Forms of Communication in multicultural classrooms: A way of exploring dialogue

A major problem in multicultural classrooms is the form of communication adopted in order to include all differently socialised children participating in activities. A form of communication is a unified set of components creating an orientation for the main aspects of communication as a social process, namely: meanings of information, participants’ contributions, their ways of selection and bodies, expectations about immediate results and possible future consequences. For each communication it is possible to observe a form. In Western countries’ classrooms, the main observable forms are educational, but it is also possible to observe various forms of interpersonal communication among children and between teachers and children. These forms create all the negative and positive consequences in communication for the single participants and the whole classroom.In a multicultural classroom, orientation determined by these forms is weakened by the differences among the cultural meanings of communication. Consequently, these forms necessarily include an intercultural orientation, which is often not clearly observed by participants. For example, the teacher’s sentence “Even if he is an Egyptian, he is a good boy” has an intercultural orientation including: meanings of cultural differences, teacher’s and child’s contributions, expectations about the results of communication including Egyptians and good boys. If this communication could continue, clarifying the further meanings of this sentence, we could better understand these components, and we could also understand the meanings of Egyptians’ and good boys’ ways of selection, the possible future consequences of communication with Egyptians and good boys and Egyptians’ bodies. Starting from theories about intercultural communication, it is possible to investigate the combination of Western stabilised cultural forms (such as education and forms of interpersonal communication) and the treatment of different cultural orientations produced in the multicultural classroom. This kind of research produces a deeper knowledge of dialogue in multicultural classrooms. Adequate qualitative research techniques are necessary in order to explore the different emerging forms of intercultural communication