Roles and Responsibilities of Teaching Staff in Promoting Interculturalism

Abstract

Education can, without a doubt, be a long-term solution to the problems of a multi-ethnic and multicultural society. From a place of defensiveness seclusion and separation, schools can evolve towards a place of openness and communication. From an instrument of assimilation and strengthening of nationalistic characteristics, school can become a tool for the formation of young people, with respect for cultural diversity. In this paper we want to identify the elements of intercultural education existing in the curriculum of the Romanian education and the way in which interculturality can be promoted as a European competence. Intercultural communication as a trainer’s competence should be considered as a priority both from the point of view of European standards and at national level. Therefore, the professors’ concerns should focus primarily on encouraging behaviors, attitudes and values so as to cause the individual to react desirably to fear, anxiety, curiosity, labeling, ethnocentrism etc.; the development of implicit or explicit hierarchical relations between groups and their impact on communication; on exercising the students’ competences to perceive time and space, the rapport between them, the system of values and beliefs, the way of feeling and thinking, the types of behavior, that is, the entire habitus that each individual accomplishes by socializing in the determined cultural environment ; on the development of identity strategies that participants put into practice to defend themselves against destabilization, to affirm their own identity, to integrate in the group, to make a positive image, to differentiate themselves, to individualize.