Page 450 - Handbooks of Applied Linguistics Communication Competence Language and Communication Problems Practical Solutions

428 Janet Spreckels and Helga Kotthoff

Below we attempt to further illuminate a few linguistic and non-linguistic
forms of communicating cultural identity and alterity.

2.1. Formations of ‘us’ and ‘them’ by national identity categorization

Koole and Hanson (2002) examine the display and use of national identity cat-
egories in classroom interaction in the Netherlands. ‘Moroccan’ is the teacher’s
membership categorization (outlined above), which is challenged by the pupils.
The teacher adopts the position of a knowledgeable actor in discussions of
topics from the everyday experience of her students. Koole and Hanson in par-
ticular show how the teacher employs the national identity category ‘Moroccan’
in a deterministic, deductive manner. In response, Moroccan students challenge
not so much the national identity category as such, but its meaning in terms of
category-bound activities. They also show how difficult it can be for a teacher
to participate successfully in the student-centered approach that is advocated
for multi-ethnic classes today. The interactional practices and competencies
required for such participation appear to be largely incompatible with the teach-
er’s acting as the one who knows (2002: 212). The authors show in detailed tran-
scriptions that even when all participants recognize a category such as ‘Moroc-
can’, this does not imply that they agree on all the attributes of this category. In
one lesson, the class discusses the practice of bathing and taking showers, and
the teacher claims that, in contrast to Dutch children, Moroccan and Turkish
children are taught that boys and girls should do this separately. A Moroccan
girl challenges the teacher’s category predicate that Moroccan boys and girls
never bathe together. She tells about her family in which she (seven years old)
had a bath together with her eight year old brother. The teacher sets her counter-
example apart as an exception to the rule. Her family is more liberal.
In another case (2002: 221), the teacher works with a category that links
wearing headscarves to religion. This category knowledge allows the teacher to
select an answer from the children that is in line with her knowledge, and to ne-
glect answers (“we wear them at home”) that are potentially, or actually, not in
agreement with this knowledge. She seems to aim at having her category knowl-
edge confirmed, rather than at having the students relate their experiences with
headscarf practices, as the authors discuss. Teachers such as the one presented
by Koole and Hanson have often been trained from a transfer perspective and
have received their education from knowledge-transferring teachers, not from a
construction model of learning and education. The authors conclude that they
faced a problem of interactional competence in the school environment (see
chapter 16 by Scherr in this volume).