Group work

If you thought that communication in you own language was difficult, communication in another language really put things in to perspective!
Groupwork is always a challenge cause you need individuals to work together for a common goal and everyone needs to be heard and agree on what to do.
This requires a very clear and understandable communication so no misunderstandings occurs. Clear and direct Communication in it self is also very difficult to obtain, cause we All have different ways of communicating. Sometimes we communicate via sarcasm and maybe you say something between the lines and so on.
All these challenges are magnified when the groupmembers have different nationalities.
First of all you do group work differently in each country and in some countries you don't do group work at all. Doing group work requires a lot of self-discipline cause sometimes you do individual pieces on the assignment and all the pieces needs to fit together in the end of the project. So everyone in the group has a responsibility to do their part and no one else to blame then them self if it's not done. This is of cause hard to do if you haven't tried it before.
Second of all there is the academic level which is very different in each country. Of cause the educations in each country aren't similar but the way we do assignments are very different. In Denmark we learn to be very critical and every time we come up with a allegation we need to have evidence. This evidence needs to be empirical or academic and we need to put a footnote, with a reference to the specific book or homepage, each time we come up with an allegation. And this doesn't seem to be the case in all countries. Furthermore there is a very strict policy about copy paste of others work, you can fail your assignment by doing this and again this doesn't seem to be the case in all countries.
Third of all there is the language barrier which really causes some problems and misunderstandings now and then. It's very hard to have academic discussions if you can't express your self or can't understand what the other one says. Furthermore it can really complicate things when you think you agree on something and the other one does the total opposite or something else then you thought you had agreed on:-)
And the last thing is the culture. In Denmark we use sarcasm a lot and in some countries you don't use sarcasm at all or as much as we do here. So this can cause problems as well cause you say something and you mean the total opposite and if this is not understood things can turn really bad. Furthermore it's very difficult to do a comparative study when you take things for granted. If you think they do it the same way in Spain as they do in Denmark for example. You need to keep an open mind and ask open or objective questions that are not coloured by your subjectivity. This is very hard to do and that's one of the greatest things I learned from this project.

Dinner for 3

Saturday the 25. Of september I had Alexandra from Greece and Marian from Spain at my place for dinner. During the evening we talked about similarities and differences and here are some of them:

How you greet each other as friends is quite different from Denmark and Greece/Spain. Already here you can make a big mistake greeting in the 'wrong' way. In Denmark it's common to give your friends a hug when you meet them for parties or other social arrangements and In Spain and Greece you kiss each other on each cheek.
Before this dinner I were at a surprise party for a Spanish girl called Laura to celebrate her birthday. The first girl I saw I was greeting with a hug. It turned very awkward cause in the same movement I tried to hug her, she tried to kiss my left cheek and I didn't notice this so after my hug I pulled back while she was trying to kiss my second cheek:-)
Then I found out the people were greeting by kissing each other so the others I hugged while I kissed them on both their cheeks. Then I talked to Alexandra (the Greek girl) later that night about this and she told me that hugging while kissing was not the proper way, you just like bumped your heads together and kissed with one hand on the shoulder, or something like that:-)
We talked about this at the dinner and I told the girls it was quite intimate for a Danish person to kiss another person, While alexandra and Marian thought the same about hugging. I told Marian that I didn't kiss some Spanish girls at the party but only shook their hand cause I'd never seen them before and because of this they were giving me a strange look. Marian told me it was because in Spain you kiss a person even if you meet them for the first time, so it was kind of impolite I didn't kiss them:-)

At this surprise party one of the spanish girls brought 3 of her spanish girlfriends to the party. I asked Marian and Alexandra if it was common in their countries to bring friends who weren't invited to parties and they confirmed that is was quite common to bring friends to parties and they were always welcome.
It is different in denmark. It is considered impolite to bring friends to a party without asking beforehand. After hearing this Alexandra said 'aaah that was why Christiane (a Danish girl) asked for permission to bring her sister to the party'.

During the evening alexandra asked me a question about Classroom behaviour. Alexandra and a Greek guy called kostas was talking about how Danish students were behaving in class. They had observed that some of the Danish students were eating during the class and some had their feet on the tables or chairs and others had their computers and mobile phones on the tables visible for the teachers. In their countries it was considered quite impolite or disrespectful while the teacher was teaching to do so.
I said that it was common that Danish students were eating if they were hungry doing the class and it was common to sit in a position which were comfortable, but still putting your feed on the table were a bit too much! Having your computer or mobile phone visible and using them during the class is common as well.

To be Independent is difficult or impossible to be in Spain and Greece where you are depending on your parents financially until you graduate and get a job.
 In Denmark it's possible to be independent when you are 18 years old cause from that time you can get money from the state during your studies or if you can't find a job.

Religion similar to denmark. All the young people are atheists while the elderly are more religious.

With all these small differences it's easy to see how a lot of small misunderstandings can evolve to major problems if you don't talk about it. It's understandable how people from different cultures some times go to war against each other, cause they have different backgrounds, religions, traditions and so on and don't understand why some people react differently then their would.

Rights

After the first and the second world war the framework with human rights started up with EU as a frontier.

A special convention for children was made in 1989.
Convention on the Right of the Child - CRC.

Ratification - national law adapted
• process

Rights holders:
The children hold rights and citizens do.
Claim their rights from the duty bearers.
Duty to other individuals.

Duty bearers:
State parties are duty bearers

Moral duty bearers:
The professionals like teachers, social workers, pedagogues ect that have special assignments towards children are moral duty bearers or have a special moral obligation.

Charity:
Services only for some people.
Goods provided.

Rights:
Services Is equal for all people.
Include empowerment.

There is a comity that is monitoring all the different countries to see if they implement the human and children's rights. Every 5 year the comity make a report about how the countries are fulfilling these rights.

Med Venlig Hilsen

Allan Thomsen

Intercultural competences

Elsebeth plum

Intercultural competences are:
- Understanding the situation, realising that cultural differences are influencing the situation.
- to stand back and analyse how to react to the situation, drawing on two kinds of knowledge.
A) general knowledge about cultural meetings and intercultural communication.
B) specific knowledge about present cultures.

Thomas Hylland Erikson - social anthropologist

A third way:

Etno-centric perspective - a horizon of understanding.
Judging other cultures by the standards of your own, defining the others in how they don't look like you.

Accepting that we do have a ethnocentric perspective.

Cultural relative perspective is the opposite of the ethnocentric perspective. It recognises all cultures as equally good. We shouldn't have any prejudices.

1. Horizon of understanding/ awareness of our prejudice.

2. Try to understand why people from other cultures do what they do. Respect their actions But you still have the right not to agree.

3. Meet people as individuals but not necessarily accepting their actions.

Camp

The class went to camp for three days from the 1.- 3. Of September. We all had a great time and the weather was sunny.
It was nice to socialise with all the different people. Because of the setting we were all 'forced' to talk to each other. We had a interesting talk in our study group (we are divided in to 3 smaller study groups because of the big amount of people. The study group is a place to talk freely about what ever comes to mind). Some of the small nationalities (the nationalities with only two of three attending students) found it difficult to find their place in the big group. I guessed it was because they didn't have the same safety zone as the big nationalities like the Spanish and danish people had. Then Daniel, a Spanish guy, sad that he actually envied people from the small nationalities because they where 'forced' to interact with others from different nationalities then their own. As he sad he haven't been traveling 2-3000 km to talk Spanish with people from his own nationality. But still the big nationalities have a urge to talk with each other in their own language. So the big challenge for us the Danish and the Spanish people is to interact with different nationalities then our own and when we interact with people from our own nationality speak English!

Ethnographic perspective:
Being there. Live with the culture you are studying. More dynamic and more subjective. Looking at cultural practice and what makes sense to the participants.

Cultural studies:
Historically perspective, traditions, values ect. more static and objective, contextually. Looking at differences and similarities between cultures.

Prejudice

Hans Georg Gadamer:
Pre understandings are all I have. We process the things we observe via our pre understandings in order to place and cathegorize them in order for the world to make sense to us.

Today we talked about cultural meetings and how all people are prejudice in some way or another. We did a pretty funny exercise where we were to guess some random things about 5 persons of our choice e.g. he's good at football or She's a good cook ect. Actually some of us guessed right and I guess some of our prejudice is right if we don't give it much thought and just let our subconscious or 6. Sense do the work:-) but if we think about our prejudices, like when you say a general thing about the Spanish people it can be a bad thing. To provoke Alvaro a Spanish student I said that one of my prejudices was that Spanish people liked killing bulls. And actually this is a very big topic in Spain that almost divide the Spanish people in half. A lot of young people in Spain don't like the bull fights, but I guess it's about 50/50 and In some areas they are trying to make bullfighting illegal.

Modes of study

Differences and similarities in modes of study:
In general the northen countries has very similar modes of study. The student - teacher relations is very loose and the teachers prefer to teach with the students inputs and active participation.
In the South and middle east the students are more passive and the teachers are teaching while the students in silence are making notes and are only allowed asking questions at the end of class.
All of the different studies have very similar clientel. We Can All work with children and adults with or without special needs in some way or another.


Economic:
In Denmark you get money from the state, the education is free but you need to buy your own books.
In other countries like spain and greece you need to pay money to go to School and you are not getting money from the state. So you need to save up money beforehand, work while your studying, have rich parents or if your grades are good, get a scolarship. In this case my guess is that the gap between social classes is bigger and more likely to accure then with the Danish system. The poor people have no money to educate themselves and the poor gets poorer while the rich gets richer.
So you Can say we are pretty privileged in Denmark, getting money from the state and free educations, but still we pay about 50 %, some more and some less depending on your income, in tax compared with Hollands 33%. So the danish state has more money to use in the welfare system, then others with lesser taxes.
In many of the southern and middle eastern countries it's possible that only one parent is working while the other parent is at home looking after the children etc. So the need for pedagogs like in Denmark and after school arrangements is not that big in those countries.
In Denmark it's very difficult to afford only one parent working, so it's very normal that both parents are working and the need for after school arrangements are bigger then other countries. Actually the children spend more time at institutions like school and after school arrangements then at home with their parents. And that's an ongoing topic in our field of study in Denmark.