Leveraging Greek kindergarten students’ lifeworlds in cultivating intercultural learning

Abstract

Modern kindergarten classes are highly diverse. This poses the challenge of the productive use of diversity namely the way students with different biographies (lifeworlds) can understand, learn from, and coexist with “others”. Familiarity with diverse biographies is important quality in the learning process as these capture aspects of student diversity that give individual meaning to self-existence. Moreover, biographical narratives in flexible intercultural communicative environments make possible to identify students’ starting points (pre-existing knowledge), learning readiness and cultural characteristics that compose identity. Thus, the negotiation of these points in the form of biographical reflections in a dialogical context can expand the understanding of the self, and the "other" as well as form a coherent view about modern world. The output of negotiating and communicating multiple biographical experiences, perspectives, and collaborative intelligence, is a newly generated intercultural learning. This article presents the role of preschool student biographies in cultivating intercultural learning. In this account, diversity is considered both as a learning resource and a learning opportunity.