientation, which can be solved at a high level of multicultural competence of teachers ready for this mission, organizing equal interpersonal, subject-subject interaction with students in the process of their psychological and pedagogical support.

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17 May 2021

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Takhokhov, B. A. (2021). Cross-Cultural Orientation Of Professional Teacher Training. In D. K. Bataev, S. A. Gapurov, A. D. Osmaev, V. K. Akaev, L. M. Idigova, M. R. Ovhadov, A. R. Salgiriev, & M. M. Betilmerzaeva (Eds.), Knowledge, Man and Civilization - ISCKMC 2020, vol 107. European Proceedings of Social and Behavioural Sciences (pp. 2533-2541). European Publisher. https://doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2021.05.340