Reel Life Methodology Developing intercultural competence through film fragments and dialogue in South Africa
Abstract
South Africa is a multicultural country; however, the politics of the past have resulted in teachers from diverse cultures being ignorant of the mores of others with whom they interact. Teachers thus risk transferring preconceived knowledge and attitudes into the classroom. The aim of this study was to explore to what extent the methodology of Reel Life can promote the development of intercultural competence among South African teachers. Film fragments were used to stimulate intercultural dialogue, and an environment was created in which teachers from different cultures could share their culture knowledge and begin to develop intercultural competence. Our results show that the teachers were able to shift their frames of reference in a movement between ethnic positions and a shared perspective of them all being South African.
Full text article
References
Akin, F., Schubert, S., & Schwingel, R. (2004). Head-on. Germany/Turkey: Arte, Bavaria Film International.
Akkus, S., Ruzicková-Steiner, G., Lohmann, N., & Lohmann, C. (2008). Evet, ich will! [Evet, I do!]. Germany: Infopictures (Alive AG).
Björk, Eva Lambertsson and Eschenbach, Jutta (2014). Reel Life – Film as a tool for intercultural dialogue in the classroom and beyond.
Bamberg, M. (2004). Narrative discourse and identities. In J. C. Meister, T. Kindt, W. Schernus, & M. Stein (Eds.), Narratology beyond literary criticism (pp. 213-237). Berlin & New York: Walter de Gruyter.
Baynham, M. (2015). Identity: Brought about or brought along? In F. Dervin & K. Risager (Eds.), Researching identity and interculturality (pp. 67-85). New York: Routledge.
Bergala, A. (2002). L’hypothèse cinéma. Petit traité de transmission du cinéma à l’école et ailleurs [The hypothesis of cinema. A small text on how to bring the cinema to school and elsewhere]. Paris: Cahiers du cinema.
Byram, M., Gribkova, B., & Starkey, H. (2002). Developing the intercultural dimension in language teaching. A practical introduction for teachers. Strasbourg: Council of Europe. Retrieved April 06, 2016, from http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/Source/Guide_dimintercult_EN.pdf
Deardorff, D. K. (2006). Identification and assessment of intercultural competence as a student outcome of internationalization. Journal of Studies in International Education, 10(3), 241-266.
Günthner, S. (2012). Doing Culture – Kulturspezifische Selbst- und Fremdpositionierung im Gespräch. Jahrbuch Deutsch als Fremdsprache, 38, 30-48.
Günthner, S., & Luckmann, T. (2001). Asymmetries of knowledge in intercultural communication: The relevance of cultural repertoires of communicative genres. In A. Di Luzio, S. Günthner, & F. Orletti (Eds.), Culture in communication. Analyses of intercultural situations (pp. 55-86). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Iser, W. (1980). The Act of Reading. A Theory of Aesthetic Response. Baltimore, London: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Jensen, I. (2011). Postkulturel kommunikation – fordi kultur ikke altid er vigtigst. In T. Sundnes Drønen, K. Fretheim, & M. Skjortnes (Eds.), Forståelsens gylne øyeblikk. Festskrift til Øyvind Dahl (pp. 47-61). Trondheim: Tapir.
Kazepides, T. (2012). Education as Dialogue. In T. Besley, & M. P. Peters (Eds.), Interculturalism, Education and Dialogue (pp. 76-86). New York: Peter Lang.
Martin, M. (2014). A witness of whiteness: An autoethnographic examination of a white teacher's own inherent prejudice. Education as Change, 18(2), 237-254.
Maalouf, A. (1998). Les identités meurtrières. Paris: Grasset.
Odağ, Ö., Wallin, H. R., & Kedzior, K. K. (2015). Definition of Intercultural Competence According to Undergraduate Students at an International University in Germany. Journal of Studies in International Education, 10(3), 1-22.
Risager, K. & Dervin, F. (2015). Introduction. In F. Dervin & K. Risager (Eds.), Researching identity and interculturality (pp. 1-25). New York: Routledge.
Schumann, A. (2009). Interkulturelles Lernen mit Filmen in Fremdsprachenunterricht. In: Leitzke-Ungerer, E (Eds.). Film im Fremdsprachenunterricht. Literarishe Stoffe, interkulturelle Ziele, mediale Wirkung (pp. 171-185). Stuttgart: ibidem.
Smith Rorrer, A., & Furr, S. (2009). Using Film as a Multicultural Awareness Tool in Teacher Education. Multicultural Perspectives, 11(3), 162-168.
Turner, J., Nkosi, K., Siephemo, R., Whittaker, J., Msutwana, Z., & Follett, K. (2009). White Wedding. South Africa: Dada Films.
Authors
Copyright (c) 2017 Eva Lambertsson Björk, Jutta Eschenbach, Lynette Webb

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
This journal provides immediate and free open access to all its content and is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). This means readers are permitted to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author, as long as proper attribution is given. This policy is consistent with the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) definition of open access.
Article Details
How to Cite
Most read articles by the same author(s)
- Eva Lambertsson Björk, Jutta Eschenbach, Reel Life Film as a tool for intercultural dialogue in the classroom and beyond , Journal of Intercultural Communication: Vol. 14 No. 3 (2014)