Transcultural Competence as Transformative Learning for Building an Inclusive Society
Date
2019-08-22
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Abstract
This qualitative research examines the process of acquiring transcultural competence by adult learners and how transcultural skills and knowledge empower personal growth and foster societal inclusion. The theoretical concept links transculturalism with transformative learning as a continuous process of recognizing different world views and multiple identities, adaptation and interaction in our culturally dynamic reality and transnational mobility. I contend that transculture can be perceived as encompassing and creating space for individual’s transformative learning and for developing transcultural competence. Based on findings from 21 face-to-face interviews, two focus groups, observation, and document analysis, my investigation unfolds around four areas of learning and constructing the path of transcultural competence. The first is related to developing the qualities of transcultural person. I outlined cognitive, affective, and social dimensions through which individuals develop transcultural competence. The second area reveals intrinsic and extrinsic factors that motivate learning engagement. I found the dominance of internal motivation which relates to the need of personal growth, family relationships, and adaptation to a new society and working environment. Moreover, the concept of motivation for learning on personal and organizational levels refers to a complex system recognizing individual experience, personal emotions, cognitive knowledge, and engagement in relationships. The third area is about constructing transcultural learning as a holistic transformative process that involves inquiry, framing, positionality, and progressing to dialogue, reflection, and competent action. As such, the process relates to multiple forces that connect local to global, challenging taken-for-granted frames of reference, expanding world views, integrating new practices, and transforming individuals. The fourth area reveals that individuals empowered with transcultural knowledge transfer this knowledge and act as agent of change for fostering inclusion in workplace and in society. My participants identified a deficiency in transcultural knowledge in education, organizational professional development, in government policies of integration, where the implications of this study will be valuable. This research offers a theoretical perspective and a vision aimed at dissolving cultural and ethnic binaries, the notion of belonging from culturally specific and nationally exclusive to transcultural and interspatial connections. As such transcultural learning model could have multiple implications in policies and practices in adult and higher education, immigrant integration, personal and organizational growth, for facilitating sociocultural adaptation and inclusion in the global age of transnational migration.
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Keywords
transculture, transcultural learning, transcultural competence, transformative learning, inclusion
Citation
Jurkova, S. (2019). Transcultural Competence as Transformative Learning for Building an Inclusive Society (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.