Communicating across cultures

Abstract

The arrival of increasing numbers of refugees and immigrants has caused large increases in multicultural school populations. This interdisciplinary paper describes an ongoing study which began in 2012, discussing the role of the school library in multicultural, multilingual school communities and offering suggestions about how the school library could become a multicultural learning environment. It provides information to help school library staff to look closely at these issues and to provide help and useful suggestions to the entire school community. The prime objective is to help the school community to safely and constructively deal with the dynamics of a multi-cultural society, using the school library as a base. Safe facilitation requires “trained” leaders from the school community. An e-learning program for school librarians is being adapted for this purpose.