A dissertation/extended project presented as a partial requirement for the award of MA in Religious Education of the University of Warwick

Abstract 

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The aim of my research was to consider the impact of a school link project on pupils’ perceptions. It consisted of a longitudinal study over the period of a year with three points of contact. The first contact was an informal event, the second included a more structured teaching component, and the third contact a joint celebration of what had been learned over the year. Each time a class of year five children from a school in a suburban town and an inner-city school met together to work on the project. After each session the children from school A had the opportunity to respond through questionnaires, diaries, and interviews based on the council of Europe AIE interview structure.

Looking at previous research carried out on Allports Contact Theory, I would have expected to find that with an increase in the number of points of contact would come an increase in positive perception of children across different faiths and cultures. What I did find was that pupils’ perceptions did not change significantly over the year. The aspect that did appear to change more significantly was the number of children recognising that they felt they were learning something new from the experience. The research considers what the children might be learning by analysing the interview responses through a grounded approach and considering what intercultural competences the children were developing.

My research seems to suggest that during the school linking project the children were developing a range of intercultural competences, and that through the use of the AIE the children were becoming more reflective in their processing of intercultural encounters.

Quicklinks

1 – Introduction 2 – Literature Review 2.1 – Contact Theory 2.2 – Inter-Group Models of Interaction 2.3 – Intercultural Competences 2.4 – Research Questions 3 – Methodology 3.1 – Teacher as Researcher 3.2 – Field and Sample 3.2 – Intervention 3.3 – Qualitative and Quantitative Methods 3.4 – Ethical Issues 3.5 – Data Analysis 4 – Analysis of Results 4.1 – Pupils’ Attitudes to Intercultural Encounters 4.2 – Analysis of Interviews Through Grounded Research 4.3 Comparison of Grounded Research and AIE Competences 4.4 – Longitudinal Changes in Attitudes and Competences 4.5 – The Effect of the AIE and Learning

5 – Discussion of Findings 5.1 – The Impact of a School Link Project to Build Positive Perceptions 5.2 – The Impact of a Structured Teaching Component 5.3 – The Impact of Using the AIE 6 – Conclusions 6.1 – Research Question One 6.2 – Research Question Two 6.3 – Research Question Three 6.4 – Research Limitations 6.5 – Possible Ways Forward 6.5 – Summary of Findings References Appendix A – Graphs Showing Questionnaire Responses Appendix B – Grounded Analysis of Interview Responses

 

1. Introduction

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In September 2005 Trevor Phillips, Chair of the Commission for Racial Equality delivered a speech in Manchester entitled “After 7/7: Sleepwalking to Segregation”. He highlighted the fact that:

…we are a society, which, almost without noticing it, is becoming more divided by race and religion (Phillips, 2005).

In this speech he warned of the dangers of segregation of minority groups, he highlighted the fact that whilst we may be sleepwalking into segregation, “we” the majority have a responsibility to address the issues.

There has been a growing concern in recent times about the importance of developing community cohesion and in particular how schools can develop the skills and attitudes necessary to equip pupils to become more effective inter-cultural citizens. Since the riots of 2001 and the resulting Cantle report, new initiatives have developed to help address the issues raised, the school-linking projects being one of them.

The concept of community cohesion emerged in the UK in 2001, following the disturbances in Bradford, Burnley and Oldham. A report was commissioned “Building cohesive communities.” The Report states that:

We recognise that in many areas affected by disorder or community tensions, there is little interchange between members of different racial, cultural and religious communities and that proactive measures will have to be taken to promote dialogue and understanding. We also take on board the need to generate a widespread and open debate about identity, shared values, and common citizenship as part of the process of building cohesive communities. This debate will feed into the citizenship education programme, and proposals to promote the common rights and responsibilities around citizenship for those seeking residence in this country. (Denham report, 2001, p.3)

It is from this background that the primary school in which I teach has been developing the curriculum to help the children to become more effective intercultural citizens. Our school has good partnerships with schools in both China and Bosnia. However, we recognised that we needed to develop a deeper understanding of what life was like for others living beyond our town in the UK. Our school has a very limited number of children from different cultural backgrounds, and we wanted to be able to give our children an understanding of the diverse nature of the country we live in. This was what prompted the school-linking project. We began to explore the possibility of developing a link with a school in the neighbouring town with a very different catchment area to ours, and pupils from a more multicultural background. We found a natural point of contact with one of the staff having a partner working in a school in the neighbouring town. We started to consider how best to equip our pupils with the necessary skills and attitudes to make good friendships, to develop an understanding of life in another part of the country, and to facilitate the skills necessary to build meaningful interactions.

In the past there has been an assumption that building links with people from different backgrounds will, in itself, build positive relationships and break down prejudice; this has been described as the “contact hypothesis.” Troyna and Hatcher define it as:

…the conviction that interpersonal contact across ethnic lines, in and of itself, brings about better race relationships by attenuating individual racial prejudice. (Troyna and Hatcher, 1992, p.24)

But is this actually the case? When pupils from different backgrounds and communities have the opportunity to spend time together, are the friendships that are formed indicators of a breakdown of prejudice and better relationships?

A working group within the Council of Europe has been investigating and developing aspects of good practice in schools, and they have highlighted three progressive dimensions to intercultural education. Firstly, they have outlined the attitude of tolerance, a willingness to co-exist with others who are different. Secondly, they have explored the skill of reciprocity, an acceptance of difference and respect for others. Thirdly, they have identified civic-mindedness, which is perhaps the most developed outlook. This is the ability to distance oneself from personal convictions in order to value those of others, whilst still holding onto one’s personal beliefs. For pupils to develop these attitudes, the council maintains that pupils need to have an element of teaching which supports them in achieving the necessary skills:

...this moderation is not something that develops spontaneously on reaching adulthood. It must be taught as an integral part of the objectives of intercultural education. (Keast, J, 2007, p.28).

This dissertation explores whether linking schools does improve positive relationships across different faiths and cultures. In other words, if schools are linked, will the interventions that are put in place help to improve the relationships and perceptions of those children that take part? It takes a look at how pupil perceptions change and develop over a one-year longitudinal study, to find out if increased contact has a cumulative effect on pupils’ perceptions. It explores the effect of providing some structured teaching activities, exploring similarities and differences across the two schools, in order to make a comparison between the effect of an informal contact and that involving a more structured teaching intervention. It also looks at how effective the Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters interview process was in impacting the reflective learning that took place.

2. Literature Review

2.1 Contact Theory

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To come to an understanding of the thinking behind the concept of a school linking project, it is important to be aware of the “Contact Theory” and the influence it has had over the last 50 years. Allport initially developed the concept in 1954. He knew from the experiences of the Second World War that when prejudices are allowed to go unchallenged there are serious consequences. But where do the prejudices come from, and can they be challenged? He states:

If ethnic and religious prejudices are not inborn - and there seems to be almost unanimous agreement amongst psychologists that they are not - it is important to find out why so large a majority of people in our culture acquire attitudes of animosity and distrust. (Allport, 1946, p9)

In 1946, Allport completed research into some roots of prejudice, using a series of questionnaires with 437 American research students in order to gain an insight into prejudiced attitudes towards Jews and Negroes at the time. Through their studies they drew some interesting conclusions. Amongst these, they found that prejudiced people often have unfavourable childhood memories of the members of the group that they are prejudiced against, suggesting there is an important impact in the types of early childhood experiences with minority groups. Those demonstrating prejudiced attitudes had few school experiences or teaching memories, suggesting they did not have or had forgotten any intercultural school training they may have experienced. Allport and Kramer also found that these prejudices first develop during school years between the ages of 6 and 16, particularly between the ages of 12 and 16.

The contacts that worked best at reducing prejudice were those that were among equal status groups and those contacts that had a more intimate knowledge of each other. In these situations, stereotypes and negative reporting can be quickly checked against a personal experience and knowledge of real people. They found that:

The more numerous the equal status contacts, the less prejudice. Thus, for example in the case of contacts with Jews, those non-Jews who reported few equal status contacts were considerably more often anti-Semitics than those who reported many. (Allport, 1946, p.23)

Whilst Allport recognised that these are tentative conclusions, a person with little knowledge or only casual experiences of a minority group will be far more susceptible to secondhand stereotypes and prejudice than someone who has recent positive meaningful contacts and meaningful relationships with that group.

There are many others who have looked at the impact of inter-group contact. Mannhheimer and Williams (1949) investigated attitudes amongst soldiers who had served together in WW2; contact in these circumstances had clearly had a very positive and significant impact on the views and outlooks of the soldiers. Brophy (1945) also found that white sailors who had worked together with Negro sailors had had a similar change in perception, and they also demonstrated a significant cumulative effect on perceptions; more contact developed increasingly better perceptions and attitudes amongst the sailors. However, Sherif and Sherif (1953) in their research observed that in order for the group contact to have a positive effect it was important that the two groups take part in some kind of joint activity. Whilst group members hold each other at a distance there is a limited likelihood of any lasting change in attitude.

Developments in the Contact Theory

Since Allport first suggested the “Contact Hypothesis” in his book The Nature of Prejudice, there have been decades of researchers exploring and testing over a wide range of different populations just how effective inter-group contact is at breaking down negative attitudes and building up positive ones. Most people have found that the four conditions he laid down are helpful if not sufficient conditions to maximize the chances of breaking down stereotypes. There has been some discussion considering whether the contact actually does change the attitudes, or are the people looking to be involved in this kind of work self-selecting; would they be open to positive attitude changes under any circumstances? Pettigrew (1997) has done some statistical analysis, which suggests that the path from contact to attitudes is stronger than the reciprocal path. It is now becoming clear that there is overwhelming evidence to confirm that contact does work.

Recently, Pettigrew and Tropp carried out an analysis on the effects of contact over 516 studies. They reported a significant inverse relationship between contact and prejudice (effect size, Cohen’s d =-.47, r = .23) suggesting that contact with people from different groups clearly does have an impact on reducing prejudice attitudes. What is less clear is how that change is taking place, and when this is happening most successfully.

The contact hypothesis has also impacted many of the initiatives that have been taking place in Northern Ireland in recent years. In a country where 97% of school-aged children attend single-denominational schools, Cairns and Hewstone (2002) found that contact, particularly within educational settings, was proving to be an effective way of breaking down sectarian prejudice.

However, Hewstone warns of the limitations of expecting too much from the intergroup contact theory and quotes the example of the breakdown of the former Yugoslavia. In a country where Catholics, Orthodox, and Muslim people had lived side by side with regular contact for many years, and in fact 12 % of marriages were mixed faith, this contact and mixing of communities did not stop the country descending into civil war in the 1990’s.

It became clear that close friendships with members of different ethnic groups offered no special immunity from barbaric acts. (Hewstone, 2002, p.354)

Simply spending time with people from another group is not sufficient in itself to break down prejudiced attitudes; there are other factors at work as well.

More recently, 10 years on from the Bradford riots, Dr Paul Thomas from Huddersfield University has done extensive research into community cohesion in Bradford schools, and found that there is still significant segregation between the white and Asian communities. He warns that:

You can't make people mix because you get a backlash. If people feel they are being made to get on, it's not necessarily a positive thing. (Thomas, 2010, BBC website)

To conclude, whilst there are large bodies of evidence to suggest a very positive effect of the contact theory, people are complicated and there are many other factors at work in these kinds of situations. In order to enhance the chances of an encounter having a positive effect, certain elements need to be present in balance.

2.2 Inter-Group Models of Interaction

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Since the early 1970s, social categorisation theory has provided a framework for studying inter-group relations. It is based on two underlying ideas. Firstly, that individuals organize their understanding of the social world by turning continuous variables into separate classes, minimizing differences within categories and maximizing inter-category differences. Secondly, those individuals are themselves members of some social categories and not others, an understanding that defines some groups as “we” and others as “they” - an in-group and an out-group classification. In other words, individuals are looking to find similarities and differences with those around them in order to define themselves.

Brewer and Intercultural Interaction

Brewer, in his article “When contact is not enough”, proposes an “Optimal distinctiveness theory” (Brewer 1996). He suggests that in order for an individual to feel stable and secure when meeting new people, two opposing aspects are needed. Firstly, individuals are motivated by the need to belong to social groups, to be assimilated, included and accepted. Secondly, he suggests that individuals need to be aware of the fact that they are different and unique within that social group. It has been said of people getting married that it is the similarities that bring them together but the differences that keep them there. Brewer highlights the paradoxical nature of this model when he states that:

According to the model, as inclusiveness increases, the need for inclusion is satisfied, but the need for differentiation is activated; conversely, as inclusiveness decreases, the differentiation need is reduced, but the need for assimilation is activated. (Brewer, 1996, p.296)

For Brewer, what is going on during a group contact is a mixture of looking for similarities, but recognising differences as well, and that there needs to be a balance between the two aspects for individuals to feel secure.

With this categorisation system come potential problems. Brewer suggests three different ways where attitudes might inhibit positive encounters.

1. The inter-group accentuation principle - assimilation within category boundaries and contrast between categories such that all members of the in-group are perceived to be more similar to the self than members of the out-group.
2. The in-group favouritism principle - positive affect (trust, liking) selectively generalised to fellow in-group members, but not out-group members.
3. The social competition principle - inter-group social comparison associated with perceived negative interdependence between the in-group and the out-group (Brewer, 1996, p.292)

The effect and behavior as a consequence of this schema can lead to preferential treatment of the in-group, distrust of others, and unhelpful competition. This then leads to the question, how can contacts be structured in order to ensure that inter-group contacts minimize the chances of the more negative features of the schema being allowed to develop? Three different models are outlined below. Each model starts from the same understanding of the basic schema but suggests different ways of reducing potential negative consequences.

De-categorisation: The Personalization Model

The first model suggests that encounters should be highly personalised; that pupils should have the opportunity to get to know individuals outside of group identities. This perspective suggests that stereotypes can be broken down, as it provides opportunities for each person to get to know out-group members as individuals; this in turn breaks down the concept that all members of a group are the same. As individuals get to know other individuals it becomes increasingly difficult to describe people from the other group as all being the same; it challenges perceptions and breaks down prejudice. Evidence suggests that those who interacted under more personalised conditions showed less in-group bias at the end of the contact.

Re-categorisation: The Common In-group Identity Model

This model suggests that encounters should not focus on differences in the groups but should encourage identification of both groups into a wider, single social identity. (Gaertner, Mann, Murrell & Dovidio, 1989) When this form of re-categorisation occurs, the original in-group loyalties become transferred to the wider new group comprised of the in-group and the out-group. The two groups become assimilated into one new group.

Sub-categorisation: The Distinct Social Identity Model

This model suggests a very different approach. It is based on the idea that for groups to work well they need to have distinctive but complimentary roles to contribute to a common goal. It is important to recognise and identify with a group, which can then co-operate together towards a shared outcom In this way both groups can maintain separate identities whilst working within a co-operative framework. As the two groups work together, they begin to develop an understanding of an “us” and “we”, rather then an “us and “them”, mentality.

Each of these three models presents potential problems. The de-categorisation model will not satisfy the need for individuals to feel part of and assimilate into a group; it is looking simply at an individual level and not inter-group level. The re-categorisation model is possibly unstable because it doesn’t allow for the need for individuals to be different, whilst the sub-categorisation model has the potential to create strong intra-group loyalty but also to promote inter-group competition. If each of these models has limitations, how can we try to make sure that pupils get the most from their inter-group contact? Hewstone (2003) Brewer (1996) and Eller Abrams (2004) all agree that the best chance of a positive group encounter is a combination of the three approaches. Hewstone suggests that:

The most effective way to capitalise on salience for generalisation while avoiding inter-group anxiety seems to be to promote contact that is simultaneously both ‘interpersonal’ (e.g. involving personal exchange within a close relationship) and ‘inter-group’ (i.e. both members are still aware that they belong to different groups). (Hewstone, 2003, p.353)

Pettigrew suggested that the three models could be used at different phases of group contacts. He suggested that early contact is best if there is de-categorisation of group members, that people get to know each other as individuals without being concerned about group membership. Later contacts should provide opportunities for sub-categorisation in which individuals are fully aware that they belong to different groups and come to appreciate their differences. Finally, he recommends contacts that provide opportunities for re-categorisation, opportunities for groups to come together to share an overarching membership of the two groups together. It is this structure that lies behind the approach used in this longitudinal study of the impact of a school-linking project.

Bradford School Linking Project (Case study)

The school linking project in Bradford started up with just two schools in 2001 and grew to 61 primary and 12 secondary schools by 2004. The project was based on the inter-group contact theory and aimed to bring about a reduction in prejudice between groups of children based on cultural, religious, or ethical differences. The school-linking network developed a programme of learning, taking account of Pettigrew’s recommendations. The project aimed to bring together children from linked schools in a way that would enable them to work together in an inclusive and meaningful way, to bring about an increase in understanding and trust amongst children from different backgrounds, and to provide an environment in which longstanding relationships could grow between groups that would not normally meet.

The evaluation considered two dimensions of the study; firstly, the impact in response to the direct experiences, and secondly, the impact in terms of deeper transferable attitude change. Raw (2007) found that there was a marked impact on the children’s cross-cultural friendships, particularly in the case of children attending primary schools that serve a community predominantly of a single cultural or ethnic identity (i.e. 90% or more either mainly white British or mainly minority ethnic). They also found that the greatest impact was seen amongst year four and five pupils. It was this research that helped to influence the structure of teaching I chose to apply to the longitudinal study and the choice of age to work with in our project.

2.3 Intercultural Competences

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In order to assess the effect of my school-linking programme over the year, it is worth considering what kind of intercultural competences are needed to gain the most from these kinds of opportunities, to see if there is increased evidence of development of theses competences in the children’s responses.

There are many people and institutions that have been involved over the last 30 years or more in trying to define and come to a consensus about what the key intercultural competences are, and yet there has not been agreement about how to define it. Deardorff (2006) has tried to draw together the wisdom of those involved in this field and carried out some research into those competences considered to be important across 24 U.S. post-secondary institutions. These institutions were identified as those that were strongly committed to internationalisation. Whilst there was a great diversity of opinions and outlooks, Deardorff found that 80% of the administrators and intercultural scholars were able to agree on 22 essential elements of intercultural competences, and has used this information to create a model which identifies the requisite attitudes, skills, knowledge, and comprehension in order to bring about the desired internal and external outcomes.

Deardorff’s Model

Deardorff suggested that there was a process going on which required a range of competences. To start with, there are some key attitudes that need to be in place: respect; valuing others’ culture; openness; a willingness to withhold judgment; curiosity and discovery; and an ability to tolerate ambiguity. He advocated that, as individuals apply these attitudes in new intercultural situations, they develop knowledge and comprehension through becoming culturally self-aware, and develop socio-linguistic awareness. Alongside this developing knowledge, the skills base requires an ability to listen, observe and evaluate. Through this process, an individual has an informed frame of reference shift and an internal outcome, which as the individual interacts in effective and appropriate ways results in an external outcome. This brings about changed communication and behaviour patterns which then feed back into changed attitudes.

 Table 1 - Pyramid Model of Intercultural Competences (Deardorff, 2006 p.254) 

Byram’s Model

Byram suggests that good attitudes are the key to successful intercultural dialogue. Pupils need to be curious, respectful, and open to the views of others; they also need to be willing to suspend judgments in order to be able to see things from the other’s point of view. The knowledge that pupils bring to an interaction, he claims, can be divided into two areas: the knowledge of identities, beliefs, values and behaviours of themselves and those from other backgrounds, and secondly the knowledge of the processes of interaction, of how to act in specific circumstances. The skills that help develop successful intercultural encounters he also breaks down into two sets: those of interpreting and relating, which draw on existing knowledge to apply what is already known to new situations, and those of discovering and interacting, the ability to recognise significant phenomena and elicit meanings and connotations to a related phenomena. Byram then goes on to argue that a teacher can help embed the learning process through attitudes, skills, and knowledge, in order to develop critical cultural awareness.

	Skills Interpret and relate
Knowledge Of self and others Of interaction: individual and societal	Education Political education Critical cultural awareness	Attitudes Relativising self Valuing others	(Curiosity; openness; respect; suspend judgments)
	Skills Discover and/or interact

Table 2 – Byram’s intercultural competences (Byram, 1997, p34)

The Council of Europe has also recognised that there are certain intercultural competences that are necessary for effective intercultural dialogue and have suggested that these need to be taught and learned, and then practised in order to maintain them. For these intercultural competences to develop, Byram suggests that attitudes, skills and knowledge are required, and highlights the central importance of being able to suspend one’s own values in order to consider how this might appear to another - the ability to “de-centre”. These skills, attitudes, and areas of knowledge have been categorized under the 10 key competences for intercultural dialogue that are listed below.

1. 1. Respect for otherness – shown through curiosity and openness, willingness to de-centre and see things from another’s viewpoint.
   2. Acknowledgement of identity – the ability to take full notice of other people’s identities and recognise them for what they are.
   3. Tolerance of ambiguity – the ability to accept ambiguity and lack of clarity and to be able to deal with this constructively.
   4. Empathy – the ability to project oneself into another person’s perspective and their opinions, motives, ways of thinking and feeling.
   5. Communicative awareness – an ability to recognise different linguistic conventions, and different verbal and non-verbal communication conventions.
   6. Knowledge – of social processes, and of illustrations of those processes and products.
   7. Interpreting and relating – the ability to interpret a document or event from another culture, to explain it and relate it to documents or events from one’s own.
   8. Discovery and interaction – the ability to acquire new knowledge of a culture and cultural practices.
   9. Critical cultural awareness – an ability to evaluate critically.
   10. Action orientation – the willingness to undertake some activity as a consequence of a reflection.

The work of the Council of Europe and the AIE

In its white paper “Living together as equals in dignity” (2008), the Council of Europe highlighted a number of issues that we face at the moment as our communities deal with increasing diversity. It warned of the dangers of promoting pluralism and tolerance and advocated a more proactive and structured way of developing cultural diversity. The Council of Europe recognised the important part schools have to play in teaching the competences necessary to be good intercultural communicators.

In 2009 the Council of Europe published the “Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters” (AIE). The AIE was designed to be a structured interview process that would enable adults and children to process a wide range of intercultural experiences. It was designed to be a tool with two related purposes. Through a series of questions, individuals are encouraged to evaluate their own responses to a specific encounter and come to a great understanding about themselves. It was also designed to stimulate learning; the questions lead the individual into opportunities to reflect on, analyse and process the experience, leading them into new learning as the interview develops.

The Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters has been expressly designed to encourage and foster the development of the relevant cognitive competences, which are required to engage effectively with people from other cultural groups and to appreciate the value and benefits of living within culturally diverse societies. (AIE, Context, concepts and theories, 2009, p.13)

It is because of this two-fold dimension that the AIE was a natural choice of interview structure to be used in this project. Not only does it enable pupils to work through their responses, but it also acts as a teaching tool to help develop reflective and analytical learning. It would provide a teaching tool that many have suggested is necessary alongside experiences of contact to promote change in attitudes and perceptions.

RE and Intercultural competences

The skills highlighted within the RE curriculum could have a transferable impact on the skills necessary for pupils to develop insights through the schools-linking projects. Whilst RE is not a central part of the study, the background of skills that would have been developed in schools already would be useful to be aware of.

(a) Seeing the world from another’s point of view

Phenomenological approaches to RE encouraged pupils to “bracket out” their own perceptions and experiences - to step back in order to understand more fully the other person’s perspective. Van der Leeuw (cited in Jackson, 1997), a key phenomenologist, suggested that to understand another person’s point of view or experience, it is necessary to distance oneself to see what is happening from their perspective. This process Van der Leeuw calls a “static understanding”, but alongside this a creative and intuitive process needs to happen - a reconstruction and reconnecting interpretation through the use of empathy in order to come to a “genetic understanding”. When a person is able to go through the process of standing back, looking more objectively, and then transposing oneself into another’s shoes in order to re-experience it, that understanding comes. To be able to see the world from another’s point of view is important in developing the competences of suspending judgments, respect for others, empathy, and the ability to tolerate ambiguity.

(b) Understanding real people

The work of Robert Jackson and his team at Warwick University has been particularly influential in developing a more ethnographic approach. His interpretive approach to RE uses the concepts of reflexivity and edification in helping pupils to apply what they have learned about other faiths to their own lives. Pupils are encouraged to reassess their understanding of their own way of life, through reflecting on the lives of those studied. This not only enables them to more fully appreciate another way of life but can also have an impact on their own thinking, beliefs, and attitudes through the process of edification – the application of what they have learned in a way that brings change. There are clear links here with the intercultural skills of interpreting and relating. The interpretive approach to religious education places an emphasis on the understanding of real people. This includes recognition that faith communities have internal diversity that needs to be recognised: any one representation was only a part of a multifaceted picture. This again connects with the attitudes and skills needed by pupils to learn from a school-linking project.

(c) The place of dialogue

More recently, Julia Ipgrave (2003) has shown through her research the powerful place of dialogue in developing an understanding through sustained contact with a group of people from a very different faith background. She linked an inner-city state school, which had a large proportion of Muslim children attending, with a Catholic suburban primary school. Both schools had 90% of the pupils affiliated to a faith tradition. Through the year they had the opportunity to communicate regularly via email across a range of topics, from talking about everyday experiences to sharing spiritual experiences and questions of belief. The skills developed through this contact link back to some of the intercultural competences outlined by Bryman, particularly those of communicative awareness and the knowledge of the way people interact.

2.4 Research Questions

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From the literature review, we can see that the inter-group contact theory is widely accepted as having a very positive effect on breaking down prejudice. We can see a range of different methods of helping groups of people to work together effectively. We have looked at some examples of intercultural competences that are needed to help pupils to learn from others, and the way developments in the teaching of RE have already been promoting these competences. We have considered some case studies in Bradford, and the work of the Council of Europe where good practise has been worked out in practical ways. It is from this background of research that the following questions have been highlighted, in order to take further the work of others, and to explore in my own context the following research questions:

• Do extended opportunities to interact with people from different faiths and cultural backgrounds, through a school-link project, help to build more positive perceptions and intercultural relations?
• What effect does visiting each other’s schools, within a more structured teaching programme, have on pupils’ perceptions of people from different faiths and cultural backgrounds?
• How useful is the “Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters” at equipping pupils to develop the skills required to become reflective intercultural learners?

3. Methodology

3.1 Teacher as Researcher

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The place of teacher as researcher brings many advantages. Ultimately, the process of educational research aims to bring to light information about what is going on in the learning process, and to develop ways in which to improve the quality of teaching and learning. Teachers have a unique place to inform and evaluate what is going on; they are not only a trained professional, but also have an in-depth understanding of the pupils who are taking part in the research.

Whilst there are many advantages, there are implications that could impact the validity and reliability of the research. We all have our own theories based on personal experiences, which can often predispose us to have a particular interest in a specific subject area. Any inquiry process, scientific or otherwise is affected not only by ascriptive characteristics but also by researchers’ personal history. (Le Compte MD & Preissle, 1993, p.121)

In this research, I tried to remember not to project my own assumptions on the pupils, particularly during the interview sessions. A critical distance is needed in order to remain emotionally detached and allow the pupil’s voice to come through. The Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters interview framework provided distance between the interviewer and interviewee by using cards that were turned over each time a new set of questions was asked. This was an effective way of breaking down the one-on-one pressure; it released the pupils to look at something neutral and reminded them of the focus of the question. It is also important to remember that in any encounter both the researcher and the pupils have an impact on each other as the project develops. Whilst this is difficult to do anything about, it is important to be aware of.

The research methods that I have used are based on evaluation research methods. There has been some debate around the nature of evaluation research, and it might be helpful to consider some of the issues here. Bryman describes evaluation research as:

... research that is concerned with the evaluation of real-life interventions in the social world. (Byrman, 2003, p.539)

My research measures the impact of a series of interventions over the course of a year, and then compares the effect of the intervention on the changing perceptions of the children. In this sense it matches well with Bryan’s definition of evaluation research. However, Robson (2002) claims that a good evaluation study should be based on a scientific experimental basis; he suggests that:

...evaluation research is essentially indistinguishable from other research in terms of design, data collection techniques and methods of analysis. (Robson, 2002, p.204)

This implies the need for a hypothesis or theory to be tested, systematic methods of data collection, and clear targets to be assessed in order to measure the effectiveness of the programme and draw conclusions. Whilst my research has tried to be as rigorous and objective as possible, Robson’s model has limitations when dealing with ethnographic issues, and real people in real life situations where it is impossible to control all the variables.

My research looks at the impact a school-linking programme has, over a series of encounters, on the children’s changing perceptions and development of intercultural skills. This kind of reflective cyclical approach is often referred to as action research, an approach strongly advocated by O'Grady (2003). Action research requires the researcher to identify an issue to be considered; plan, implement and monitor the evaluation in order to assess the effectiveness; review how to change the programme in order to address issues that arise, and start the cycle again with the new insights. To this extent I believe a review cycle was used. Fuller and Petch point out that action research:

...involves collaboration with others more traditionally thought of rather demeaningly as the "subjects" of the research in the development of ideas about what to study; it may also include their active participation in carrying out the study and in interpreting the results. (Fuller and Petch, 1995, in Robson, 2002, p.218)

My project did not require such a shared ownership of the review process, so probably sits better within evaluative rather than action research.

3.2 Field and Sample

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The two primary schools that were linked were similar in size, but quite different in a number of ways, and whilst geographically the schools were not far apart, the two communities rarely had contact with each other and represented two very different dimensions of life in the UK.

School A has 201 pupils on roll. It is a well-established school, with a small and focused catchment area, that plays an important role as a community hub. It is recognised within the county as possessing an international vision, with excellent links to a school in China and Bosnia and a variety of foreign languages taught. The school already has an emphasis on building an understanding of the worldwide community and has developed a curriculum that emphasises global dimensions. Teaching and learning across the curriculum aims to build an understanding of people from different backgrounds. It includes an awareness of the diversity of pupils’ abilities and experiences and aims to provide equal opportunities for all. However, the community is largely a white middle-class monoculture, with only 3% of pupils having English as a second language, and less than 5% from faith traditions other than Christianity.

School B has 210 pupils on roll and has been established for over 100 years. Many of the children have learning difficulties and many have a statement of special educational needs. While pupils are mainly from a white British heritage, around 15% are from different minority ethnic backgrounds and speak English as an additional language. Around 45% have free school meals, and there is a regular turnover of pupils. Last year, 59 pupils left, and 60 pupils joined the school in addition to the infant joiners and year six leavers. The link with the school was initiated because of contacts between staff members from each school.

3.3 Intervention

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The initial contact took place with the year four classes from each school in the summer term. A neutral venue was selected, and the focus of the morning was on making new friends and feeling comfortable communicating together. It was based on the personalisation model and encouraged children to begin to make contact with others on an individual level. Allport’s four criteria for success were applied. The children did not wear their school uniform but were asked to wear comfortable clothes suitable for working outside; they all appeared to be part of the same group, all having equal status. They had two practical activities to do during the morning; one was a den building activity and the other was an orienteering challenge. They worked together in mixed groups of six, three from each school, and worked towards a common goal, building a secure den and then completing the orienteering challenge finding as many of the clues as possible on the way round. Each group of six had an adult working as part of the team ensuring there was an authority figure available to provide security.

The second morning of activities took place the following term and was based on the distinct social identity model. The activities were based on a model used in the Bradford school-linking project, and the focus was on looking at similarities and differences at a personal level, then as groups, and lastly at a whole school level. The children were asked to work with their partner to find three things that were similar about them that they could see, and then three things that were similar that they couldn’t see. They were then asked to do the same for differences. The teachers modelled these activities for the children. This provided some suitable vocabulary for the children to use when considering similarities and differences in their paired activities. The groups from the first morning then worked together to produce a Venn diagram thinking through similarities and differences of the schools’ working day. This was shared to build a bigger picture of how we as communities had aspects that we shared, but also aspects that made the schools different and unique. The morning ended with an opportunity for the pupils to work in pairs again to design an ideal school.

The third morning of activities took place the following summer when the pupils were at the end of year five. It was an opportunity to celebrate the end of the year-long project and was based on the common in-group identity model. The two schools worked together with a local artist to create a piece of artwork, one half of which was to be displayed in each of the different schools. The children were working together to create something that was shared, something they all owned as part of a new shared identity.

3.4 Qualitative and Quantitative Methods

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Three basic methods of data collection have been used with the children from school A. After each of the morning’s activities, a questionnaire was completed straight away giving a broad overview of how positive the children’s perceptions were of the experiences and how they related to others. Six of the children were then interviewed. The interviews took place on a one-to-one basis in a quiet classroom. The children were asked if they were comfortable having the interview recorded; all of them agreed. The third method of data collection was taken after the final morning of activities. The children were asked to write a diary entry looking back on what they felt they had learned from the experience.

Questionnaires

The questionnaires provide a quantitative element to the analysis of what was happening as the children took part in activities over the year. The questionnaire was designed to get an idea about how positive or negative the children found the experiences. The questions were based on a five-point rating scale from strongly agree to strongly disagree; a five-point scale was used as it enables pupils to register a neutral opinion indicating neither a positive or negative response, as opposed to a 6-point rating scale which forces pupils to make either a positive or negative response. I wanted to give pupils the opportunity to register a no-change standpoint. It was made clear that the questionnaires were to be anonymous and that it was not compulsory to complete them; however, it was emphasised to the children how valuable their opinions were and how helpful their answers would be. All the pupils chose to complete the forms and the data has been presented using an excel bar chart (see appendix A at the end).

The sequence of the questions started with facts to be considered, which were not threatening, and were easy to complete in order to build up the confidence of the pupils taking part. The next nine questions were closed statements; the pupils were required to express their opinion on different aspects of the morning’s activities. The questions broadly followed the sequence of those found in the Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters. Each time, the children were asked to consider how easy they found talking to the people they were working with. They were asked to consider how comfortable they felt working with the pupils from a different school, and to suggest how they thought those they were working with felt about working with them. Lastly, they were asked to consider whether they felt they had learned something new from the meeting, and whether they would like to work with these people again.

A questionnaire on its own could be perceived as being too positivistic for this kind of research. It provides analytical data which can be measured and compared in a scientific way but may miss the deeper metaphysical aspects of what is going on under the surface of the responses and how they relate to each other. To get a deeper understanding of how the children felt and how their perceptions were changing, a number of interviews were carried out to find out in more detail what the children were experiencing.

Interviews

The interviews provided a more qualitative aspect to the data collected and used the recent Council of Europe “Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters” (2009). The autobiography uses a series of questions, which learners can use to help them think through their responses to an intercultural meeting. These questions help children to go through a self-evaluation process, but they also help the children to provide a teaching tool that can stimulate reflective and analytical thinking. There are no right or wrong answers to these questions, and children do not need to answer them all if they don’t feel comfortable, so it allows a thoughtful and honest response revealing a more detailed dimension to the evidence collected in the questionnaires.

Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters – Interview Structure

Question 1 – The Encounter I’m really interested in hearing all about what happened when you met these people; what do you remember?

Question 2 – The other person Can you tell me a bit more about someone you worked with? What was the first thing you noticed about them?

Question 3 – Talking to each other How did you talk to them; was it easy for you to understand them?

Question 4 –Your Feelings How did you feel at the time?

Question 5 – The other person’s feelings How do you think the other people felt at the time?

Question 6 - Same and different Do you think that you and * felt the same way when you met? Do you think there is anything you could learn from them?

Question 7 – Thinking a bit more What do you think you have learned from this meeting? If you met them again is there anything you would like to know?

Table 3 – AIE framework of questions Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters – Interview Structure

Six interviews were carried out at the end of each activity morning; this was a 20% sample of the group. A purposeful sample was selected based on gender and language ability. Three girls and three boys were selected, one each from a high, average, and lower ability group. As the Gatekeeper, the person responsible for the welfare of the pupils, the head teacher was approached and gave permission for the pupils to complete the interviews. It was not considered necessary to ask for parental permission, as the school is often involved in asking for pupil feedback and there is a longstanding emphasis on hearing student voice. Each interview took place on the same day and in a room familiar to the pupils, with the same teacher to try to ensure validity across the interviews.

These interviews do provide more detailed information, and in an ideal world it would be good to interview everyone taking part, but in reality it is possible to consider only a small number of these cases due to time constraints; this makes the sample relatively selective and can potentially increase the chance of bias. To try to ensure we had a greater selection of qualitative data to see whether the interviews were a good representation of the class responses, a class set of diary reports were collected.

Diaries

At the end of the year’s study, as part of the reflective process, all the children in the class from School A were given an opportunity to consider the new skills they had developed over the three mornings of activities. This provided a qualitative response from a larger number of the children involved. A selection of trigger statements and scaffolding sentences were supplied in order to provide support, to help the pupils to be able to formulate their own ideas. They were then asked to use their ideas to help them to write a diary entry about how they felt. This enabled a broader analysis in a quantitative style of more of the children’s opinions. A combination of these approaches provides a degree of triangulation and a more balanced insight than either a qualitative or quantitative approach could provide on its own.

3.5 Ethical Issues

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When taking part in educational research, it is crucial to think through ethical issues. As a teacher-researcher it is important to be aware and think through the implications of the power relationship between the pupils and the teacher and any stakeholder that will make decisions based on the findings.

If we as researchers are not responsible to the inhabitants of our study, our research is likely to reflect the dominant perspective and the voice of the researcher, not the multiplicity of views and the cacophony of voices of lived realities. (Lee and Van-de-Berg, 2003, p.100)

As the research was primarily independently initiated as part of my continuing professional development, and the main benefactor of the information was the school, the head teacher was the primary "Gatekeeper" and the person who needed to give permission for the research to take place. Having talked through the clear set of objectives, he was happy for me to work with the children without parents being informed of my MA research. Pupil voice is often sought and is an everyday part of school life. At each stage of the questionnaire and interview process, pupils were given the option to opt out if they did not feel comfortable. None of them took the opportunity, but their opinion was sought and respected. All of the results remain confidential and care was taken, particularly when interviewing, to give space between each question to allow time for reflection.

In order to ensure the pupils felt safe and protected during the three activity mornings, I used the guidelines outlined in Allport’s Inter-group Contact Theory. (Allport, in Pettigrew, 1998, p65)

(a) Equal group status within the situation. In order to ensure equal group status, it was considered important that the first joint activity should take place in a setting which was new to both groups. This puts all the pupils on an equal footing and enables both groups to be free from misconceptions about the environment from which they have come. It was also proposed that pupils from both schools should wear non-school uniform for this first encounter, in order to break down group barriers, and again to emphasise equal group status.

(b) Shared common goals. Planned activities for each of the mornings required the pupils to work together to complete a task with a common goal. This also helped to develop good dialogue in order to complete the tasks.

(c) The encounter should encourage inter-group cooperation. Mixed groups were formed including pupils from both schools. Interestingly, on the final morning some of the boys choose to play football at playtime and created mixed teams - a very positive outcome.

(d) Authority figures overseeing the event. Each group had an adult to support and facilitate activities; this enabled pupils to feel confident and secure that there were authority figures in place to support and encourage should the need arise, and to enable their voice to be heard.

3.6 Data Analysis

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Questionnaires

To find out about the pupils’ perceptions of the interventions, the results from the questionnaires were allocated a rating, and the ratings for each answer put into a spreadsheet. This information was then used to create bar charts, which showed clearly how positive or negative the pupils’ perceptions were in each of the questions asked (see Appendix A). From this data it was then possible to work out the percentages of positive and negative responses, and to compare how these changed over the three points of intervention. It was from these results, together with evidence from the interviews, that we were able to track how perceptions changed over the year. This was the primary data source for the first question of the study: do extended opportunities to interact with people from different faiths and cultural backgrounds through a school-link project help to build more positive perceptions, and better intercultural relations?

Interviews

To analyse the results from the interviews I tried to use a more grounded approach. I was keen to see if there were any patterns coming out of the interview data I had collected; in this way I was drawing conclusions directly from the data. I transcribed the results from the interviews and broke down each question into a separate statement so that I could compare the statements from each of the children. This was then carried out across the three interventions. To ensure that it was possible to track each statement, a code was applied to indicate which session, which question, and which child had said it. Thus a statement given in response to the second meeting, the sixth question, and child b would be recorded as (2,6,b). This coding made it possible to make different comparisons across the children, across the interventions, and across the questions to see whether any patterns were emerging.

Originally, I tried to see whether these statements could be grouped into positive perceptions, statements related to similarities, statements relating to differences, and those showing a degree of reflective thoughts. As I worked my way through there seemed to be a different pattern emerging. Some of the statements were simply retelling events that had happened, others seemed to be showing a more reflective element, which is what I expected might be the case, whilst others showed elements of new learning or insights drawn from the experience, a much more sophisticated response than I had expected. With this three-part categorization I was then able to plot each child’s statement into a grid showing whether it was a telling, reflecting, or insightful statement, and from this work out the percentage of each kind of statement for each intervention (see Appendix 2). This information was then cross-referenced back to the results of the questionnaires. So, if we wanted to see what percentage of pupils felt they had learned something new from the third encounter, we could see that it was eighty three percent, and when we looked at what kinds of statements were given in response to the question, we could see that three of them were reflective and three insightful answers. It was from these results, together with evidence from the questionnaires, that we were able to track what was changing over the year and the impact the teaching component had on what the children were learning.

The interviews were then read through again, and any examples of the intercultural competences were highlighted, and a record kept in table form to see which competences were being demonstrated at different stages of the study. The interviews were the primary data source for the second question of the study - what effect does visiting each other’s schools, within a structured teaching programme, have on pupils’ perceptions of people from different faiths and cultural backgrounds?

Diary Reports

The third source of data collected was a diary entry. Each of the children had written about what they had learned, and each of the diary entries were then analysed using the three-part categorisation applied to the interview statements. The sentences were marked as either retelling, reflective, or insightful. It was then possible to make comparisons with the responses given as a result of the AIE interview process. It was through the diary entries and the interviews that the third question was considered - how useful is the “Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters” for equipping pupils to develop the skills required to become reflective intercultural learners?

4. Analysis of Results

4.1 Pupils' Attitudes to Intercultural Encounters

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After the first morning of activities it was clear that there was a considerable enthusiasm about the event. 70% of the responses to the questions were positive, with only 13% being negative. Looked at more closely, it was clear that question 6 was an anomaly and going against the trend of all the other answers. The wording appeared to be presented in a confusing way. Whilst all the other questions were positive statements to assess how much agreement there was, question 6 referred to a negative aspect, asking whether the pupils changed the way they talked. It might have been better to ask whether “the pupils found it easy to understand the way I talked to them.”

These findings are reflected in the interviews as well, with comments such as “It was 100% brilliant” (1,1,f) and “…it was such good fun” (1,7,b), indicating a high level of positive attitude amongst the pupils during the first meeting. The event did seem to build up enthusiasm with 83% of the pupils keen to work together again.

It is interesting to be aware that, whilst it may appear at first sight that there were a few pupils whole did not enjoy the morning, on closer examination of all the papers these negative responses are spread out over 11 questionnaires, showing that a third of the pupils found some aspect of the morning difficult. This suggests that the pupils were thinking carefully about their responses and reflecting on which ones applied and did not apply to them.

The second morning of activities took place at school A and involved a structured teaching time looking at similarities and differences on a personal level and at a school level. There were set activities which the children were asked to work on together, and they had lots of opportunities to talk in pairs and in groups with the support of an adult. The overall number of positive comments went up to from 70% to 77%, with only 5% negative comments. There seemed to be a very good response to the partner work, with 87% of the pupils enjoying it and finding it easy to talk with their partner; only one child disagreed, and this may well be due to a difficult pairing. It could be that there was a more comfortable feeling for the children being on home territory, which provided an increased level of confidence in the pupils, enabling them to enjoy the opportunities more. 86% of the pupils wanted to work with these pupils again, indicating a sustained positive perception about working together on the school-linking partnership.

During the interviews, when asked how they felt about the morning, 5 out of the 6 children interviewed expressed very positive feelings with statements like “I woke up really early because I was looking forward to it” (2,4,e) and “Well like, Yippee! They’re here!” (2,4,f). Only one of the pupils expressed some concerns: “A little bit excited and a little bit nervous in case something went wrong. Like we might have an argument like we…things might not work out like planned” (2,4,d). Overall, the interviews reinforce the findings of the questionnaires that positive perceptions remained high.

The third morning of activities took place at School B and the focus was looking at similarities and differences in the places we live. An artist was appointed to create a piece of art that could be displayed in each of the schools as a celebration of the work we had done together. The children were asked to prepare something that they enjoyed about the place that they lived, and the theme of a castle and a windmill became the symbols of the two different environments. The overall responses continued to remain at a high of 77% positive statements with 11% negative, slightly higher than the response from the home school but still less than from the initial encounter. This time the more negative comments appeared on just 7 of the response questionnaires, suggesting a slight polarisation of opinions. With 4 of the pupils registering most of the negative responses it appears that, for a few, the experience was not a positive one. It could be that the experience of being in a different school setting made it harder for some. One of the pupils commented on feeling uncomfortable walking into the school hall and having everyone looking at him; another didn’t like going on a coach, so there could be many factors at work.

There also appeared to be a slight drop in the willingness to work with the pupils again. I am genuinely not sure why this would be the case. When we look at the interviews to see how the pupils felt about the morning, a couple expressed some sadness at coming to the end of the project, suggesting disappointment about not being able to work with their friends again. However, many of the responses did show a continued sense of enjoyment and positive outlook, with statements such as “We got on really well”(3,2,d); “I was excited, I hadn’t seen them for a long time”(3,4,f), and “I think the friends that I made had a really good time as well” (3,5,g).

We started this chapter by considering whether the pupils demonstrated positive attitudes towards the experience of intercultural encounter and meeting children from different backgrounds. I think that for each of the three meetings there is evidence in both the questionnaires and the interviews to suggest a good degree of positive attitudes, both towards the encounters themselves and the experience of working with children from different backgrounds.

4.2 Analysis of Interviews through Grounded Research

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After each of the activity mornings, the children were interviewed using the AIE questionnaire. This provided a framework to help them to evaluate, to reflect, and to analyse the experience. Some of the statements were fairly basic, reporting factual information about what had happened, a retelling of the events without any processing or interpretation. Many of the statements showed the pupils looking for common ground, areas of their lives which draw together their shared humanity, the way they looked, the interests they shared and the way they felt. Alongside this were statements to do with recognising and building respect for aspects of their new friends that were different. Both of these groups of statements suggest that the pupils were reflecting on similarities and differences and processing the information in some way. They were drawing on what they already knew and looking to see how their new friends matched or didn’t match their personal experience of life. Some kind of thoughtful reflection was taking place.

Other statements seemed to indicate a more sophisticated process - a mature reflection indicating some new learning had taken place, and a new attitude or change in behaviour as a result of processing the experience and reaching new conclusions. Some kind of insight had taken place resulting in a change in perception.

These three categories of telling, reflecting, and insights were used to group the responses from each of the meetings in order to see what kind of learning might be taking place. The first category of “Telling” was used to describe a reporting of factual information, a statement of what had happened during the meeting. Statements such as “There was orienteering and den building and someone would help you. My strongest memory was when the den fell down” (1,1,b). The second category of “Reflecting” was used to describe a statement showing some kind of processing of the experience, statements such as “Well at first um… I felt like um a bit nervous but kind of excited too, and then I felt um…good and then I felt even better and then I felt happy” (2,4,c). The third category of “Insight” was used to describe a statement showing some kind of new learning or change in attitude or behaviour as a result of the reflections from the meeting. This included statements such as “I think I’ve learned lots of things. I think I’ve learned the meaning of it is, it doesn’t matter what they look like or what their attitude is, they can still be your friends” (1,6,b).

 

Table 4 - Grounded Research Results from AIE Interview Questions

When we look at the results from the table, we can see in the bottom percentage column that 38% of the responses from the first set of interviews were statements retelling what had happened, 38% of the statements showed some degree of reflecting taking place, and 24% of the responses showing new insights. As this was the first encounter, with the social element being the main emphasis, it is encouraging to see that this has facilitated a significant amount of insight already. The second more structured meeting which involved looking at similarities and differences appears to have enabled the pupils to respond to the questions in a more reflective way. 50% of the responses show some element of reflection, and there is a slight increase in the number of insights. With 24% of the responses being “telling” statements, there does appear to be a change in the way the pupils are answering the questions. Instead of reporting or retelling the pupils appear to be thinking more reflectively.

The third meeting, which had less focused teaching content, also seems to have a high degree of reflective comments, with again 50% of the responses showing thoughtful refection. There are slightly fewer insights then in the previous two contacts; however, the ability to reflect does appear to have improved during the year and remained high.

The responses in the questionnaires over the three interventions appear to indicate that during the year, the pupils felt increasingly that they were learning something from the experiences. The grounded research seems to be indicating that the children are becoming better at reflecting on their learning, particularly in the second intervention. This data could suggest that in some way the children are developing the ability to reflect in ways which help them process their learning.

In order to look a bit more closely at what was going on, I considered how these responses are broken down across the different questions asked in the AIE interview.

The first question invites pupils to talk about what happened and what they remember. This encourages a ‘telling’ response and just over 60% of the responses to this question come under that category, but, surprisingly, almost 40% of the responses show some kind of reflection about the experience.

The second question asks them what they can remember about the other person and what they noticed, again inviting a ‘telling’ response. With this question there is a 50/50 split; half the responses tell, and half reflect on the other person. The AIE suggests that this question offers pupils the opportunity to show awareness of identity; perhaps those responding in a reflective way are demonstrating an awareness of this.

The third question asks the pupils to consider how they found talking to their partner, providing an opportunity to demonstrate a communicative awareness, knowledge, and behavioural flexibility. Out of the possible 18 responses, two thirds of them demonstrated some insight gained. This could indicate a significant area of learning for the pupils. It could also suggest that they are becoming more aware of what they are doing when they are communicating with others from different backgrounds.

The fourth question drew out many thoughtful reflections and a couple of insights as pupils were asked to consider their own feelings about the encounter. Sixteen out of a possible eighteen responses where reflective, indicating that children are very capable of reflecting on a personal level.

The fifth question required a certain amount of empathy in interpreting how their partner felt, and whilst there was an even spread of responses across the first encounter, the second encounter showed a much greater proportion of reflective responses. It seems that as the pupils are getting to know each other and reflecting more, they are learning to draw more insights, or perhaps it could be that they are getting to know their friends more and thus understanding better how they might respond.

The sixth question involves asking pupils to consider similarities and differences and requires pupils not only to show empathy but also to be able to interpret and relate what they know to others. There seem to have been very mixed results across the three encounters. The first session had an equal split across the telling, reflecting and insights; the second structured session seemed to enable mostly reflections; whilst from the third session, most of the responses were telling.

The last question encouraged the pupils to think a bit more deeply about what they had learned from each of the meetings. At the end of the first session, two thirds of the responses where telling, which surprised me as the question is inviting a more reflective response. After the second session two thirds of the responses were reflecting or insights, quite a difference from the first session, whilst in the last meeting all the pupils were able to demonstrate either reflective responses or new insights. This change might be an indication of some improvement in the ability to be more critically aware of the process of learning from an experience. This could be as a result of the use of the AIE or through the structured teaching component, it is difficult to determine which, as both were used alongside each other.

4.3 Comparison of Grounded Research and AIE Competences 

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Looking through the transcripts of the interviews with the pupils after each of the three activity mornings, there is evidence in their comments of a wide range of intercultural competences right from the start. In order to explore this, I looked at how the statements from the interviews match up with the intercultural competences outlined in the AIE. I went through each of the interviews and marked with a letter where a statement showed evidence of a particular competence, and then recorded the totals in the table on the next page.

Intercultural competences (AIE)	Intervention 1	Intervention 2	Intervention 3	Total
Respect for otherness (R)	9	8	12	29
Acknowledgement of Identity (I)	5	9	0	14
Tolerance of ambiguity (T)	9	5	6	20
Empathy (E)	6	8	6	30
Communicative Awareness (CA)	6	5	3	14
Knowledge (K)	1	8	2	11
Interpreting and Relating (IR)	1	5	7	13
Discovery and Interaction (DI)	3	10	12	25
Critical Cultural Awareness (CCA)	1	1	1	3
Action Orientation (AO)	1	1	0	2
Behavioural Flexibility (BF)	2	0	0	2
Total competences recorded at each intervention	44	60	49

Table 5 – Analysis of AIE Intercultural Competences

In the first set of interviews there were many comments from the children showing attitudes of respect, curiosity, and openness to working with new people, with comments such as, “I noticed he was very generous and very kind. He was a really good friend. As soon as I met him, he shook my hand. It was really nice” (1,2,e). Pupils were also showing an ability to tolerate ambiguity. I was surprised at how many of the pupils commented on how nervous they felt, but there were a high number of comments indicating that the pupils were able to deal with the uncertainty in helpful ways. Comments included: “I was nervous at first and but then we really got to know each other like we’d know each other for ages” (3,1,a).

There was a good level of empathy shown, most pupils seemed able to see things from another’s point of view, which can be seen here in the following comments: “Um… but he seemed a bit shy when we first saw each other. Yeah … well because they…this is the first time they have been to our school and there’s like other children at the school that they haven’t met before and they don’t know where things are” (4,2,d). There was evidence of communicative awareness, which was particularly impressive in the following statement: “Sometimes their accents were hard to understand, * was from Russia so he had a Russian accent so you had to figure out a way to say stuff to him ‘cos he can’t understand your accent very well. It was hard” (3,1,b). Not only was pupil b aware of different linguistic conventions, but she was able to show behavioural flexibility in adapting her approach to communicating and recognising that this was a hard thing to be doing.

There was less evidence on the first activity morning of the skills of interpreting and relating, discovery and interacting, or even much knowledge of social processes or products. However, there was one pupil who stood out from the others as exhibiting most of the intercultural competences in a mature and sophisticated way. Below is a table demonstrating some of her comments and competences from the interview after the first visit.

Question	Comments	Competences
2	When you get to know her, she was really really funny!	Respect
3	Sometimes their accents were hard to understand, * was from Russia so he had a Russian accent so you had to figure out a way to say stuff to him ‘cos he can’t understand your accent very well. It was hard.	Identity Communicative awareness Behavioural flexibility
4	I felt really nervous. I thought oh no we will never come first and then we said it doesn’t really matter we can still have really good fun and things like that and the after you did all the activities, wow we actually came first!	Tolerance Behavioural flexibility Action orientation
5	I think they felt a bit nervous as well because they didn’t know us, so it’s like you are meeting another stranger to another stranger and then suddenly it’s like after a couple of minutes you’re like chatting away asking them to come round to your house and things like that.	Empathy Knowledge of social process
6	She’s got loads of pets; I like pets, loads in common. I think I’ve learned lots of things. I think I’ve learned the meaning of it is, it doesn’t matter what they look like or what their attitude is, they can still be your friends.	Discovery and interaction Critical cultural awareness.

Table 6 –- Range of Competences in Pupil B.

It is clear from these comments that pupil B has good attitudes towards meeting new people; she has knowledge about how to communicate effectively and is showing a range of skills to help her discover and interpret her observations, enabling her to draw conclusions and adapt her behaviour.

If we then go on to consider how pupil B responds to the second encounter, she seems to be gaining in confidence and applying what she has demonstrated in the first session to new learning situations. This appears to be an example of Deardorff’s process model of intercultural competences, of learning as a cyclical process. In the second intervention she states: “Um… she believed quite a lot of strange things. I thought they were a bit strange, but I didn’t say anything ‘cos that might have interrupted her. But um… it was really good fun talking to her because you get to learn stuff that you wouldn’t really find out” (3,2,b), and “Yes a lot. In the way that like, ‘cos I used to be like I’m not going to talk to them because they might be a bit odd and they might be liking different things and now and since I’ve met them I’m perhaps it’s like oh yeah let’s go and talk to them” (7,2,b).

She appears to have developed effective and appropriate communication in the first session and applied and developed what she had learned in the second encounter. Her behaviour in an intercultural situation has changed her attitudes and perceptions. If this is the case, we can learn much from her that might help others to respond as positively in the future

4.4 Longitudinal Changes in Attitudes and Competences

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Questionnaires

Looking back over the year at the longitudinal aspects to changes in perceptions, there is a mixture of results. At the start of the project 70% of the pupils found it easy to talk to new people and 10% didn’t; by the end of the year we find there has been very little change, with 70% finding it easy to talk within their group and 10% still not finding it easy. This could indicate that some of the pupils need some kind of teaching or support to give them more confidence when talking to new people. Again, when we look at how comfortable the pupils were working together, there appears to be little change over the year.

However, there does seem to be an encouraging improvement over the year with a steady increase in pupils saying they had learned something new - 67% after the first meeting, 77% after the second, and 83% after the third meeting. Could it be that the increased opportunity to interact with people from different faith and cultural backgrounds does build on and increase the ability to learn from others?

There also appears to be some increase in the overall positive responses over the year, starting at 70% from the first meeting and moving up to 77% and remaining at 77% at the second two meetings. This does seem to suggest a modest increase in the positive perceptions of the pupils, and whilst it is not a huge increase, it is a step in the right direction.

Interviews

When looking back at the interviews and my initial analysis, we can see a change in the way pupils responded to the questions asked. The first meeting showed an equal level of telling and reflecting with some insights evident. The second and third meetings showed a much higher proportion of reflective comments, whilst the insights did not significantly change over the year. This could indicate that the teaching element in the second session helped to develop the ability to learn from the experience but was not present in the less structured environments.

If we consider how the pupils felt about talking to each other we can see that after the second meeting all of the pupils were able to think of a new insight, which was not the case in the first or the third meetings where the responses were spread across the three categories. This might indicate that the taught element helped to progress the pupils’ learning to produce new insights.

When the children were asked to consider the other person’s feelings, initially in the first meeting there was an equal spread of responses. By the second meeting the majority of responses were reflective, whilst by the end of the year they were demonstrating reflective and insightful responses. The last question, which asked the pupils to think about whether they had learned anything new from the meeting, also showed a change throughout the year. Initially two thirds of the responses were simple telling responses, but by the end all of the pupils show reflective or insightful responses. This matches well with the results of the questionnaire, where 83% of them felt they had learned something new. The way pupils responded in the interviews seems to suggest a change from retelling responses to more reflective responses, and a change in the ability to process their learning, but is this showing up in the competences that they are demonstrating?

If we look at the responses over the year, we can see some very positive attitudes across the three meetings, with many examples of statements demonstrating respect (29), tolerance of ambiguity (20), and empathy (30). This is encouraging to see as it appears to suggest a high level of positive experience and expectation of each of the events, and that motivation to work together well is consistent across the year.

If we look at the aspect of knowledge, the second meeting seemed to facilitate more responses than the first or the last encounter, and acknowledgement of identity peaked in this meeting too, matching my findings in the level of reflective comments in the second week. However, the most striking change appears when we look at the skills of interpreting and relating, discovery and interaction. These responses go up from just 4 examples in the first meeting to 15 examples in the second meeting and 19 examples by the end of the year. This could indicate that the pupils were becoming more reflective in their thinking and recognising that they were learning more.

4.5 The Effect of the AIE and Learning

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In order to look a bit more closely at the way the pupils responded to the third intervention, I asked them to imagine that they were writing a diary to explain the important things that they remembered.

The writing activity took place a couple of days after the visit which was not ideal, and the timing meant that some of the children who had been involved with the interview process were at an intervention session; however, four of the six sample group were present and twenty six of the thirty pupils completed the diary entry.

At first sight the diary entries appeared to be mainly factual recounts of the visit, but in order to check this out I went through each of the diary entries and highlighted the three different types of responses from my grounded research. Each diary entry was then grouped into those that were completely retelling information about the visit; those that had a mixture of telling and some reflections; and finally, those that had telling, reflecting, and some new insight. The different responses from the girls and boys are recorded separately. The results are presented in the table below:

Diary analysis	T	T and R	T R and I.
Boys	9	8	1
Girls	0	6	2
Year 5 total	9	14	3
% of total.	35%	54%	11%

Table 7 – Diary Analysis

Whilst it is important to recognise that this is a small sample size and just one encounter being considered, I was surprised to find over half of the pupils had managed to include some kind of reflection in their diary writing, about the same percentage as had been recorded during the interviews. The differences that appeared to come out of the diary entries were quite striking for the boys; many more of their responses were purely factual, in fact half of them simply wrote about what happened, whilst more of the girls seemed able to communicate their reflections and insights in their writing. This could indicate a difference in linguistic ability at this age, and whilst it would be interesting to explore this further it was not specifically part of my research project.

The boys from my sample group had in their diary entries responded simply in a telling mode despite the fact that one was a high and the other a low ability learner, with statements like “Today my class visited * school, we all had a great time”. However, when these boys were interviewed they both demonstrated that they could not only tell and reflect, but were also able to draw new insights with comments like “Well it was a bit weird ‘cos I hadn’t seen him for a long time,” and “…I’ve met new people and I’ve learned some stuff about them. I know quite a bit now.” For the boys the AIE appears to be helping them to demonstrate and communicate what they were learning in a more reflective way.

For the girls from my sample group their diary entries combined a mixture of telling and reflecting, with comments like “I felt hot and nervous. I hadn’t seen them in ages. Perhaps no one would recognise me. Perhaps I wouldn’t recognise them,” and “It was really sad when we left because we made a lot of new friends and we were not going to see them again.” It could be that these results indicate a difference in the written ability of year five boys and girls, or it could indicate that the girls are finding more effective ways of thinking and processing their learning. So, for both the boys and girls it appears that the interview was a much more effective way of helping to structure their learning in a way that writing about the event did not.

5. Discussion of Findings

5.1 The Impact of a School Link Project to Build Positive Perceptions 

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The original title of the project suggested that school-linking would help to increase positive relationships across different faiths and cultures and encourage social cohesion. Much of the rationale behind the project has come out of a desire to provide young people with opportunities to spend time with those from different backgrounds, to come to understand some of the similarities we share, and to break down misconceptions about the differences in order to build a positive attitude toward those with different perspectives.

The contact theory considered in the literature review suggested that the process of spending time with people from different backgrounds in itself is what is needed to enable prejudice to be addressed. That increased time spent with others in turn increased the degree to which prejudice was addressed. In other words, the more time you spend with others the less prejudiced you become; you have a recent and real experience of what others are like, against which you can balance any negative second-hand stereotypes. Allport (46) tentatively suggested that the more numerous the contact, the less the prejudice. Brophy (45) also found that there was a cumulative effect in the way prejudice was broken down over time.

If this were the case, I would have expected to find that over the year there would be a change in attitude amongst the children taking part. However, what I did find was that whilst there was a high degree of positive responses across the three sessions, there was very little change in the percentages over the year. The pupils enjoyed the experiences but there was very little evidence to suggest there was any progressive breakdown in prejudice. This could have been because I did not specifically ask any questions that would have elicited a prejudice-related answer, so I did not measure how prejudiced the pupils were at the start or at the end.

These findings also seemed to be reflected in the results analysing the intercultural competences of the interview statements. When the pupils were asked to think back about the meetings, there appeared to be equal responses reflecting attitudes such as respect for others and empathy, which remained high across the three meetings - there appeared to be very little change over time.

Sheriff and Sheriff (53) suggested that for a group contact to have a more positive effect it was important that the pupils took part in some joint activity. Whilst pupils were able to keep their distance there was a limited likelihood of any lasting change. It could be that the activities were not sufficiently stretching enough to engage the pupils in joint responses.

I am not sure that this is the case. Looking at the interview responses it is clear that there were many good friendships being developed and genuine respect being formed with statements such as “…although we did just meet when we asked them, they would ask another question back about your life and what you were going to do and they were saying really nice things about us.” (3,3,g)

The data seemed to suggest that the project did not appear to be changing the attitudes or generating more positive perceptions. However, one thing that did appear to be changing from looking at the responses to the questionnaire was the pupils’ perception that they were learning something new. This was steadily increasing over the year. At the start of the project 73% felt they had learned something new, which rose to 77% during the second session and 83% by the final session.

5.2 The Impact of a Structured Teaching Component

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The Council of Europe suggested that promoting tolerance was not enough to break down prejudice and avoid conflict. They advocated a more proactive approach and recommended that teaching was necessary to develop intercultural competences. The skills they were promoting were those of “reciprocity”, an acceptance of difference and respect for others, and “civic-mindedness”, a willingness to distance oneself from personal convictions and beliefs, and to value those of others whilst still able to maintain one’s personal beliefs.

The Bradford School-Linking Project developed a way of structuring learning encounters to help pupils talk through similarities and differences. This teaching structure was used on the second morning of activities, and the children were given the opportunity to ask questions in an open and honest environment. It followed the “Distinct Social Identity Model” and encouraged the children to be aware of distinct differences. The children had the opportunity to use appropriate language and had permission to ask questions that would not normally be part of an everyday conversation. One of the children actually verbalised this rather succinctly when she observed “…you don’t really get to go up to people and say oh what’s your life about in your family and we were talking about how her house was run and what the rules were in her family. I also found out she was a Sikh.” (2,3,b)

According to the Council of Europe, a teaching component is important in helping children to develop the skills necessary to become good intercultural communicators. Looking at the questionnaires one aspect that stands out is how the pupils felt about talking to their partner. During the first intervention, 60% found it easy to talk, whilst within the structured session 87% of the children stated that they found it easy to talk. This suggests that the second intervention was a much better environment for talking more openly. But what sort of talking was going on? I do not have any record of the types of conversations that took place on the morning, but I do have information from the interviews, which provide an insight into what sort of conversations were taking place.

We can see from the information gained on the grouping of statements into telling, reflecting, and insights that a number of interesting things emerge. It appears that during the second meeting something enabled the children to move from being tellers to more reflective communicators.

The questions where this appeared to be most noticeable were questions four, five, and six, the questions which asked the pupils to consider their own feelings, those of their partner, and the similarities and differences that they noticed. Five out of the six pupils interviewed were able to make thoughtful reflections about feelings and similarities and differences.

Perhaps the evidence is suggesting that giving the pupils appropriate language and structure enabled more in depth communication to take place. Perhaps there was something taking place during these talking times that had not happened at the original encounter. This could be an indicator that the children were just getting to know each other better and feeling more comfortable about sharing. Perhaps the most striking difference in the responses to the three meetings was in the way the children responded to question 3. When asked how they found talking to each other, all of them were able to draw some new insight or learning from the encounter, which was not the case in the other two meetings. They all felt that it was quite easy to talk, although it was different to what they would normally do. Many of them commentated on how much easier it was to talk the second time with comments such as “…We knew what to do and what we could talk about and we feel much more friendly with each other” (2,3,a), and “ …it was really good fun talking to her because you get to learn stuff that you wouldn’t really get to find out.” (2,3,b)

It appears from their comments that, given the structure and language to talk about similarities and differences, they were able to talk in a very meaningful way which was positive and enabled them to make interesting reflections afterwards, and to draw new insights from their conversations. A number of them commented on how much they talked with their partner with comments like “…I couldn’t stop talking” (2,3,c), and “…once you got to know him a bit more, you just didn’t want to shut up!”. Perhaps the structure and teaching are a key to opening up the ability to talk openly which then enables significant learning to take place.

This appears to confirm the idea that the Council of Europe advocated, that teaching is required to develop intercultural competences. Looking through the interview statements from the second meeting I was surprised to find some examples of both reciprocity - “I found it quite easy to find things that were different” (2,6,a) - and civic mindedness - “…she believed quite a lot of really strange things. I thought they were a bit strange, but I didn’t say anything ‘cos that might have interrupted her.” (2,3,b) What mature insights for ten-year-old children.

To explore this further we can look back at the number of different intercultural competences demonstrated at the second meeting in comparison to the first and third less structured sessions. The intercultural attitudes outlined by Bryman (97) remained high throughout the three sessions: there were many examples of respect for others, empathy, and tolerance of ambiguity.

What did change were statements indicating knowledge. In the second session there were 8 statements, in comparison to 1 and 2 in the other sessions respectively. This appears to suggest that some new knowledge was being acquired or reported on during the second set of interviews which did not come up in the other two. Bryman suggests that there are two aspects to knowledge: knowledge of self and others, and knowledge of interaction. On closer examination of the statements, it appears to be the case that the knowledge being demonstrated is that of how social interactions take place, in statements such as “I’ve got more confident at talking to people” (2,7,a), and “…I couldn’t stop talking and…sometimes we were quiet for a bit. We were like what do you think then?” (2,3,c) This could suggest that one of the things being learned is the understanding of how to communicate effectively with new people.

Another interesting finding in the analysis of the data was that the incidents of the skills that were being shown were gradually increasing over the year. Bryman’s (97) skills of discovery and interaction went from 3 on the first session, up to 10 on the second, and then increased further on the third session to 12. The skill of interpreting and relating went from 1 on the first session, up to 5 on the second, and then increased further to 7 on the third. This was different to the findings about knowledge, which appeared to be a one off-outcome as a result of the teaching session. What surprised me with the skills gained was the cumulative effect that appeared to be happening over the year. During the year the pupils appeared to be increasingly better at discovering and interacting, interpreting and relating.

The evidence suggests that this style of teaching was opening up the ability to talk meaningfully, which in turn provided the knowledge needed to develop the skills which enable a cyclical process-based learning, equipping the children to develop their understanding further on their own using the skills developed. This was what Deodorff suggested in his model of how intercultural competences develop.

5.3 The Impact of Using the AIE

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The AIE was designed not only to process an intercultural encounter but also to stimulate learning. If we look back at the grounded research and the way the children responded to the initial intervention, we can see that most of the statements in response to the AIE were telling and reflecting. The second time the AIE was used there were far more reflective comments. These reflective statements remained the same in the third session despite the fact that no new teaching component was introduced.

The AIE does appear to be having an impact on the way the children are processing more reflectively what they are learning, but to check this further we can look back at the comparison with the diary reports. Looking at the analysis of the diary entries and the final interview, it does appear that whilst the diary entries had more telling encounters, the major difference between the diary entries and the interview responses was the ability to draw out new insights. Over all three of the interviews the percentage of insights remains roughly the same, much higher than I would have expected from a normal conversation. This could indicate that the AIE is helping pupils to process their thinking in a way that enables them draw their own insights. We can see from looking at the interview responses from child b that she is demonstrating a range of intercultural competences. The interview questions appear to be providing her with prompts to stimulate her learning. With positive attitudes and the skills necessary to communicate well, she is able to process the interaction, which has changed her knowledge and behaviour. This has then enabled her in the subsequent encounter to revisit and rework her attitudes using the skills gained to attain new knowledge and understanding of the next interaction. The AIE has provided a framework around which she has been able to express her attitudes and it has guided her to become more reflective her responses, which has then enabled her to learn more in subsequent encounters.

However, learning is a complex process and it is difficult to be certain about what the cause of an impact might be. Is the interview process feeding into the learning process, or the learning process feeding into the interviews? Are the children just gaining in confidence and getting to know their friends better, and becoming more willing to ask difficult questions? Would the teaching content on its own provide the necessary opportunities to facilitate learning? Perhaps the process of growing older is enabling the pupils to think in more reflective ways; it could be a maturational factor that as they become older they are better able to process what they are learning. However, the data does suggest that pupils’ perception that they are learning is increasing over the year. The skills that are being developing over the year appear to enable pupils to become more reflective in their responses, and this skill remains high after the initial contact and interview process. They are increasingly demonstrating that they are becoming more skilled at discovering and interacting, interpreting and relating.

6. Conclusions 

6.1 Research Question One

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Do extended opportunities to interact with people from different faiths and cultural backgrounds through a school-link project help to build more positive perceptions, and intercultural relations?

Looking back at the findings of this project it would be reasonable to expect that pupil’s perceptions and attitudes towards those of different faiths and cultures would improve over the period of the project. In fact, according to Pettigrew and Tropp (2006), there is an inverse relationship between contact and prejudice, and much research suggests a cumulative effect of contact and positive perceptions.

My research suggests that whilst there were many children who felt very positive about the school-linking project there was only a very small change in positive perception over the year. Positive responses went up from seventy percent after the first encounter to seventy seven percent for the second and third encounter. This was not what I had expected at all. The information collected from the questionnaires at first sight seemed to suggest that there was little change in perceptions. But when I looked more closely at how the different questions broke down, it became clear that one thing that was changing over time was the children’s perception that they were learning something new. It appears that something has changed over the year, and it involves the pupils learning something new from working with others.

6.2 Research Question Two

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What effect does visiting each other’s schools, within a more structured teaching programme, have on pupils’ perceptions of people from different faiths and cultural backgrounds?

From the experience of the school-linking project in Bradford and the recommendations of Pettigrew, I used a specific intervention from the “Distinct Social Identity Model”. During the second encounter the children were given the opportunity to look specifically at the similarities and differences between them as individuals, as groups and school communities. They were given an example of how to talk together and the sort of vocabulary that could be used, and then given the opportunity to develop the skills of communicating together. From the questionnaires it is possible to see that there is a significant increase in the perceived ability to talk to new people. During the first encounter seventy percent felt positive about talking with new people and ten percent felt negative. During the second encounter with a teaching component eighty seven percent found it easy to talk with only three percent still feeling negative.

From the grounded research there does appear to be a change in the proportion of reflective comments, but this could be linked to the use of the use of the AIE, However, when we look at the comments made showing intercultural competences, there is a significant increase in the statements demonstrating knowledge from one in the first encounter, eight in the second and back to two in the third encounter. It does appear that there is an increase in learning when intercultural teaching is given; when children are given the vocabulary and an example of how to communicate, it seems to increase their knowledge.

The other competence that seems to develop during the second teaching encounter is that of discovery and interaction. Comments showing the skill of discovery and interaction increase from three in the first encounter, to ten in the second encounter and surprisingly twelve in the third encounter. This could suggest that the learning that is happening is enabling children to interact and discover from their friends, and that this skill is developing and remaining consistent over time. It could also indicate that one of the things the children are learning is the ability to learn from people from different backgrounds, to interact effectively in order to discover new things.

The case study looking at Pupil B also suggests that there might be a learning process taking place. Deardorff (2006) suggested that there was a process going on in developing intercultural competences; as individuals show positive attitudes skills and knowledge there is an internal change, which then alters the way the individual interacts through behaviours and new attitudes. Right from the start of the linking project, child b is showing that she is already demonstrating a wide range of competences. By the second encounter the comments she is making shows an even greater level of understanding, which might suggest that she is building on her past learning in order to develop her thinking further. In order to consider this further it would be necessary to follow her through a longer period of time, and to begin categorising her responses in a way that would indicate progression in the competences. It would also be necessary to work with a larger sample of pupils. My research does seem to suggest that one possible thing that the children could be learning is the ability to learn how to learn.

6.3 – Research Question Three

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How useful is the “Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters” at equipping pupils to develop the skills required to become reflective intercultural learners?

The AIE has been developed as a tool to help pupils to develop the skills necessary to become effective intercultural communicators, and to become more reflective and analytical in their responses to meeting others from different faith and cultural backgrounds. My grounded research suggests that this tool is in fact helping pupils to develop reflective thinking. At the end of the first encounter when the children were first interviewed, thirty eight percent of the responses were simple retelling responses, an equal number of responses were reflective, whilst twenty four percent were insightful comments. The second time they were interviewed the percentage of reflective comments had gone up to fifty percent, which was then repeated as fifty percent in the third encounter. My research suggests that the process of working through the AIE has helped the children to become more reflective in the way they process intercultural encounters, and that this ability is then transferred into subsequent encounters.

This appears to be confirmed through the comparison of the interview responses and the diary records written at the end of the project. From this comparison it can be seen that whilst the diary entries elicited more telling and reflecting comments, the interview process enabled more reflecting and insightful comments. This was particularly apparent amongst the boys who seemed to benefit more from the interview process. It is difficult to know how much impact the AIE has had over the year, and the numbers considered in this project are small. In order to be sure there was a link it would have been good to complete a diary entry at the end of each of the encounters. It is however clear from my grounded research that as the children become more used to using the AIE there is a greater degree of reflective comments.

6.4 Research Limitations

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Whilst the questionnaires provided some useful information to get a broad overview of pupil’s perceptions, when I came to make a comparison of the responses over the year, I realised that there were some discrepancies in the wording over the three interventions. I had used the AIE as a structure for framing the questions, but it would have been better to ensure a greater consistency about the wording of each of the questions in order to make a better comparison over the year. It turned out that only six out of the questions were directly comparable.

It was unfortunate that two of the girls were unable to take part in the third intervention. Having two new participants who had not had the experience of working through the AIE may have distorted some of the results on the final intervention.

It was a shame that we only have one set of data from school A. It would have added more depth to the insights if I had been able to explore how the pupils’ perceptions were being effected by the programme in school B. Due to the scale of the project this was not possible, however, it would have been interesting to make a comparison of results from both schools.

6.5 Possible Ways Forward

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In order to move this research forward, it would be good to have the opportunity to look in more detail at what the children were learning on a larger scale and over a longer period of time. Whilst my findings appear to indicate some tentative conclusions, the sample size was small, and to develop a greater statistical significance it would need to be repeated on a larger scale. My research did indicate that the school-linking project appeared to develop intercultural competences, and that it could be a cyclical process. It would be interesting to look at this in more detail with a number of children over a longer period of time. It would also be interesting to see how child b and others from the interview group develop and change as they approach secondary school and experience other intercultural encounters. The AIE did appear to be helping pupils to become more reflective in their thinking and processing of intercultural encounters. In order to explore this further it would be interesting see whether the pupils themselves could support each other in using an adapted version of the AIE. Having a teacher talk through the AIE interview is a very time-consuming process. It might be worth considering whether it would be possible for peers to support each other in using the AIE, and what effect this might have on the children’s learning.

6.5 Summary of Findings

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In summary, whilst the school-linking project did not seem to change significantly the positive perceptions of working with others from different religious and cultural backgrounds, the children did appear to be learning from the experience. The AIE appeared to give them the tools needed to be more reflective in their thinking, and the teaching element appeared to be enabling the children to develop intercultural competences, which helped them to build on their learning over time.

References

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Amir, Y, (1969), ‘Contact hypothesis in ethnic relations’ Psychological Bulletin, Vol 71(5), pp 319–342.

Allport, G, W, (1946), ‘Some roots of prejudice’ Journal of Psychology Vol, 22, pp 9-39

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Byram, M, (1997), Teaching and assessing intercultural communicative competence, Clevedon, Multilingual Matters Ltd

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Brewer, M. B., & Miller, N, (1984), ‘Beyond the contact hypothesis: Theoretical perspectives on desegregation’, in N. Miller, & M. B. Brewer (Eds.), Groups in contact: The psychology of desegregation, Orlando, FL: Academic Press Inc, pp281–302

Brewer, M. B, (1996), ‘When contact is not enough: Social identity and inter-group cooperation’ International Journal of Intercultural Relations, Vol 20, pp291–303

Cairns, E, & Hewstone, M, (2002), The impact of peacemaking in Northern Ireland on intergroup behaviour, in G. Salomon & B. Nevo (Eds.) The nature and study of peace education, (pp.217–228). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Council of Europe, (2008), White paper on intercultural dialogue: Living together as equals with dignity, Strasbourg, Council of Europe Publishing.

Council of Europe, (2009), Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters, available at http://www.coe.int/t/DG4/AUTOBIOGRAPHY Accessed 21^st July 2009

Deardorff, D,K, (2006), ‘Identification and Assessment of Intercultural Competences as a Student Outcome of Internationalisation’ Journal of Studies in International Education Vol 10, pp241-266

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Hewstone, M, (2003), Intergroup contact - Panacea for prejudice? The Psychologist Vol 16(7), pp352 - 355

Hewstone, M. & Brown, R, (1986), Contact is not enough: An intergroup perspective on the contact hypothesis. In M. Hewstone & R. Brown (Eds.) Contact and conflict in intergroup encounters, pp.3–44). Oxford: Blackwell.

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Appendix A: Graphs Showing Questionnaire Responses

Appendix A1

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Appendix A2

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Appendix A3

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Appendix B: Grounded Analysis of Interview Responses

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List of Pupils Interviewed

Key:	Gender:	Ability:	Intervention	Comments:
A	F	+	1, 2.	G&T
B	F	=	1,2.	Loves RE
C	F	-	1,2,3.	EAL
D	M	=	1,2,3.	Behaviour challenges
E	M	+	1,2,3.	Popular
F	M	-	1,2,3.	IEP – Aspergers Syndrome
G	F	+	3	G&T
H	F	=	3	Very sociable

 

Grounded Research

The analysis of the AIE interview statements given by each child.

AIE	Intervention 1			Intervention 2			Intervention 3
	Tell	Reflect	Insight	Tell	Reflect	Insight	Tell	Reflect	Insight
Q1	BFC	ADE		ABCDF	E		EDG	HFC
Q2	ABDF	CE		AB	CDEF		CFD	GHE
Q3	C	E	AB DF			ABCDEF	C	HFD	GE
Q4		ABCDEF			ABCEF	D		GCDEF	H
Q5	FC	DE	AB	F	ABCDE			HCE	GDF
Q6	AF	CD	BE		ACDEF	B	GHDEF	C
Q7	BCDE		AF	CF	D	ABE		GFE	HDC
Total	16	16	10	10	21	11	12	21	9
%	38%	38%	24%	24%	50%	26%	29%	50%	21%

 

Acknowledgements:

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I would like to thank my supervisor Julia Ipgrave for her support and encouragement during the project, I have benefited enormously from her insights wisdom and gentle encouragements. I would also like to thank St Gabriel’s Trust and the Hockerill Educational Foundation for their financial support of the work.