An Overview of Muslim Spiritual Parenting

Muslim life on the individual, family, and community levels continues to revolve around fundamental spiritual principles, themes, and values with corresponding meanings that impact purpose of life and even lifestyle. Muslim parents pursue ways and means to nurture their children’s spirituality, strengthen their moral resilience, and shape their identity as effective members of society. This theoretical study explores Islamic insights into spiritual parenting, addressing questions around what defines spiritual parenting and constitutes its core tenets, characteristics and approaches, and principles and guidelines used by Muslims to raise spiritual children. This study identifies a rich Islamic conceptualization and theoretical approach to holistic spiritual parenting that engages with modernity and allows room for adaptation, creativity, and intercultural experience. Further empirical research is needed to shed light on the current dynamics of Muslim spiritual parenting, parents’ struggles, accommodations, adaptations, as well as caregiver resistance in practices of spiritual parenting, which would help us better understand the needs and challenges facing Muslim families today and further enrich our understanding of comparative and cross-cultural parenting in multicultural societies.

The Proximal Zone of Intercultural Development (PZID)

This article presents results of a comparative analysis of intercultural experiences between French and Singaporean participants. France and Singapore were chosen as research fields because of their difference in terms of the management of cultural otherness: a universalist cultural model for France and a pluralist cultural model for Singapore.Based on an online questionnaire addressing the intercultural experience of the participants, a quantitative analysis allows us to identify singular differences between the French and Singaporean participants . A particularity of the Singaporean context leads us to think about the concept of the proximal zone of intercultural development (PZID) that we will develop in this article.

"Excuse my Misunderstanding": Using Intercultural Approach to teach English as a Foreign Language in France

In France, the intercultural approach has been largely associated with teaching French as a Foreign language due to the multicultural and multilingual nature of the classes. There is very little research on the use of such an approach in teaching English as a Foreign language. This is due to the fact that the majority, if not all the students, share a similar culture and common linguistic codes. The intercultural experience, in that case, is encountered through the English program as presented by the teacher, who in most cases is also French. This paper examines the use of the intercultural approach in teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) to French learners (middle school /university students) by a foreign teacher and the consideration of social representations (stereotypes) as a strategy to develop classroom participation in verbal communication. It discusses theoretical understanding of the intercultural approach and how this approach could be used in practice by drawing examples from the teacher and the learners' experiences. Data was collected through participatory observations and questioning. The research findings will show that using social representations as a strategy in intercultural approach can be instrumental to the development of verbal communication.

Collaborative Online Learning: Plurilingual and Pluricultural Development

Background. The growing importance of international cooperation among universities have increased the number of joint training projects. Common Bologna principles followed by Russian and Spanish tertiary institutions helped perform a pilot study focused on telecollaboration and plurilingual and pluricultural competence implementation. The project aimed at forming plurilingual and pluricultural competence and communicative competence among students studying either English or Spanish or both through the integration of digital technologies into the learning process.Methods. This 7-month study took place in Moscow (Russian Federation) and Valencia (Spain) from November 2019 to June 2020. Participants were university students aged 20–23 from Teaching Training Faculties from Lomonosov Moscow State University and CEU Cardenal Herrera University. The undergraduates who volunteered to participate in the focus group took part in five telecollaboration sessions (March-May 2020). The participants were divided into two mixed (50% Russian and 50% Spanish learners) subgroups and discussed suggested topics during online studentled bilingual sessions. After each online interaction, researchers collected their opinions through questionnaires and discussion with a lecturer.Outcomes. All participants announced that the study gave them a chance to improve their language abilities, update their vocabulary and enhance their intercultural experience. None of the partakers reported having experienced any difficulty doing the project and only regretted that interaction time was too short. Additionally, lecturers were able to test new curricula implementation and assessment procedures.Conclusions. The pilot study was feasible to deliver and there was a clear, satisfactory result with the focus groups participants and teaching staff.

Intercultural Communication Concepts in Clinical Pastoral Education: The Intercultural Experience of Muslim Students

This essay argues that inclusivity and multicultural-theological representation in CPE is its most valuable component. We will explore Muslim students’ interaction, communication, and other processes, including conceptual analysis during their CPE training. Furthermore, gaps in the CPE curriculum will be addressed.

Transfer of Social Competencies to the Intercultural Environment. The Relationship between Social and Cultural Intelligence

Purpose of the article: The purpose of this quantitative empirical study is to examine the relationship between social and cultural intelligence. The aim is to determine whether social skills are transferable and applicable anywhere, regardless of external conditions given by cultural diff erences. Methodology/methods: Data were collected using an online questionnaire, which was completed by 92 students studying economics and management at universities in the Czech Republic. Data were analyzed using the PLS-SEM method. Scientific aim: The aim is to determine the predictive power of the social intelligence construct (SQ) (and their individual components - processing, skills and awareness) on the target variable, cultural intelligence (CQ). The mediation influence of two traditional antecedents of cultural intelligence, language skills and intercultural, experience is compared. The stability (immutability) of the basic theoretical model, the relationship between social and cultural intelligence, depending on gender, is also examined. Findings: It has been found, that there is a statistically significant positive relationship between social and cultural intelligence. Social skills have the greatest eff ect on cultural intelligence, but our data did not confi rm the statistically signifi cant effect of one dimension of SQ (awareness). The relationship between SQ and CQ is well explained by language skills; complementary mediation was confirmed. On the contrary, the second mediator examined, intercultural experience, does not explain the SQ-CQ relationship. Only a direct eff ect was identifi ed. The found relationship applies equally to men and women. No statistically significant difference was found between the two groups. Conclusions: The results of our study are important for HR management and personnel management, who select new employees. The knowledge can also be used to make decisions about sending employees abroad: individuals with a high SQ are likely to do well and be work-effi cient, both at home and abroad. A limitation of our research to some extent distorting its results and findings is a relatively small sample, or certain problems associated with the measurement of individual constructs. Suggestions for further research are discussed.

Developing and Assessing Intercultural Competence during a Mobility Programme for Pupils in Upper Secondary School: The Intercultura Assessment Protocol

Although pupil mobility is a core educational activity within the process of internationalising secondary school education, only modest efforts have been made to investigate pupil mobility in upper secondary school and how to assess it. The aim of this article is twofold. First, it presents an assessment framework—the (To be added after the review) (IAP). The IAP, which was designed through action research in the context of the Italian upper secondary school, is composed of a set of tools and follows a multimethod, multiperspective and longitudinal approach. Second, the article shows the pedagogical value of the IAP. Indeed, results suggest that some of the IAP’s tools, especially those requiring deep reflection on the self and on the intercultural experience, foster pupils’ self-awareness and critical thinking. These form key aspects of intercultural competence, which is one of the principal expected learning outcomes of pupil mobility.