Exploring teachers’ perceptions and practices of intercultural education in an international school

Abstract

This article examines teachers’ perceptions and experiences of intercultural education. The participants (n = 11) were teachers who work in the Primary Years Programme (PYP) of an International Baccalaureate (IB) school in the Netherlands. The school was chosen as the context for this study due to the emphasis on intercultural understanding in IB education. The data were collected through a closed and open-ended survey in 2019 and complemented by an ethnographical method. The results showed that the teachers mostly drew on cultural-differentialist approaches in their definition of intercultural education. They considered intercultural education to be important for the pupils’ future but felt insecure in implementing it. All teachers reported implementing intercultural education in their teaching at least to some extent, however with some limitations. The teachers focused predominantly on national cultures and traditions to address interculturality in class. Despite the overall trend, a few teachers expressed more critical views on interculturality and expanded their perceptions of it to ‘small cultures’. The findings of this study speak to the importance of paying attention to pre-service teacher training to provide teachers with tangible tools to implement a type of intercultural education that departs from solely essentialist views of culture.