Cultural Awareness in Multilingual Education

“Cultural awareness,” as a quick Internet search will show, is a widely used phrase and consequently has no single precise meaning. It is used to refer to awareness of diversity within a society and among societies. It is often associated with “training,” involving specific activities which draw attention to diversity and encourage and deliberately develop positive attitudes and understanding. Such training is directed at adults in their professional and working lives. It is linked through this to “intercultural competence” which is based in part on heightened cultural awareness and which is itself fundamental to “intercultural communication.” This field of activity and study is well enough established to have spawned “handbooks” (e.g., Straub, Weidemann, & Weidemann, 2007; Deardorff, 2009) and many textbooks (e.g., Holliday, Hyde, & Kullman, 2004; Jandt, 2004; Chen & Starosta, 2005).