Third Place Learning: Reflective Inquiry Into Intercultural and Global Cage Painting (PB)

By Glyn M. Rimmington and Mara Alagic

Book Overview

The hybridity and dynamism of today's interconnected, interdependent and culturally diverse world poses challenges and opportunities for learning and communication. This book introduces an approach to facilitate global learning opportunities, while facing these challenges. The approach is based on the cage painting metaphor for dialogic co-construction of meaning, and understanding of multiple perspectives. Resolving disorienting dilemmas or preconceptions requires a dialectic flow of thinking since the root of the problem may lay deep in person's beliefs and values. Such experiences might be transformative in their nature, causing change in person's perspective; better understanding the culture of themselves and other people; reflective and mindful inquiry into one's worldview; the third place processes. Misunderstandings are more prevalent when using technology--global reach--between people from distant locations different cultures. To prepare people for these challenges, we offer a Web 2.0-based instructional design blueprint. Dependent on the context and content of the planned activities, the cage painting and global learning processes may be facilitated simultaneously or sequentially. The approach presented in this book has attracted interest of educators in different disciplines as well as human resources leaders concerned with key characteristics of today's global business workers: intercultural/global communication and collaboration. The ideas emerged from six years of studying ways in which we and our colleagues from 25 other countries integrated global learning into classrooms in a range of discipline areas. In this book we explore the competences needed to communicate interculturally and avoid the effects of preconceptions on our communication and collaboration. We review metaphors commonly used in intercultural communication and then introduce a new metaphor called "Cage Painting". The process of Cage Painting requires certain conditions during intercultural communication, whether it is face-to-face or via global reach, using technology. The transformative processes that we undergo as we confront cultural disorienting dilemmas, smiling being a simple example of one, are named the Third Place.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1593119267
• ISBN13: 9781593119263
• Release Date: May 2008
• Publisher: Information Age Publishing
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.61 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

A good source of new ideas and their practical implementation

"Third Place Learning" is the interplay of theory and practice, enhancing intercultural and global awareness, and is a good source of new ideas and their practical implementation for experts involved in intercultural communication, global learning, cultural studies, education, linguistics and philosophy. It allows intentional development of a broader view of culture. This type of learning is a complex process of crossing your "cultural borders" in terms of overlooking your cultural preconceptions as well as cultural meanings and symbols of an interlocutor's culture. The goal of such a communication is to create a combination of your and an interlocutor's culture - a hybrid culture. Reinterpreting every new cultural situation by adopting position of an outsider is based on the concept of Third Space introduced by Homi K. Bhabha. In their book, Rimmington and Alagic, help to solve this complex task by means of the metaphor and simulation. With the aid of these tools, learners are stimulated to conceptualize and visualize the intercultural communication competence by painting the bars of their own cultural cage and the bars of other communication participants. The algorithm of cultural scenarios, introduced by the authors of the book and based on disorienting dilemmas, gives an impetus to learners to change their perspectives and to reflect a cultural situation as a whole. "Third Place Learning" brings a new perspective in the fields of global learning and intercultural communication by encouraging people to change their worldview, to open their hearts and minds.